Tanabata, which is translated as the Japanese Star Festival, is one of my favorite holiday celebrations.  It derives from a romantic legend about two lovers in the sky, who are allowed to meet only once a year.

For the past six years I have celebrated Tanabata with the children of Willowbrook, where I work every summer.  We always have the campers write wishes and make origami ornaments to hung on bamboo for Tanabata.  One year we even did a skit about the legend of Tanabata.

Here are some wishes that our campers made this year.

"Be good at math" (left), "Beautiful planet" (right)

"Good health" (left), "I want a dog" (center), "Peace at home (right)

Here is my Tanabata wish this summer...

"I wish the event at Japanese Garden will go well"

It seemed that my wish had come true.  The event was full of people and fun.  I received some positive feedback.

my demo table

lotus flowers, lily pads and frog that I folded and displayed.

People seemed to be more interested in the lights that I put inside of the lotus flowers than anything that I folded.  They may be hard to notice in the photo above, but they are glowing LED lights that are battery operated, called Fairy Berries, available on Amazon.com

lotus flowers with fairy berries look like these in dark.

The guitar music by Toshi Onizuka was also very beautiful.   Thanks to his music I was able to stay calm and in good mood during the event.  I will definitely need to purchase his CDs.

I got to browse around the garden for a little while, before and after the event.

Traditional kusudama in display, not made by me.

I wore a vintage floral skirt I found at Lodekka. Some of the flowers on the skirt are star shaped, Isn't it appropriate?

koi in the pond

iris flowers were still blooming

I would like to express my gratitude towards all the staff, volunteers and visitors at the event in the Japanese Garden, as well my helper (aka my significant other).  It was a wonderful event thanks to all of you!

The event was fun and full of families, elephants (not the real ones), and green (for St. Patrick's Day)! They even had green popcorn and green cotton candies for snack.

These are the artworks I made for display at OHS.

Hindi Goddess Ganesha made in origami

White elephant holding white lotus flower. The elephant model is from Yasutomo Animal Print Origami package. The model creator is unknown.

In honor of Packy.

I wanted to create some art pieces that express how elephants are highly regarded both in Hindu and in Buddhism for different reasons. I also created something to honor the birthday elephant, Packy!

My table set up...

This is a box that I always use to hold my business cards. It was a gift from a group of students that I used to teach. Coincidentally, it has a beautiful design of elephants on it!

"Elephant Book Corner" had an elephant print chair and a basket full of elephant books. I had to have a photo taken with my elephant skirt!

While I was at OHS, I ran into some people that I know, including an event coordinator at the Oregon Zoo. She invited me to work at the official celebration of Packy's birthday at the zoo! I will be teaching more people how to make origami elephants, yey! I will be at the Oregon Zoo from 10am to 4pm, on Saturday, April 14. You can read more about the event here.

In traditional Japanese culture, people used furoshiki, a square piece of wrapping cloth to transport kimono, bento, gifts and many other things.  After the use of plastic bags became common in the post-war period, the number of furoshiki users almost diminished.  In the recent years, however, the trend of using furoshiki has come back again along with the eco-friendly movement.  Just a square piece of cloth can be wrapped in so many different ways, kind of like origami.  They also come in different sizes, designs, and types of fabric.

My sister found this furoshiki in Japan and gave it to me.  The design motif of the fabric is paper cranes!

I can wrap a bottle of wine to take it to a party, like this...



When I go to check out some books at a library, I can wrap the books like this:


Or, if I am going to a spa and need to bring change of clothes, I can wrap them like this.


Really, they are so versatile, eco-alternative to plastic bags and elegant alternative to eco-bags.  This website shows many techniques on how to wrap furoshiki.  You can buy one there, on Etsy, or many other places.  You can also use just a square scarf as a wrap cloth too!

It has been a few weeks since I picked up Origami Dress-Up Paper Dolls book.  I've already made a few dolls for myself and also helped some of my students make theirs with this book.  Since the book was imported from Japan, I paid a little more than how much I would've paid if I waited to buy it in Japan, but for me money was worth spent.  This book turned out to be just as good as the Amazon Japan review, or even better!  I love origami and I love fashion, so this is right up my alley.

First of all, the designs of the dolls are absolutely adorable.  Here is a doll that I made using a left over paper from Origami Mushrooms for the dress.  I think she turned out pretty cool!

I find that some origami instruction books are hard to follow, but not this one.  The book is very well written.  The level of difficulty is about semi-beginner to intermediate.  The girls at my school who made these dolls have done origami with me in the past, and they are between 2nd and 5th graders.  With my help, it took each of them about two hours to finish making a doll with a whole outfit.  Each doll is made out of 10 or more pieces of paper, with all the body parts, clothing and shoes combined.  They loved it and stayed focused on the project for the whole two hours.

A large variety of clothing, accessories, and hairstyles are introduced in the book.  Even though some pieces of clothing or body parts require different sizes of paper, he explains exactly how to cut a regular size origami paper into each required size so there is no need to purchase different sizes of paper.  He also encourages you to use wrapping paper and such, and explains how to cut one into a perfect square that you need (which is by using the cardboard that comes with an origami package, FYI).


Here is a "Mini-Me" I made.  Black hair, a print skirt, and boots... That's totally me.  I had so much fun choosing paper for this outfit that made me realize this book might even help me stop my obsession for buying clothes!

When I was little, one of the most favorite things to play with was dress-up paper dolls, which kind of explains why I love playing dress-up.  If you have met me in person you probably have noticed me with a weird skirt one day or another.  I have a collection of skirts... and I know they are all weird...  I love fun, novelty prints not only for skirts but also for origami papers.  And I have a collection of pretty print origami papers also.

So you can imagine how I got excited when I found an instruction book on how to make dress-up paper dolls in origami.  The book is called 折り紙きせかえ人形, written by Makoto Yamaguchi, a renown origami artist in Japan.  Many of his books are translated into English, but unfortunately not this one.  When it comes to origami instructions, though you can usually understand it just from diagrams so it doesn't really matter even if it is written in a language that you don't know.  Most origami paper packages are from Japan and come with instructions written in Japanese, but my American students still use those.

Last week I ordered this book at Kinokuniya Bookstore which is inside of Uwajimaya in Beaverton and am still waiting to receive it.  It is very well reviewed on Amazon Japan.  Oh I can't wait to get it!  I will review it on this blog later.