Ornaments from the Hungarian Map Fold

08/11/2022 by UKMA 2 Comments

You may recall the little Hungarian Map Fold book I made many years ago.

I was playing with a similar book and realized the inserts would make a lovely ornament. The old step-by-step instructions were pretty good so I am bringing them to this post. Ignore the text and focus on the folds!

1. Cut your circles. Mine were about 3 1/2 inches across

Fold the circle in half bottom to top

2. Open and fold, in half side to side.  

Flip it over.  It should look like this:

3. Fold the diagonals by matching the fold lines.  This is the only tricky fold.

4. Fold the second diagonal by matching the top and bottom fold lines of the first diagonal

5. Collapse the piece.  It should want to collapse, if you’ve done the folds right.

Note the orientation of the text.  You want the flat area to be the text area. Once collapsed it will look like this:

6. Mark each unit at the same point – can you see the tiny dots? This is a really important step to get the tops the same size.

then fold in the side to meet the point.

7. This sounds tricky but it isn’t.  REVERSE the folds so those triangle on the top switch to being INSIDE the unit.  Open them

and push on that middle fold to push it inward

Re-crease the folds.  It will change from the left image to the right one.

From here you simply stick the units to each other then stick to close the circle!

I think they are quite cute and not hard. They work well with scrapbook paper and I managed to get 10 circles from a single double-sided sheet, so two identical ornaments or one with one side as the focal point, and the other, well, the other!

I have another ornament that I am loving, but I’ll save that for another day.