Learning Chiri-men and Other crafts

I decided to try and figure out how to do the chiri-men flowers and artwork that I like so much. This is my first attempt. It is harder than it looks, and the example is extremely elementary and full of mistakes, but that's how we learn, ne?
These are supposed to be tulips, but are on a fantasy vine with fantasy leaves. I don't think I will be doing the vine and stem thing again. Unless I can think of some way that is not EXTREMELY painstaking to do it well.






This is done from a kit I purchased at UEKI, a paper shop in Shimonoseki. Wow, what a shop! They had kits, washi, chiyogami, origami, everything. Calligraphy stuff, and then, in back, an art gallery with the owner's mother's water colors and photographs on display. That was another WOW. She does flora/avian studies. They were inspired and beautiful.

This was the first I did from the kit that had 3 different projects. Of course, I did not follow it to the letter. Especially since every letter was in hiragana or kanji! I had to rely on drawings and trying to match the Japanese characters on the diagram with the characters on the different patterns and to the picture to make sure I was cutting the correct color. I still made mistakes, but was able to recover them nicely, I thought. Don't know what I'll do with it. But it's done.


This is another project in that kit. A 3-D postcard. Don't know how the postcard is expected to make it through the mail system, but maybe they are more gentle in Japan than in the US?










Here are all 3 together. My bouquet.