LED Lotus Flower

LED Lotus flower is a great for decorations either with or without the LED lights.

Paper lotus are easy to make and adds a wonderful addition to any occasions. It will make a perfect decoration on wedding tables. And being charged by batteries, they glow at the press of the button.

What you will need are

• Colourful Papers (three in total) - I have used A4 size paper and used three different colours [Pink for Petals, Green for leaves and yellow for the filaments]
• Scissor - 1

You actually don't need a scissor unless you need to cut the papers into wide rectangular strips. You can just use you hand if you are good at tearing the papers into perfect strips too.

Our origami lotus don't need any tearing and as the name says its just the creative folds that becomes the essence of the art of origami.

I love Pink and its always suits the lotus petals. Take 8 strips of wide rectangular strips of paper and start folding as follows,

1. Folding the paper strip into halves and release it.
2. Fold one corner of the paper strip right to the middle where we have made the impression in step 1.
3. Similarly fold the corners of all the four side as shown in the above image
4. Now, reverse the paper and fold halfway towards the middle line. Do the same for the other side as well.
5. The finished look will look as the image above. Repeat all the above steps for the other sets of paper strips. You should have 8 in total.

The steps of folding the leaves are the same as we did for the petals. Follow the image above for instructions on how to fold the paper for the leaves. Finally, you should have four petals for the lotus.

It is the easiest and is known by almost anyone. Just take three strips of yellow paper and place them on top of one another. Fold them in halves and cut the ends using the scissors. We have now made the filaments of our lotus flower ready.

Now that we have the petals, leaves and filaments ready, we need to arrange them into sets as

2 pink petals + 1 green leaves + 1 yellow filament.

Make four sets so that they look like the above image.

Yes, tie them together using a rubber band. Make sure the sets are of same length and you tie the band exactly at the center.This will make it easy for splitting up the flowers equally.

As I have mentioned , you need to split the sets one by one. With four sets, we now have 16 petals and 8 leaves.

Filaments are optional and you can also make lotus even without them. But adding the filaments just makes your lotus look appealing. Lift the yellow filaments slowly upwards. Make sure they point up and trim them as required.

Having lifted the filaments, it is now time to life the petals one by one.

Repeat lifting the petals. Slowly and steadily lift the petals as shown in the above image. Similarly do the same for the first round of petals at the top.

Similarly lift the second round of petals at the bottom

Next, make the leaves as shown in the image. As you can see, only the petals are lifted above . And for the leaves you just need to tone the ends slightly upwards and they should face sideways. This will make the whole set look like a real lotus flower. Finally the lotus flower is ready.

You can either stop with this. But I wanted to add more to the flower and chose LED light to make it look more appealing even in dim lights. And especially if you are planning this flower for the center of the wedding table or wedding decoration, this will make sure make your guests in awe and just takes minutes to make them.

I have used my old LED lights that I got from a birthday add-ons. I have added two cell batteries to the LED light sets. Having seen this, an idea struck me. Why not use this in my lotus flower and what follows is what I made using the inspiration.

Having five to six LED lights with wire, I used them at the back side of our origami lotus and pulled the tiny LEDs one by one through and in between the petals to the front side of the flower.

This is how the LED Lotus flower looked like.

Getting glass cups are cheap and easy. And almost it can be found in any parties or wedding occasions. You can use this glass along with the lotus to add a center piece to the wedding table. The on/off switch of the LED is glued to the side of the glass and you can use it to light the LEDs.

I have thought of extending the wire to the end of the table so that anyone can easily tap the table to light on or off the LEDs. But I don't want to mess up the only LED I had and so right now I 'm just sharing my idea here.

Idea: Extend the wire and run through the underside of the table cloth so that the on/off switch is just few inches from the hand. Anyone who taps the tables can control the LEDs without touching the Lotus flower centerpiece.