Difficulty level: Easy
Tools needed: A square piece of paper.

A 4″ x 4″ piece of paper will make a samurai bookmark of approximately 2.5″ x 1.4″ dimensions. You can make it bigger, but a starting square beyond 6″ x 6″ is not recommended as the bookmark will be too big. Used a piece of newspaper to fold and you can wear this on your head!

Download instructions: (425KB)

If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it here.

1. Start with a square piece of paper and position it so that it’s a diamond shape.

2. Fold bottom corner to top corner. Crease and unfold.

3. Fold left corner to right corner. Crease and unfold.

4. Fold the bottom flap up so that the bottom point touches the intersection of the folds in the middle of the paper. Note: the image looks like it has the bottom corner above the intersection of the folds but it really matches it.

5. Fold the top corner down.

6. Fold the right corner down to the bottom corner.

7. Fold the left corner down to the bottom corner.

8. Fold the top layer of the left and right flaps up.

9. Fold the top right flap backwards.

10. Fold the top left flap backwards.

11. Fold the bottom corner upwards so that the corner is between the two flaps bent backwards (from step 10).

12. Fold the bottom edge up to get the finished product.