Join us to make homemade Iris folded cards! Iris folding is a paper craft technique that involves folding strips of colored paper in such a way to form a design. The center of the design forms an iris—a shape reminiscent of the iris diaphragm of a camera lens. Iris folding originated in 20th-century Holland, where early craft people made their designs using patterned paper cut from the inside of envelopes.