I was recently asked, in one of the Origami Houston meetings, about ideas for place card holders for a party. They needed to be simple, elegant, and not too much time consuming, as the host would have to fold a bunch of them by himself.
I suggested to go with this one, the traditional crane place card holder.
The crane place card holder is a modification of the traditional flapping bird. The instructions can be found in the book
Crane Origami
.
I folded the model in the picture above with a 6" (150 mm) square of embossed washi paper, and added a 3" x 1½" (75 mm x 38 mm) name card, decorated with a scrapbooking corner punch.
The place card holders can have an elegant or casual look depending on the paper you choose.
From left to right: embossed origami paper, elephant hide paper, scrapbook paper, tant paper, patterned origami paper.