kusudama: cherry blossom ball

After some struggle I proudly present you my new cherry blossom ball! This lovely kusudama is by 布施知子/ FUSE Tomoko. Find it in 折紙探偵団 MAGAZINE 通巻72号 /Origami Tanteidan number 72. Now a little explanation about its’ name: this beauty is called てまり桜; the てまり・手鞠 is a japanese hand ball and the 桜, cherry blossom. This is different from the 桜玉 that is made with 桜, meaning cherry blossom, and 玉, meaning ball; so as you can see even though both mean cherry blossom ball their origin is quite different… As some more (useless) trivia you can see some new year “temari” in this site that is basically about flower arrangements. Or so says the title since I’m feeling too lazy to check it all out. Another “temari” can be found in this Kawasakidaishi wind chime festival post. For the curious: Kawasaki Daishi is a temple; for more english info visit the Kawasaki Daishi english site.

As you might have noticed there were two kusudamas: a pink and a peach coloured one. Well I first assembled the pink to find out, after assembly of course!, that I couldn’t find no figure resembling a cherry blossom. I had assembled the kusudama the wrong way. Sometimes I am just so smart… After that I folded and assembled the peach coloured one. Another 30 units! Yay! lol First I must say that assembling in the correct way is so much easier… Second, after the first five units assembled I could clearly see a cherry blossom like arrangement :) Third, this is very sonobe-like in assembling. That’s also why you can arrange the 30 units in two different final kusudamas. Both kusudamas were made with thin (about 70 grams per square meter) double face coloured paper of 9×9cm/ 3.5×3.5″ and both have a final 11cm/ 4.3″ diameter. Regular copy paper is, in my humble opinion, overly stiff to make one of these at least with these paper sizes. Now I want to do a pink or carmine cherry blossom ball. If I find a paper that I like you’ll definitively see it around here! ;) A nice lightweight paper…
Another useful info: you can assemble these without glue! Just have some paper scotch tape ready for assembling aid. Actually I don’t know if this is the real english name; it’s a tape that painters use sometimes when painting that glues easily on every dry surface and leaves absolutely no mark when you take it off. Perhaps it is called painter’s tape? In here the most common one is a beige one but I have seen in it blue too. I use the beige. Just “glue” the assembled units with the tape on the outside. After you tuck in the last unit you can remove the tape to discover a pretty flowery kusudama looking at you.

animals: butterflies

Along with dragonflies, butterflies are my favourite insects. I believe one day I will be able to admire spiders but for now they just make me shiver. Imagine my suffering being a country girl: lots and lots of spiders for me to scream around… Well at least now I don’t scream: I jump. In silence. The silence part is very important :) It’s still an over reaction but improvement is improvement! And coming back to origami: these butterflies were diagrammed by 川崎敏和 /KAWASAKI Toshikazu. They can be found in 折り紙夢WORLD花と動物編 /Origami Dream World, Flowers and Animals volume.

These butterflies are made with 1×2 ratio paper, or simply put: half of a square. *origami purists tremble with horror… Ehehe* It’s very easy to do. Actually I have much more done, you’ll see some more after this text. The brownish one was made from 9×18cm / 3.5×7″ rectangle of wrapping paper and ended up with 9×10x1cm /3.5×4x0.5″; the flowery one changed from a 7.5×15cm /3×6″ to a 7×8x0.8cm /2.8×3.1×0.3″ and was made from double faced origami paper (blue on one side, flower prints on the other). Finally the smaller and pinkish butterfly was made from stiff semi-transparent paper of 3×6cm /” that resulted in a 3.2×2.8×0.3 cm /1.3×1.1×0.1″ butterfly.

Here are some of the other butterflies… They are smaller than the blue one with flowers and a little bigger than the pink one as you can see. And another post went by. I am also approaching fast the point of having no more origami done to show to you… I have stuff for another post, maybe two more and then I’ll just have to improvise (this is the part where you feel shivers down your back and tremble in fear). Thankfully my kind-of-vacation-like-time is almost here too and, of course!, I have lots of things to fold: another sakuradama, two dogs, a fox, a cat, wait two cats and at least two kusudamas and a box :)

wow…

I’m always surprised when I look at the blog counter… But 20.000 hits? That reaaally surprised me :) Actually right now it’s 20.062 so it’s over 20.000 ehehe good thing they don’t count my own visits to the blog, if they would it’d be something like 30.000 or more… After posting I always check and re-check my posts to look for misspellings, phrases that I cut because I started talking about something else and stuff. I know that this has a preview “thing” and I use it but it’s not enough. :$
Anyway, as the origami lover that I am I plan on giving you, the readers and visitors, a nice origami surprise. It has to wait until next week because I have one really important exam and that comes first. Once again thank you for your visits and wait for the surprise! ;)
I’ll probably post one or two more things before the gift so don’t worry: I’m slow, and I know it, but it will came!

kusudama: present from froebel

Another Mio Tsugawa diagram! You can find it in her site with the title フレーベルの贈り物 /Present from Froebel. The original diagram is by Friedrich Froebel. This is my first one and the first version. Since it requires just a few units (6+6) in the simplest version I gave it a try last month. I will probably redo it with colourful paper since this one is quite well, colourless. It was also made with a very stiff whitish paper and a really soft blue paper. I still think it’s cute but it’s also in a desperate need of a colour bath! :)

Since I made it to relieve me from exam stress I can hardly remember the units size; I believe that the whitish units are 10×10cm/ 3.9×3.9″ however I am totally not sure of this! And as for the smaller units its’ size has completely gone with the wind… Or with the summer heat in this particular case… So please enjoy this little pale kusudama while expecting a colourful and bigger version of it. With measures and the complete info. Of course you can always try to fold your one from Mio’s diagram: the first units are always the hardest after that it becomes easier and easier! And more and more addicting ;)

kusudama: new floral kusudama

This a cute kusudama that has two versions:one is simpler and the other quite resembles a flower or something flowery, you get the idea :)
This kusudama is sold in a kit; I have no idea where to find a published book with it. Once again the name is 新フローラくす玉 or new floral kusudama and the author is 上田暁美/ UEDA Akemi.

This kusudama is only doable with glue. Assembly is like a sonobe, a 30 unit sonobe. This is my recently folded kusudama and I think it is very cute. Assembly is better with double sided chiyogami or any kind of paper that has different patterns/ colours/ prints on each face. Since I had a bit of space and some paper I also added a small cube… The cube was assembled with 6 units. All units were made with 5×5cm (2×2″) paper; the kusudama ends with 9cm/ 3.5″ diameter. I better add that this kusudama is also known in some places and by some people as Spring kusudama (Hello Brazil! ehehe).

kusudama: sakuradama

Another model by Toshikazu KAWASAKI and quite famous: the sakuradama or cherry blossom ball. The pink one has been made around November or perhaps early to mid December… The smaller one has been “recently” assembled but the units were cut and fold way before: around March or April or even earlier!

The pink was made with pearlescent paper from the sakuradama kit (5.4×9 cm/ 2.1×3.5″) and the “golden” one from wrapping paper of 5×7.5 cm (2×3″). I have followed the kit diagram however you may find it in 折り紙夢WORLD/ Origami Yume World, in pages 87~89 according to the kit…

This is last sakuradama I made; and this is the only picture that survived my laptop “crisis”… The stupid thing is that I saved the most important data of my laptop hard drive and then I lost all the data in the pen… Including lots of ready to post images :( anyway this sakuradama is made of white paper of 260g/m2 (or perhaps 300g/m2?) in rectangles of 7×11 cm /2.8×4.3″. The result is quite sturdy. This beauty is now with the new proud owner…

All of them were made without a single drop of glue! The last one I actually re-assembled it with glue cause you can never know what the new owner is going to make with it… But the way I really like to do a kusudama is without gluing :) The 5th unit of the flower is, as a no-glue result, a little hard to join but the overall result is so pretty that it’s worth all the little troubles of assembly. I have recently found two more sakuradamas: one by Tomoko FUSE and other by Miyuki KAWAMURA :) I’m looking forward to folding both! But only after exams! Well, bye bye and untill another post…