Sheep Origami Bookmark {Tutorial} plus {Review}

August 31, 2017November 29, 2019 acraftyarab Arab Book, Arabic Resource, Eid Tutorial

We made this sheep origami bookmark after I recently received the Arabic children’s book Who Hid the Eid Lamb, written by Taghreed Najjar and illustrated by Manal Haddadin, from Maktabatee. This company, owned by two moms, is founded with a simple objective: to hand-select high-quality, engaging, and relevant Arabic books and goods for children and beginners.

The story hit so close to home because the same thing happened to me as a child. You can’t image my joy at realizing I can share my experience with my daughters as I saw myself in a children’s book. Even down to the pony tail!

I also remember as a child falling in love with an Eid lamb that had been brought to my aunt’s home before Eid Al Adha. While the story in the book is set in Palestine, and mine was in Libya, and the lamb in the book was white, while the one in my memory is black, the other similarities really hit close to home.

I remember my older cousin Ahmed had to kill the lamb for the family Eid meal and I was mad at him for days after. It’s funny how memories come rushing back from just a few images. And the images in the book are quite stunning. We loved them all, from the detail in the Palestinian embroidery on the dresses to the tiny touches like a flower necklace on the lamb, as it frolicks in the field.

Did you notice our adorable sheep bookmark holding our place in the corner? Inspired partly by the Kaab’a bookmark we made a few days ago and the lamb from my childhood, we made it to go with our new book.

Supplies

This bookmark is in two parts, the origami bookmark that fits over the page and the cover made to look like a lamb. We started by making our bookmark first by folding a square piece of beige card stock into a triangle.

We folded the top point down.

We then folded over the points on the side of the triangle towards the point in the middle.

Finally, we tucked the side points into the pocket created by our second fold.

Our bookmark looked like this when it was complete. We set it aside to work on our lamb, which will cover the middle fold.

My daughter drew out a large “cloud” design on the black card stock and cut it out. She choose the word cloud because kids would get it, she said. She made it the size of our bookmark.

Next she placed the cloud over the bookmark and traced out the design. She traced it out with pencil, but if you feel confident to just cut and turn, you can try it that way too.

Now she needed to create the tuft of wool over the eyes of the lamb. She drew out a more horizontal, smaller cloud shape.

Once that was cut out, she drew and also cut an oval for the lamb face.

Finally, the ears were drawn and cut.

Now all our pieces were ready for assembly.

We added the oval face to the round black card stock and placed the ears on the sides. The top layer was the tuft of wool over the eyes.

We added the lamb’s face to the bookmark, only adding double sided tape to the top half of the body.

We made sure our cut out points matched.

Now it was time to use our pencil and draw out eyes, a nose and a mouth. We used the face from the sheep countdown printout to figure out placement.

We cut out a small triangle from pink card stock for the nose and use the double sided tape to add it on. My daughter then went over the pencil lines with a pen. She also outlined the ears and face.