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.