A Dozen Red Origami Roses

A unique twist to the traditional giving of roses on Valentine's Day. Handmade origami roses are everlasting and inexpensive to make.

Looking for a unique way to convey my love, the idea of paper roses popped into my head. A quick Google search and it turned out it wasn't such an obscure idea.

The first result returned Bloom4ever a company that specialises in hand-made roses, and they were even nice enough to include a How to fold origami roses guide. The site lists dozen rose bouquets for $80.

Only the most basic craft stationary is required, these include:

• Scissors
• Ruler
• (Craft) Glue
• Pens/Pencils

The most important material is the paper, unable tot find any origami paper, I had to settle for coloured A4 paper, and this turned out for the better. I used 80gsm A4 paper, as i didn't already have it, I purchased 100 sheets of red and green for $6.50 AUS. You may be able to borrow some coloured paper from your school or work, 1 sheet of coloured paper is required for the rose and 1 sheet of paper is required for the stem and leaves. You should experiment with different paper sizes and thickness to find what best works for yourself.

Other materials include:

• clear transparent wrap (Cellophane) - to wrap the bouquet, around $2 from any Newsagency.
• 1mm diameter wire - to make the rose stems, nice to have but not a requirement.
• ribbon - to tie the bouquet or roses.

This rose was designed by origami theorist Toshikazu Kawasaki.

Start with a sheet of A4 paper, and cut the paper into a square. I used a 17cm square as I found 21cm (width or A4 was too large), and 13cm (recommended by bloom4ever) was too difficult to fold.

I will not go through each folding step as there is numerous resources already available:

• How to fold origami roses (bloom4ever)] - very good instructions except for step 25.
• Rose (pajarita.org) - alternative instructions
• How to Fold a Paper Rose (wikiHow) - How to Fold a Paper Rose (wikiHow)

I used the bloom4ever instructions for the most part. Even though step 25 is broken into steps, I could not work out how to perform the 'twist' maneuver.

This YouTube video saved my life, big credit to the producer.


I have included my own version of the tricky part. It should also help.

Make as many rose heads as required.

I found some 1.86mm copper wire lying around that could be used for the stems. The advantage of copper wire over a paper only stem is that the copper can be bent allowing for better arrangement of the individual roses in the bouquet.

The copper wire was first straightened by pulling on the wire with one end in a vice. Once straightened the wire was cut into 30cm lengths. Each wire was then rolled with green paper and the end glued. It is possible to make stems without the wire by only rolling paper.

I needed a simple method of attaching the stems to the rose heads. Each wire end was bent into a shape that allowed the rose heads to simply be twisted onto the wire. Glue was then applied.

An idea that I think would look good, is to make the rose heads from silver metalic paper, and keep the stems as copper or silver.

After Googling rose leaf for ideas, basic leaf shapes were cut out of green paper. Each leaf had a little stipule allowing it to be glued to the main stem. There were two leaves per stem, glued in an alternate pattern.

Once the glue dried, the leaves were slightly bent through the centre axis and shaped to give a more appeasing look.

A dozen roses were bunched and arranged together to form a bouquet. the stems were securely tied together with red ribbon.

Clear transparent wrap was used to wrap the bouquet and again fastened with ribbon.

A simple card was made to accompany to flowers.