Origami: Woven Kusudama

Woven Kusudama

Woven Kusudama, designed by me

I have a few books by Meenakshi Mukerji, and one of them (Ornamental Origami) has these floral balls.  I found the Layered Petunia particularly inspiring, because I had this idea of changing the connections to make different shapes.  The unit wasn’t really strong enough to hold though, so I had to redesign the unit.

This is a recent model that I just finished last month.  I decided to submit this to the East Bay Origami Convention two weeks from now.

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Origami: Striped Box

Striped Box

Striped Box, designed by me

Once a year I run a little origami class for kids, for someone I know.  As a self-imposed constraint, I always teach modular origami.  It’s hard to find simple modular origami models that kids can do in a reasonable amount of time!

I’ve wanted to make a modular origami box, and a big one so that it can hold other origami inside.  So I bought some colored A4 paper, and looked around for a simple box design.  None of them were quite to my liking, so I made my own design.  There’s no lid for this box, because we’re keeping it simple.  I have folding diagrams if you’d like to try.

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Origami: Stars

origami stars

Five- and Six-pointed Stars. Designer unknown.

Back in 2019, we had a small wedding celebration–we didn’t actually hold a wedding reception, and that’s a story that I’ve already told.  As decorations for the celebration, I made a dozen giant paper cranes (actually Tsuru Roses) from wrapping paper, and you can see a photo of those at the bottom of my story.  I also made 50 origami stars from foil paper and holographic paper, seen above.

We’ve officially reached our 5th anniversary!  I am not inclined to be sentimental, but I am grateful for how incredibly fortunate we are.

Origami: Wave

Wave

Wave by Ilan Garibi, in turn inspired by Goran Konjevod

This model is created by pleat tessellations, which I discussed in another post.  It’s easier to make than it looks, since it’s just folding the paper back and forth over and over.  And over and over and over.  I’ve made several of these.

Origami: Little Turtle

Little Turtle

Little Turtle by Tomoko Fuse

Sorry to disappoint people who were expecting a turtle!  That’s just what the model is called.  If you want a turtle, go look at this one.

This is a fairly old photo, from 2014.  I can tell just based on the photography sensibility.  I just put the model on top of the textbook I was using as a flat surface for folding, and put a tape measure in there for scale.

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Origami: Water drops

Water Drop, by Ekaterina Lukasheva

For quite some time, I had been complaining about lack of origami books about curved crease techniques.  But now we have one!  Curved Origami by Ekaterina Lukasheva has a bunch of curved crease projects from very simple to moderately complex.  This is one of the first models in the book.

For those who don’t know, a “curved crease” is a crease that makes a curved line on the paper.  A curved crease will not fold all the way, meaning that the folded models necessarily make a 3-dimensional shape.  The typical folding method involves drawing and scoring curved lines on paper (possibly with the assistance of templates, compasses, french curves).

I really admire how simple these water drops are.  (Yeah, I know rain drops aren’t actually shaped like that.)