I came across a bunch of variations to a 12 unit modular cube that variously used a 1×1, 2×1 and 3×1 rectangle. I settled on the square variant (in retrospect I should have used the 2×1 version – half as much paper required, but you live and learn.

Initially I just was interested in the locking mechanism of a cube, so folded a red one. then I decided to see how a yellow one might intersect, then because I had some purple paper left over from the torus I thought to link the yellow to a purple, and the idea sort of grew from there.

I scoured my dealer’s (Rhonda, the custodian of paper supplies) shelves and ended up finding 11 different colours/tints – I added a “black” origami paper as the 12th colour and, hey presto they formed a ring of particular beauty.

It just sort of happened – I resolved to only fold during breaks at work, in front of kids, and over a period of 2 weeks it grew into a long chain and I was finally ready to join it into a ring.

I want to say this join was an easy, simple thing. I did not find it so – I tried, undid it, tried again, unfolded it (muttering obscenities under my breath). tried again, thought I had it until I realised it was wrong (the pattern should repeat, the join should not be visible – doh!

In trying, I mashed the 2 cubes I was trying to join, so had to re-fold them before trying again – in the end, I realised that it was paper tension that was making my join attempt fail, so (cheating) used a little glue to make the modules stay in place on the last cube as I constructed it among the other one.

There is an inherent geometrical beauty here, coming from the repetition and the gentle twist – if I was to fold it again I think I would go either for monochrome or be more organised with my colours – I just sort of made the colour scheme up as I went – dark with light, spacing out the tints as best I could without having to disassemble and rebuild.

Not sure what I will do with it – someone wanted to buy it (Stuart) – might give it to him instead.