Tuttle Publishing provided me with the origami kits shown below, to facilitate my review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Hobbies make for great gifts.  Either you can give the recipient something that supports a holiday he already has, or (especially if the recipient is one of your kids), you can a gift that introduces a potential new hobby.  Origami is an especially great option because it’s inexpensive.  There are no fancy supplies to purchase; you just need paper.

Tuttle Publishing has a huge selection of origami books and kits (together with other artsy books); I’ve shown you a few of them in the past.  The three options in this post make fabulous introductory kits, depending on who you’re buying for.

Fun & Easy Origami

This kit consists of two how-to books and some papers, packaged in a long, slim slipcase.  When you take them out, they actually neatly divide into two.  (You could even split this into two gifts if you needed/wanted to.)

See?  Slim case.  (That’s a glue stick I photographed beside the box, for scale.)

Fun & Easy Origami is, hands-down, the easiest of the origami kits I’ve tried from Tuttle.  If your gift recipient is a young beginner, this is definitely the one to go with.  There’s a good bit of variety, but these are pretty simple folds.  That’s good for not-so-nimble fingers, and/or for young people who may get frustrated easily if the folds aren’t working right.

The selection of figures seems to have been made with children in mind, too.  They are likely to find these approachable, relevant subjects.

Origami Extravaganza

Origami Extravaganza is an excellent kit for the older beginner (or for a not-so-beginner).  The overall size of the box is about half that of the Fun & Easy Origami box, but it’s notably thicker.

It, too, comes with a book and a stack of papers.  I like that it’s so compact.  The figures in this book are considerably more difficult than the figures in the first book.  (Overall.  There are a few easy ones in here, too, but for the most part they’re more challenging.)  I ran into a little bit of difficulty, so this is definitely for a gift recipient with a bit more dexterity and patience than the other kit.  You’ll want to make sure you’re giving it to someone who can be okay with running into a “wall”  a few times, and patiently work through it to figure out where he went wrong.

There is a great selection of figures here, though, for the folder who is patient.

Origami Stationery

This one is a bit different.  Origami Stationery is probably an especially good option for tween girls on up.  (There’s no reason the boys can’t use it, but in my experience, most boys are far less likely to have interest in correspondence than girls the same age.)  If your girls love to send letters or pass notes, they’ll love this!

Origami Stationery offers fun folds for dressing up your correspondence.  There’s a variety here, in terms of what functions the folds will serve.  There’s a trapezoid note fold, for instance, that will go in the corresponding trapezoid envelope.  I’m pretty sure the trapezoid note would be mailable as-is, though, as long as you seal it shut first.  Others would need to be tucked inside a regular envelope.

This is one of my favorites.  See the sailboat?

Here’s the trapezoid note:

See how it looks like if you slapped a seal on that you could then just address the other side and pop it in the mail?  (It would need extra postage, though, being non-rectangular.)

This kit also comes with a bone folder (that’s a tool for firmly creasingyour folds)…

…and a nifty little notch to store it in, inside the box.

The only thing I was a little bummed about, with this book, is that all of the folds start with a traditional square of paper.  That’s great for regular origami, but most people write notes on rectangular paper.  If you want to use most of these folds, you’ll have to plan ahead so you use the right paper.  (A few can be folded from rectangular paper by folding the paper into a square first.  But some folds are sufficiently complex that those extra folds would just really confuse you.)

So I kind of wish the writers had taken that into consideration and included some folds that work well with regular notebook paper or stationery.  Still, these folds are a lot of fun, mostly pretty easy to do, and definitely workable as long as you plan ahead to be sure you write your letter/note on paper that’s square.

Which one would you choose for that special person on your list?