It’s time to take another look at origami kusudamas. A kusudama is essentially a modular paper model made up of various units assembled into a ball-like shape. They’re often quite beautiful with very interesting shapes and amazing colour schemes.
First up we have this beautiful flowery orange kusudama. It’s assembled from 30 units.
Allegretto, Designed and Folded by Masha Athanasiadi
Instructions not available
Most of the time kusudamas are completely closed in but sometimes they’re open with holes in them like what you see here. This one is also folded using 30 units (many kusudamas use exactly 30 units). The units here are 1:3 ratio rectangles.
Strange Midnight, Designed and Folded by Ekaterina Lukasheva
Instructions not available
This next one believe it or not uses 300 units! That’s 300 pieces of paper folded and assembled together to make this! Uschi Mitzkat was also able to reverse engineer the design and fold this without any instructions.
Twirl Rhombicosidodecahedron, Designed by Krystyna Burczyk and Folded by Uschi Mitzkat
Instructions not available
This next one is absolutely beautiful with an excellent choice of paper. It’s folded using 12 units that are 2:3 ratio rectangles.
60° Origami Star, Designed and Folded by Maria Sinayskaya
Instructions not available
Here’s a very different looking design. There are 150 units here, 60 purple ones, 3o orange ones and 60 green ones.
Designed by Tomoaki Yano and Folded by Valentina Minayeva
Instructions not available
Next is a very festive looking kusudama. I quite like the paper used here.
Starline, Designed by Uniya Filonova and Folded by Akira Nguyen
Instructions not available
You don’t always have to fold your paper with crisp flat angles. You can always curl the paper too like you see here.
Erythronium, Designed and Folded by Masha Athanasiadi
Instructions not available
Here’s another really great kusudama that’s more on the complex side. It’s folded from 72 units. I should also mention that pretty much all of these are assembled with no glue or tape.
‘Buckie’ (type Truncated Cuboctahedron), Designed and Folded by Tomoaki Yano
Instructions not available
I really like how this next one almost looks like it’s made out of stone. It’s folded from regular red Tant paper and then painted with golden, bronze and purple acrylic paints. This one is folded from 12 pentagon shaped sheets of paper.
Tiara, Designed and Folded by Ekaterina Lukasheva
Instructions not available
Next we have a quite elegant looking one with some luxurious looking gold and black paper. The colour combinations you can use to fold these are endless! This is another 30-unit kusudama.
Scilla, Designed by Natalia Romanenko and Folded by Uschi Mitzkat
Photo diagrams available from kusudama.info
Here’s another beautiful 30-unit kusudama. The individual units are 1:2 ratio rectangles.
Spring Awakening, Designed and Folded by Natalia Romanenko
Instructions not available
Some kusudama designs look a lot like balls of flowers. The name of this one, “Moonstone Rose” really fits with the colours and shapes.
Rosalie, Designed by Natalia Romanenko and Folded by Charles Smith
Diagrams available in British Origami Magazine #279
This one is very well put together and I really like the star shapes.
Sunshine, Designed by Valentina Minayeva and Folded by Akira Nguyen
Photo diagrams available from stranamasterov.ru
This next one is folded from fake dollar bills which is probably a good thing otherwise this would be one expensive kusudama! This is another design that has holes in it which I quite like.
Skella Beta, Designed and Folded by Maria Sinayskaya
Video instructions available from Sarah Adam’s YouTube channel
Byriah Loper is famous for some incredible interlocking shape models but he’s also designed a few really great kusudamas as well.
Pisidia Kusudama, Designed and Folded by Byriah Loper
Instructions not available
The purple and shiny paper here is a very nice combination.
Mandragora, Designed by Ekaterina Lukasheva and Folded by Uschi Mitzkat
Instructions not available
Here’s another really great curly design.
Designed and Folded by Natalia Romanenko
Instructions not available
Here’s another one with a really great design and a really great colour combination.
Fern Flower var. Designed and Folded by Masha Athanasiadi
Instructions not available
This is a really great design and I especially like the blue and yellow star paper used here. This one is also made from 30 units and the units are folded from 2:3 ratio rectangles.
Designed and Folded by Akira Nguyen
Instructions not available
Here’s a quite soft and pretty looking kusudama folded out of 60 Sonobe units. The Sonobe Unit was designed by Mitsunobu Sonobe and is probably the most popular unit to assemble modular origami models out of.
Sonobe with Stripes, Designed and Folded by Peter Keller
Instructions not available
Here’s another very pretty almost flowery looking kusudama. Sometimes these are enhanced with beads or string like you see here.
Sea Jelly var. Designed and Folded by Valentina Minayeva
Instructions not available
This is another really excellent 30-unit model.
Elisabeth, Designed by Masha Athanasiadi and Folded by Uschi Mitzkat
Diagrams available from Masha Athanasiadi’s Google Drive
This design reminds me of ice cream or some kind of delicious looking dessert.
Izumi, Designed and Folded by Tomoaki Yano
Instructions not available
This one really looks like the bows you’d put on top of a present.
Pompadour, Designed by Uniya Filonova and Folded by Akira Nguyen
Instructions not available
Our final kusudama for this post is this absolutely beautiful purple star looking thing by Ekaterina Lukasheva.
Hathor (Opus K-516), Designed and Folded by Ekaterina Lukasheva
Instructions not available
That’s it for this post. If you want to get into folding some kusudamas of your own there are several excellent books you need to check out.
First of all Ekaterina Lukasheva has 3 fantastic books. You’ve seen several of her designs in this post.
- Kusudama Origami
- Modular Origami Kaleidoscope
- Modern kusudama origami: Designs for modular origami lovers
Meenakshi Mukerji is another really excellent kusudama designer who also has 3 excellent books.
And finally Byriah Loper has a great book called Mind-Blowing Modular Origami that has some great kusudama designs in it as well as a bunch of his crazy interlocking shape models.
If you fold a kusudama of your own be sure to post a photo in the comments!
