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Stringing 1000 Paper Cranes

I've folded 1000 cranes -- now what? (community article)

It's becoming pretty popular for brides to fold 1000 origami cranes as part of the Japanese tradition. The idea is that anyone who folds 1000 paper cranes will be granted one wish. For weddings, the bride folding the cranes learns patience and is granted the wish of a happy, healthy marriage.

I thought I'd share the way I showcased the 1000 paper cranes at our outdoor wedding! I know that there are many ways to display the cranes, and this is just one way. Feel free to post a comment with other ways you've displayed them, or seen them displayed! Here is how our gazebo turned out on the big day!

[photo by our amazing photographer, Chris Richards]

The following is taken directly from my bio to show how we strung the cranes I folded.

Believe it or not, a lot of math was required for the stringing of our 1000 paper cranes. =) Here is the gazebo that we'll be decorating:

What we decided to do was hang alternating colored cranes around the whole gazebo in the "windows." We'll also do a short fringe around the front -- where our officiant and we will be standing for the ceremony.

The length between the top of the little "wall" and the bottom of the dome of the gazebo is about 5 feet, so we made strands of around 4 feet of cranes, which was around 18 cranes. For the fringe, we made some 2 foot versions of these strands.

What you'll need:

1000 Paper Cranes =)
1000+ beads -- I chose plain white beads that came in a pack of 1100
Lots of string -- I used a fairly strong 0.008 inch non-fraying, non-pierceable beading string
Needle, thin enough to p ass thr ough the beads, but stiff enough to pierce through the top of the origami crane

First, Measure out the string to your liking. (For my strands of about 4' of cranes, I used almost 5' of string.) You'll want to double-knot a bead to the very end to keep the first crane on it:

Next, thread your needle, and pass the needle through the hole at the bottom of the first crane, and pierce through the center of its back. There are various ways you can string cranes, but for our purposes, I wanted to put some space between each and every crane, so next, I passed my needle through a bead twice, then slid it to its final position for the next crane:

Note: Passing the string through a bead twice still allows the bead to slide, so every 3 or 4 cranes, I placed the next bead, and then passed the needle through one extra time to keep it in place a little better.

Dear FI hard at work in the background!

Repeat... 999 times. =) Here's what two hanging cranes look like:

And here are just some of the strands that we finished this week:

Yippee!

My dad came up with a nifty way to transport these cranes, too -- a big box (that our centerpiece branches came in) on its side, old coat hangers, and voila!

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kristiranee

11/11/2010 at 08:07 am

I'm thinking of making 1000 paper cranes and I was curious... what type of paper did you use to make yours? I want to use solid colors, similar to what you did, and was thinking about using regular colored copy paper but not sure how they would turn out. Would you mind sharing what type of paper you used (and possibly where you purchased it)? Thanks!!