Folded Paper Butterflies

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By Jessica Ripley

I am so honored to be part of a group that will be creating and gathering butterflies for the Houston Holocaust Museum. It's such a beautiful project and I can only imagine how breathtaking it will be when it's complete.

As a scrapbooker, the first medium I thought of to create my butterflies was of course paper. Below is an easy tutorial for a folded paper butterfly that you can do too. They take just a short time to make

Supplies you need:
-Double sided patterned paper or card stock
-Staples
-Adhesive dots

And the quick and easy steps:

1. First, cut 4, 4X4 inch squares of paper. (smaller is fine, but any larger might make your butterfly bigger than their requirements)

2. Next, fold two sides of each square up at a diagonal, kind of like a kite shape.

3. Then attach the "wings" together. I chose staples to do so as these butterflies will be traveling, and I want to be sure they stay together. Attach the two for each side first:

4. And then the two pairs together: (The staples will be covered up in the next couple of steps).

5. Next make the "body" of the butterfly. Using another piece of 2 sided card stock, cut a small piece about 3" X 6". Fold the two sides towards the center leaving a small gap in between, and then the corners of one end out. Like a collar:

6. And for the final step, attach the body to the wings with adhesive dots.

Pavel Friedman wrote in the incredible poem:

Only I never saw another butterfly,

That butterfly was the last one,

Butterflies don't live here, in the ghetto.

It just makes me want to create and send as many as I can to this wonderful project as they work towards their goal of collecting 1.5 million. Please do consider creating a few butterflies in whatever way you can to send along too.

Have a wonderful and safe holiday.