Origami Kusudama

Video Transcript

"Now I will show you how to make a kusudama. This is the origami version of a healing ball. Traditionally, a Japanese will hang a ball of herbs over a sick person's bed in hopes that the sick person will get better. This is the origami version, so of course it doesn't have the herbs, but still retains that tradition. This takes thirty-six pieces of this, so we will make one of this individual piece. I will show you how to do that. It is best to use double-sided origami paper, because both sides will be apparent, so if you have double-sided paper, that is the best paper to use. First, fold a preliminary base. Now with the preliminary base, we are going to fold the raw edge into the center crease, similar to when we were folding the bird base or the frog base. Essentially, we are going to make a frog base, except we're missing that final step of the petal fold. So, we made those guiding creases for our future steps, open it back out to the preliminary base, take one of the sections, and do a squash fold. Do the same thing on the other side, squash fold. Fold the section over, lift up this section, squash. Turn the unit over, fold the section over, lift up this section, squash. Now, instead of doing the petal fold for the frog base, we are going to do something else. Take the top section, fold it to the left, and if we do it on the top, we should do it on the bottom, so that we have four sections on each side. Turn your unit upside down, take the raw edge, and following along the creases that we had made previously, fold the raw edge into the center crease."