Columbus Tower (Design by David Mitchell)

A Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all!

This is my first fold after my vacation and I am really happy to get back into the routine of folding. This is a design which is a modification of Paul Jackson’s cube – it has a ‘dent’ like pocket in the corner of the cube in order to be able to stack them up.

This is fun to fold and quick, too. However, stacking them up requires patience and of course, a flat surface.

Paper to use:
In the instructional video you see below, they use 15cm sized square paper for each unit, with 6 units being required to make 1 cube. What I used instead is 7.5 cm square sheets of Kami (you can also use Post Its) to fold the 6 units making up 1 cube. In this manner, I used 18 sheets to fold 3 cubes. You can fold any number of cubes and the challenge here is to see how many you can actually stack up without having them toppling over! Sounds like fun, eh?

How to fold:
You can find the instructions to this model in the book Building with Butterflies: How to build stunning sculptures from simple units made by folding paper, by David Mitchell. EZ Origami has recorded a very well explained instructional video on folding this model, too. You can find it below:

I have folded my rendition using the instructional video and have used green colored sheets for all units in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

Have a great weekend!

Electra (Design by Dave Mitchell)

This imaginative kusudama, designed by Dave Mitchell, requires just paper and patience! One needs to use paper of a smaller size and I have seen that regular ‘Post It Note’ sizes are just perfect. One can use an array of colors to fold an Electra and ‘interlocking’ these to make a ‘globe’ is real easy too.

Origami base to start off:

It starts off with a simple ‘waterbomb’ base, and can make use of a single color of paper too.

What you need:

60 pieces or rather sheets of paper. I have used Post – its to create this model. These are square shaped of size approx 5 inches or so.

Here’s how you do it:

I have found this video on Youtube.com by Cabulete, which clearly depicts how to fold an Electra. In it, they have used a paper size of 5″ or so.

Putting it together / Technique:

Try to connect different colored units together to add ‘variety’ to the color in the model. One should remember that the design consists of a “star” shape, connected to a “triangle’ shape. This alternating pattern is to be followed throughout the design and comes in really handy when checking up on whether you are going the right way.

Enjoy folding!