Happy Chinese New Year!!!!!

gong hey fat choy!! Here's to the Year of the Tuzi (that means rabbit in Chinese)! Power to those little cute fuzzy guys. I'm a rat myself, but I prefer to think of it as a mouse. :)
So anyway. Sorry for the minor blogging hiatus, but I had a huge test this week I was studying my little ratty (mousy!) bottom off for. But now it's over and I'm ready to celebrate the New Year!
Here's a little Chinese-paper-cutting tutorial I learned in my Mandarin class. When the teacher first showed it to me I thought holy cow no way can I do that! But it's actually quite easy and now I'm obsessively making them.

The one on the left is what it looks like unfolded. The one on the right is a mess-up but I still think it's pretty.

This is the character for chun (spring) in Mandarin.

Materials you will need:
-One square of paper. Any paper you want--origami paper, construction paper, really pretty patterned paper like I used in the tutorial--the (paper) world is your oyster!
-Scissors
-Pencil
See, it's that easy. No fancy-schmancy materials needed.

1. Fold the paper diagonally to make two triangles, crease, and unfold.

Wee! That's my foot down there, sorry. Also sorry for the bad picture.

2. Fold the other way to make another triangle, crease, unfold.

3. Here comes the mildly tricky part. Flip the paper over and pinch the center part where all the creases meet, like so.

4. Wait a second, that wasn't tricky! Now make creases between the sides.

5. Bundle everything over to one side and draw these lines on it. Make sure you use the 'backbone' (my term for the one-piece side without all the little triangle tips poking out) as the backside, like in this picture (mine doesn't really show up so well):
http://www.crafty-crafted.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/5.jpg

My picture. You can kinda see the lines....sort of? Maybe?

Cut out the shapes you drew.
Then unfold and stand it up! Gorgeous! See, you can make it.