Sonobe Christmas Ornament Tutorial

Start with a 3" x 3" piece of paper and fold it in half. I used the hostess Designer Series paper. You may want to use a lighter weight paper. I like the heavier paper because I don't feel like I am going to rip it when I am working with it. The holes on my ornament will be larger because thicker paper doesn't fit as tightly as lighter weight paper does.

Fold each edge of the paper in to meet the center fold.

Take the top left corner of the paper and fold it down to meet the edge of the bottom.

Take the bottom right corner and fold it up to meet the upper edge of the paper. Your paper should look like this.

Open your folds back up and you will see 2 small triangles on the top right corner and the lower left corner.

Fold the triangles under.

Take the lower right corner and tuck it under the flap that you folded the little triangle under.

Take the upper left and tuck it under. Make sure that all the paper is laying flat and does not bunch up.

Flip the paper over. Fold the lower right corner up and the upper corner down to form a square.

Fold the square in half with the points on the outside.

This is a more 3D view of what you just made. This is called a sonobe. You will need to fold 30 of these. Yes, I said 30! Once you get the hang of it the folding will go quickly. Don't rush too much because you want them to be neat.

To make the top of the ornament you will need 5 single sonobes.

3 sonobes... 2 more to go!

4 sonobes....almost there!

All five sonobes. Tuck the point from first sonobe into the flap on the last to make a ring.

Double or triple knot a piece of ribbon and feed it through the hole in the top of the ornament.

To make a set of 3 sonobes you will start with 2 individual sonobes.

Tuck a point from one sonobe into the flap of another

Complete the 3D point by tucking the point from the last into the flap on the first. Make 7 of these set of 3 sonobes.

You will have 5 points on the top of the ornament that you will attach a set of 3 sonobes to. The set of 3 sonobes will also have a point that needs to be inserted back into a flap on the top of the ornament. You can see that the green point is from the set of 3 sonobes and it will insert into the More Mustard flap that is above it. This will create a 3D point with the More Mustard, Always Artichoke and Night of Navy papers. You can almost see the complete point already even though the Always Artichoke has not been tucked in yet. I attached all my set of 3 sonobes before I started tucking the points back into the top of the ornament so I wouldn't lose my place.
Once you get all five of the set of 3 sonobes on your ornament will look like this. You will have 5 points that you will attach two set of 3 sonobes and 3 single sonobes.

This shows the first set of 3 sonobes attached to the ornament and then a single sonobe on the next point. The third point will have the other set of 3 sonobes. The fourth and fifth points will have a single sonobe. There will be one single sonobe left that will complete the ornament. It does not get attached until there are no more flaps to insert a point.

You will start to see where the points need to be tucked into the flaps from the pieces that are already there. You want to form 3D points all around the ornament. This helped me figure out where to tuck. The last sonobe will go on the bottom of the ornament once you run out of flaps to tuck in to. Hopefully where I labeled the flaps and points will help.

I wrote this tutorial from the last step back to the first, so if there is something that is a little fuzzy please let me know so that I can edit it to make it better. Thanks!