kusudama

1150: Star Katrina

| wonko

As a closet botanist, I am interested in floral geometry – many flowers are based on pentagons:

This is “Star Katrina”, a beautiful kusudama designed by Xander Perrott. Folded from 30 x 2:root 3 rectangles cleaved from squares of Tuttle Indigo dye duo paper over the last couple of days.

The unit is based on a tight triangle grid – fairly easy to fold accurately and the locking mechanism is so positive that this kusudama is held together via paper tension and friction only (no glue, truly, none).

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Display

| wonko

My annual origami display at Holland Park Library was installed this morning:

Cabinet 1 views

Included is a broad range of origami styles from a huge and diverse collection of designers, folded from a varied collection of papers.

Cabinet 2 views

I am trying to get better at not crowding the display cabinets – sometimes less is more to allow individual models to shine – let me know how I went.

If you visited, I would love your impressions, comments and suggestions for future displays.

Get directions here

1145: Nova Kusudama

| wonko

I am often given 6″ origami paper by well-intentioned friends who know I do origami and assume 6″ paper is useful to me. I have lots of it – and I mostly use it to fold kusudama:

I had a pile of duo Tuttle watermelon/lime duo paper, so resolved to treat it to make it more interesting. I bought some acrylic inks a while back, and a mouth airbrush, so decided to tone the pages while learning how the airbrush works – a fun experiment.

I chose to spatter the watermelon side with white ink, and the lime side got yellow and black spatters. The effect is quite lovely and delicate – it compliments the geometry of the model really well.

I had seen a youtube tutorial of Kovács Vincéné’s “Nova” kusudama, and I thought the geometry really interesting. Like many spikey balls, 30 units in 5/3 clusters makes a nice little structure.

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