Creating a "Blintz Fold"
Create guidelines by folding a square piece of paper in half. Line-up the edges and corners and make a solid crease.
Unfold and repeat in the other direction. Be sure to line-up the edges and corners as cleanly as you possibly can.
Unfold. You should now have a square piece of paper with creases/guidelines that intersect perpendicularly in the center.
Fold each corner inward toward the center. Begin with one corner, pulling it all the way toward the center point and lining it up with the guideline-creases you made earlier. Once everything is lined up, fold and crease. Try to get the tip as close to center without going past it. Do not unfold.
Repeat the previous step for each corner. Once each corner is folded you should be left a smaller square. This is a "blintz fold." The "blintz fold" is the foundation for many origami projects.
Creating a Lotus Blossom
Fold each corner of the blintz base inward toward the center. Bring each corner all the way to the center point of the square, and line-up the corners, edges and guidelines just as you did when you first constructed the base. Make sure the folds are on the top of the blintz base when you begin.
Repeat for each corner. When you are finished, you should end-up with another square. You are essentially performing a series of blintz folds on a single piece of paper.
Make another blintz fold. As you did with the previous step, fold each corner of the paper inward toward the center, lining up all edges and corners. Work each corner one at a time and be patient.
Flip the square over and make another blintz fold. Once again, you will be folding the corners to the center point so that you are left with yet another, albeit smaller, square. At this point, the paper may be very difficult to fold.
Make the final folds. This time you will only be folding a portion of the corners inward. Make a fold that includes approximately 10-20 percent of the corner.
Repeat for each corner. The object should know resemble an octagon with irregular sides.
Pull up your first petals. Keeping the object oriented so that you can see your most recent folds, feel around the bottom of the square for the top layer of flaps. Gently pull-up each flap one at a time, working around the smaller partial folds you made in steps five and six. Repeat for each flap/petal. You will be "inverting" a fold with each petal. This is the hardest part of the process. Move slowly and gently, and try not to tear the paper. You may have to slightly "unfold" the lotus to get the petals to come up. When you're finished, the flap you grabbed from the bottom should be nearly vertical.
Pull up the next round of petals. Again, grab the flaps on the bottom and gently lift them up, "inverting" the fold so that they petals open on the opposite side.
Pull up the last round of petals. Grab the remaining flaps on the bottom and gently fold them upward. These petals will be closer to horizontal than vertical, and they might be the most difficult ones to fold without tearing.
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