kusudama-rama

[wombat1138]

...okay, I have to admit I was wrong. When I first got Tomoko Fuse's latest book, Floral Origami Globes, I wasn't very impressed by it and considered returning the thing, due to the tedious prospect of having to make at least 12 identical 2-piece modules for every finished kusudama. However, once I stumbled onto the concept of mix'n'match color schemes within each kusudama, I was hooked.

And now I have beads all over the floor that desperately need to be put away before tomorrow, when the cleaning lady sweeps through and the wombat-consort comes home from his trip, and I can't stop making kusudama. See, I've got all these odd pieces, and I think, "Well, instead of trying to rubber-band all these modules together, it'll be easier for me to make a few more so I can just assemble the entire kusudama and store it that way." And then I space out and fold something the wrong way, or grab the wrong color of paper without noticing it, and then I've got two *more* modules that need to be paired off and matched up, and then *another* kusudama needs to be made, and...

(I have no idea wtf I am going to do with all these kusudama. Maybe put them into a box and eBay them off that way. I managed to get rid of one this morning by using it as a space-filler in a box of jewelry. They're breeding like rabbits. Halp.)

Comments

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

I forget which Buddhist teacher it was who, when his student started getting caught up in the minutiae of something, suddenly yelled out KATZ!! Whereupon the student was enlightened.

Put down the piece you've got in your hand. Yeah, that one, right there; don't finish it. Find that box you mentioned, drop it in. Sweep up the stuff on the floor, drop it in. Put the box away, and go make popcorn or something. Not out of beads.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

...bah.

Do you know how many more kusudama I've made since reading your reply? You don't want to. Trust me.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

...That's because you're not LISTENING to me. Dumbbell.

Have I ever steered you wrong? Even when I wanted to?

[eeedge.livejournal.com]

Now you have me intrigued. I'll bet that they would be interesting to try to do with the children. They're old enough now to be coordinated enough to do a paper folding reasonably well.

By the way, your Klein bottle hat continues to be something we pull out to show random guests.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Bwahah. I keep thinking I ought to knit another one of those Klein bottle hats these days.

Floral Origami Globes is basically a set of variants on the type of modular origami built from the "Sonobe base"; as I said, most of the book's models require at least 12 (more or less) identical 2-part modules, and if there are major irregularities among them, they can be difficult to put together. (And some of them need glue, which annoys me.)

Tomoko Fuse had another book, Kusudama Origami, which I was hoping this would be closer to; those models don't require quite as much paper, typically 6 square faces, 12 quarter-sized edge hinges (another three squares), and maybe some central ornaments for the faces (another 2-6 squares). But I think the most impressive results from the least amount of paper are probably the 6-square "brocade balls" from yet another books; various pix are here (http://wombat1138.deviantart.com/gallery/artisan/origami/) to give some examples.

[redswordheart.livejournal.com]

Pretty! I want to learn to make those.

Post pictures of your kusudama! Please?

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's pretty; I don't think I have the pattern for that one anywhere.

I've got pix of various kusudama-type things at the link in my previous reply to eeedge, though none of them is the traditional type with a large number of conical segments sewn together through their points at the middle of the ball; instead, all of mine are hollow polyhedra of some sort, some held together with glue and some without.

The one in your pic vaguely looks as if it might be one of those, but otoh the very regular shapes make me think that it may also be a modular dodecahedron of some type, with twelve pentagonal faces connected... somehow. I also suspect that it may require pentagonal paper to be specially pre-cut to achieve the fivefold symmetry; sometimes it's possible to partially mimic that sort of shape when folding from a square, but these look too precise, with no immediately obvious signs of some of the petals being doubled up to hide some extra layers.

ISTR a mention from somewhere in RK when Aoshi gives a kusudama to Misao, but I have no idea of the exact context, much less what it looked like.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

I think I've found the general paradigm for edge-connected flower-faced kusudama like the one in your pic, in the new origami book I just bought: Marvellous Modular Origami by Meenakshi Mukerji. Haven't tried any of her models yet, but it looks as if these are constructed with one rectangular half-square per individual petal; thus, each dodecahedral ball would take... oog, 60 half-squares? though otoh that's the same amount of paper that Tomoko Fuse's stellated icosahedra require, and I survived assembling one of those.

I don't see any indication of how to form the little anther-like structures near the center, though.