Day Three Hundred Thirty Six: Love Notes B.T. (Before Texting)

For all my jokes, I'm really a romantic at heart.  When I saw Martha's Antique-Style Valentine, I had to make it for my husband.  It's a little card, folded origami style.  According to Martha, it's a "puzzle purse".  In this version, a poem runs along the edges, starting outside the folded square.  The text, embellished with designs, is revealed in stages as the card is opened.

Looking at the directions, I was reminded of the notes my friends and I folded and passed between classes in junior high. Easy right?

You start with a square piece of paper:

Fold it into thirds, then rotate 90 degrees and do it again:

Then fold into the triangle, rotate 90 degrees and do it again:

When you finish yo have something that looks like this:

Confession:  it took me about ten pieces of paper to get to this point.  It's not as easy as it looks.

I'm not exactly sure how, but if you hold the corners just so, then dance around in a circle under the light of a full moon at midnight, your paper will fold up into a little star like this:

 

Martha's directions might as well have been in Chinese for all it helped.

Then fold up the corners of the star:

Tuck in the last flap and you have this:

Copy a suitably sappy poem inside. I used Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds....")

It turned out pretty well.  My junior-high self would be highly impressed. 

My husband will think I'm weird.