Hen with chickens

Link to the instruction video for the hen: https://www.origamispirit.com/2014/02/origami-hen-box/ And for the matching chickens: https://www.origamispirit.com/2014/04/chicken/

I know it's not Easter yet, but I found this cute origami hen and just had to fold it! And with the accompanying chickens, you get two instructions in one post!

The two different colours for the beak and the body are a nice little touch and I even bought some bicolour paper for this (but it still looks good with regular origami paper, then you simply decide if either the beak or the body is white). Another cool thing about this hen is that its back can be pushed open and filled with little things, so it's a cute way to gift little chocolate eggs or other packaged sweets!

The tiny chickens are like a smaller version of the hen, literally but also instruction-wise: They have an open back as well and can be filled, even if in this case it's just one single gumdrop. I wouldn't really bother using bicoloured paper for the chickens, though, as everything turns out the same colour except the inside of the body (which usually isn't visible anyways). For the step in the beginning where you have to guess where half of the edge is, I used the technique shown for the hen (folding the edge in half, but only marking the edge with a pinch). I also prefer sloping the fold for the bottom a bit more towards the back for a more upright position, but I like the possibility of varying the apperance.

The blog recommends using at least 15x15 cm paper for the hen (resulting in a 7 cm high hen) and using a quarter of the paper (so 7.5x7.5 cm) for the chickens for balanced chicken-hen proportions... For the chickens, I would not recommend using even smaller paper since it was a bit of a challenge to do the very last folds in particular without the risk of ripping the paper, but this of course depends on the thickness of the paper.

Happy Very Early Easter!