THE HOOKED VASE

Since I have been working with pentagons it was inevitable that I would come up with a serendipitous design.






This model combines some of the features of my Coaster Bowl and its lids, some of the features Pentamontanas Flower and some of the features of one of Francis Ow's bowl. The hooked points are a novel feature that arose by accident and looked sufficiently interesting to preserve.







The model can be varied by folding the points and the top triangles hard against the base or by lifting them away from the walls.

THE PENTAMONTAÑAS FLOWER KUSUDAMA

True to form, I have been creating other models while struggling to finish large and time-consuming ones.

The kusudama displayed here is a good one for folding between major projects. It is really easy and quick to fold from pre-printed pentagons.

If you want to be more adventurous you can fold a pentagon from a square. Phillip Chapman Bell (known as Oschene on Flicker) has provided instructions for doing this which you will find here:
http://origami.oschene.com/cp/Decagon%20SCP.pdf

My pentagons were created with the Draw program provided on Microsoft Word. I chose a pentagon shape from the shapes menu, clicked somewhere on the page to make it appear without ruining its aspect ratio, chose the "format autoshape" menu, locked the aspect ratio and then changed the size to suit. Mine has a height of five inches. I can fit two of these on a standard letter sized sheet of paper. The result is a ball of about 8 inches in diameter.

I outlined the central star and filled it in. Unfortunately my laser printer only prints in black ink which results is a rather boring dark gray color.

There is a lot of room for improvement in terms of folding material. I made it from cheap and simple stuff to prove that the idea would work. I think I have succeeded there.

Making diagrammed instructions is a lot of work. Making and photographing a series of Step Folds is almost as time-consuming. So today's lazy solution is to describe the relatively easy process in words and hope that all of the excellent origamists who follow this blog will be able to figure it all out.

I wonder who will be the first to do this? My bet is on one of my many Brazilian fans. They are an enthusiastic and dedicated lot. But perhaps my French, Russian or Japanese fans might beat them to it. Now all these people have a language barrier to circumvent so by right of text the English speaking Brits, Aussies or US Americans might get there first. If we go by volume then US Americans have a distinct advantage because there as so many of them. But I am willing to be surprised.

Here is the challenge: be the first to provide a comment to this blog entry which contains a link to a photo of this model which you have folded yourself. One more thing: tell us how long it took you to fold and complete the model. Can you do it in under an hour?

Go to it, my folding friends.


The folding sequence is this:

On the "white" side, fold and unfold all points in half, extending the crease to the opposite side. Turn the paper over.

On the "colored" side, refold as valley folds (and unfold) the part of the creases which extend from the center to the flat edge.

Fold and unfold all points in to the center.

Fold and unfold all points to the indented crease pattern on the opposite side. In other words, not quite to the other side.

That is all of the precreasing completed. Now let's finish the unit.

Turn over the tips of the five points at the ends of the extending crease lines. See the crease pattern for clarification.

Reverse fold (make vally folds into mountain folds) the triangles on the five flat sides. Valley fold the side edges of these triangles to their opposite sides. That is, fold these triangles in half lengthwise.
See the crease pattern for clarification.

Collapse your flower. Reinforce the valley folds around the central star. Note: the inner pentagon creases are non-functional. They are marked as blue dotted lines on the Crease Pattern.

Make 12. Six coordinating colors works well.

Now for the construction.

Glue the tiny triangular points to the same points on the neighboring flower. (I used bulldog clips to help keep the tips together until the glue dried.) Work in units of three to make a twelve sided ball. That is, each "hole" has just three flowers around it. See the photos for clarification.

Happy folding.

THE WORRY BOX

This box was made as a gift for a friend. It is made from letterhead paper which is 8.5 by 11 inches. The back of the paper is red. The front of the paper is white with a black and white striped border surrounded by a red pin stripe.

I used a standard Tomoko Fuse design but modified the lid in order to make the best use of the pattern. The rim is folded over several times and appears on the outside of the box. Unfortunately I could not line up the stripes at the diagonal fold on the sides.

THE CORNER WINGED BOX

This series has side wings or wrap arounds as corner shapers.

The first in the series has truncated diamonds on the outside of the box and the tips turned into the box to prevent the wings from flying outwards. If you like the wings popping outwards then make the box without turning the top hem over and into the inside of the box. The side wings are folded from to the left and the edges of the top diamond wraps around it on the left and turns under freely on the right.

A variation has the top turned out as a rim and the internal wings halved and squashed across the edge seams. The covering truncated diamond cannot tuck into the underlying diamond in this version.





The next version turns half the diamond into the box and converts the turned over edge into triangles in the middle of the sides which are turned outwards.


THE BOAT BOX

A variation folds these triangles to look like a sail boat.

DECORATIVE MODULAR RING

Carrying on from yesterday's paper connection model I created a modular ring. There are two sections, which differ only in the finishing pattern of the center twist. The orange module overlaps the brown module at both ends.

THE WATCHBAND RING

I have been experimenting with modular paper connection again. This time I aimed to make a long ribbon of connected pieces of paper which could be used as a ring, bangle, belt, napkin holder, or similar.

I have called the model The Watchband because the decorations on the front resemble the links of the standard metal watchband.

The green and blue model was folded from standard 6 inch kami squares which were folded into quarters in both directions and then cropped to produce 4 x 3 rectangles. This provides enough paper to ensure that inside is relatively smooth and can be worn as a ring or bracelet without irritating the wearer.

The original model, shown here in white, is folded from 2 x 1 rectangles. The advantage of this version is that the model is less bulky and folds neatly from thicker paper. The model shown is folded from 4 x 2 inch pieces of copy paper. The disadvantage of this sized paper is that the back side of the model is bumpy and is uncomfortable on the skin if worn as a ring or bracelet. Of course, this problem might go away if it were also folded from thinner paper. Alternatively, the band can be worn inside out, with the link pattern on the inside and the diamonds showing on the front.

Crease Patterns for both the original 4 x 4 and the 4 x 3 (Variation 2) model are shown here. A third option, Variation 1, will produce a model with pointed bumps around the edges.