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.

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