Modular Origami Ornament

A couple of years ago my son and I were Christmas shopping at the local mall. Numerous vendors rent tables in the mall at this time of year, and at one of these we found a delightful young Asian lady selling these beautiful modular origami ornaments. Being interested in all things paper I stopped to ask her about them. Not only did she tell me all about them, she gave me a copy of the instructions, showed me how to fold the pieces, how to assemble them, and how to assemble the final product. We gratefully bought one of her ornaments (for a mere 8$) and carried on with our shopping.

As the following Christmas approached I finally got around to trying one myself. This, one, in simple red and green became a Christmas gift for my mother.  I didn’t have any good origami paper, so this is a plain “folding paper” which is the same color on both sides. Traditional origami paper is colored on one side and white on the other.

I was quite pleased with the result of my first ornament (and my mother loved it, of course),  so, when I finally got hold of some proper origami paper I had to make another one. You can see how the white underside adds detail to the individual “flower” sections in the final product.

If you’re interested in learning more you’ll find an excellent tutorial on this particular ornament at “Folding Trees“.  An excellent collection illustrating the amazing variety that can be realized with this technique can be found at Kusudama.me. And of course, if you search for “kusudama” you’ll find hundreds more.

Oh, and last but not least, I have to share a great laugh I got as I was uploading the images for this post.  My typing skills are average at best, and after uploading the first image I was typing the caption “My First Origami Ornament”. However, I made a couple of typos and got “Modular Origasmi POrnament“. What are the chances of two typos working so well together?

Enjoy!