Origami Kusudama Is Interesting and Fun Craft Project

This is my second origami kusudama.

It is a bit flat on one side, shown in the photo below right. I did not understand how to glue together the five-petalled flowers to form half the globe.

I started paper crafting a few years ago. I focused on modular flowers and stars. I tried to make a kusudama, but it got all sticky.



I did not have proper glue, so I used a collage finishing coat. This is a liquid and less precise than the mini glue gun I used this time.

I also was using proper origami paper, which is thin. So the combination of the liquid and thin paper turned into rather a sticky mess.

For this , I used heavier card stock and a glue gun. The flowers also were larger than those of my first effort.

This kusudama is made of 60 folded units. It is not particularly hard, but it takes some patience. The directions are located at Folding Trees.

I love the tactile feel of paper and the wonderful colors. I am taken aback at the expensive prices for many of the pretty gilded print Japanese origami papers. I will have to find wrapping papers and other substitutes.

I’ve bought my first book about origami folding by one of the best-known artists, Origami Inspirations.

Artists take great care to figure out patterns, often using their knowledge of mathematics. So the folding instructions are copyrighted and not necessarily available free on the internet.

I also bought a day calendar, Easy Origami Fold-a-Day: 2011 Day-to-Day Calendar

So far, the folds are too simple to be interesting. Some of the models require coloring in eyes and noses or wheels and so forth to make the ambiguous folds look like something.



On the other hand the Mukeriji book is beautiful even if all I do is look at the wonderful color photos of her work.