DIY Origami Hexagon Wall Decor | Paper-Folding Art Project

I love the order and calming qualities of a repeating symmetrical pattern, so I thought I'd use this concept to make many of the same pleasing paper shapes and join them together to make a piece of wall art.

This Instructable will show you how to fold regular A4 printer paper into 3D hexagon shapes, and use these to form your own design of minimalist decor. Of course, you can use any colour(s) of paper for this, and arrange them in any layout you wish. And the scale is only down to your levels of patience!

You don't need many supplies for this, so it's a good budget-friendly craft!

• A4 sheets of paper; I used 10 sheets of regular printer paper
• All-purpose clear glue
• Stiff cardboard; I reused some packaging
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Something to attach the art to the wall; I used self-adhesive Command strips

Place an A4 sheet down in front of you in the landscape orientation, and then bring the bottom-left corner upwards so the left-hand edge now lines up with the top edge.

Only crease at the very ends of this 'fold' - you don't want a diagonal fold line.

Fold in the right-hand edge so it meets the parallel edge of the folded-over section. Crease this fold. Drag your fingernail along folds to make them crisp.

Unfold just the diagonal.

Line up the left-hand edge with the folded edge, crease and then unfold.

Unfold the paper completely and line up the right-hand edge with the fold just past the centre. Crease and keep folded.

Line up the left-hand edge with the fold in the centre of the folded-over section. Crease and then unfold everything.

Line up the left-hand edge with the crease you just made (the leftmost one). Crease and keep folded.

Fold the right-hand edge over to line up with the folded edge on the left. Crease and then unfold everything.

You should now have the paper split into 7 equal parts.

You now need to cut 2 strips from this sheet of paper, each 8.3 cm (3 1/4") wide.

So use your ruler and pencil to mark out these strips, and cut them out. Make sure you're cutting parallel to the long edges, not the short edges.

Try to make your pencil marks faint so they can easily be erased later.

Discard the narrow leftover strip of paper.

Place one of the strips down on your table with a short edge towards you, and mountain folds facing you.

Note: a mountain fold points upwards and a valley fold points downwards (they're the reverse of each other).

Fold up the edge closest to you and line it up with the first mountain fold. Crease.

Then line up the 2nd mountain fold with the 3rd mountain fold and crease to form a valley fold in between the two. Repeat the same along the strip, making a valley fold in between each pair of mountain folds.

That will give you a concertina.

Position the paper horizontally as shown, making sure that the fold at each end is a valley fold.

Fold each top corner downwards to line up with the first mountain fold on each side, and crease.

Fold up the bottom edge so it lines up with the bottom edges of these triangles. Crease and then unfold everything.

Fold both long edges inwards so they line up with the central fold. Crease and then unfold.

Turn the piece of paper over and position it so there is a short edge towards you, making sure there is a diagonal mountain fold in the bottom-right corner.

It's quite hard to describe the next folds, so if you get stuck take a look at my video above!

First, you need to fold the triangle in the bottom-right corner underneath. Then fold the short edge upwards.

Fold the short edge downwards a little along the next fold, then find the 3rd square from the left and make a new crease diagonally in this square. This crease needs to line up with the folded edge that's now on top of it.

Fold the rightmost flap backwards (or to the right depending on how you're looking at it).

Then repeat the step where you make a new crease in the 3rd square from the left, and again make it line up with the folded edge on top of it.

The short edge gets folded back again and all of the steps get repeated over and over until you reach the end of the paper.

Carry on with the steps listed above until the end of the strip, and the result will be as shown in these photos. You'll have a concertina with zigzag folds at the top.

Compact these folds again and you'll have an 'L' shape of paper.

Hold the 'L' shape with the short end at the top, pointing to the right.

Fold the bottom-right corner of that short end upwards, so it lines up with the top edge.

Repeat the same for every other corner of the concertina.

Turn the 'L' shape over so the short end is now at the bottom and pointing to the right.

Fold the corner at the front downwards, so it lines up with the bottom edge.

Repeat the same for the other corners behind that one.

'Pop' out the valley folds around the sides to help you form the paper into more of a circular shape.

Now for the tricksy bit.

You need to join the ends of the concertina together by overlapping a section and tucking in a couple of triangle flaps.

So first, turn the shape over and undo one of the triangle flaps on the leftmost end of the paper strip.

Look at the top again and you should see a triangle flap on one end, and this will need to tuck down into a triangle-shaped gap on the other end of the paper. In the photo above, I've marked the triangles in pink and green.

It takes some coaxing, but you'll get there! Then go to the underside and re-fold the triangle flap that is undone.

Fold the bottom edge upwards and inside the shape.

The hexagon is finished!

Repeat the above steps until you have all the hexagons you want. I made 19!

If you want to, you can put a little dot of glue in the central point on the inside of each shape. This is to keep the central point together and looking neat, with no gap.

Then glue these hexagons together into the layout you want for your wall art.

Once dry, place these on top of a piece of stiff cardboard, and draw around the outside.

Cut a little inside this line - you want to make sure that no card will be showing around the outside of the paper shapes. Once you're happy, glue the shapes to the card.

This is a very lightweight piece of art, so it's easy to hang. I personally chose to attach a couple of self-adhesive Command strips; one half of the strips on the cardboard, one half on the wall. They work like Velcro, so you just press the two sides together and that's it, they're stuck!

And that's your minimalist decor completed!

I'm really pleased with it, and once you get the hang of it, making the hexagons is very satisfying.

I hope you enjoy following along :D