30xsquare

551: (1/365) Mummy Star

| wonko

When my sister in law went to Nepal, she found some rather charming Lokta paper, hand-made with block printed gold floral designs. She carefully transported it back with her for me to wrangle. I had a modular in mind and the orange Lokta seemed the obvious choice:

This is Miyuki Kawamura’s Mummy Star, a startlingly complicated modular in 30 pieces. The technique of folding splayed fans, then folding them back on themselves gives the appearance of “wrapping” or bandages I suppose (think Mummy Movie). Continue reading →

486: Little Turtle Kusudama

| wonko

A dear friend (*waves to Caff) holidayed in Europe, visited Florence and found some amazing block-printed handmade paper, popped it in a post pack tube and mailed it to me.486LittleTurtleKusudamaView

To be honest, I have struggled to use this paper because it seemed a such a terrible shame to cut it. Lovely irregularities, vibrant colours and relatively heavy cardstock suggested that a kusudama might be the solution.

Thumbing through Tomoko Fuse’s book “Multidimensional Transformations, Unit Origami”, I came across a unit called “little turtle” that I had not tried. I think they got the name because, as part of the folding process of the unit you make a shape similar to the “turtle base” I have used for other models.486LittleTurtleKusudamaScale

Continue reading →

411: Phizz-based Stellated Icosahedron

| wonko

The “phizz” unit designed by Tom Hull is a basic building block that can be used for many modulars:

I thought I would start manageable, so devised a 30 unit ball, 6 faces each of 5 colours – total of 30 units. These are easy folding and have a positive locking mechanism so were a good choice.

The tricksey part was to ensure an even colour balance – making sure that no face has the same colour twice. that did my head in a little, and it seemd to take me ages to come up with a construction method where I could easily predict what colour next to use.

In the end, a lovely modular – I may try for something grander, we shall see.