Kusudama

The Japanese kusudama (medicine ball) is a paper model that is usually created by sewing or gluing multiple identical units together, usually stylized pyramidal flowers folded from square paper.  

Kusudama originate from ancient Japanese culture, where they were used for incense and potpourri; possibly originally being actual bunches of flowers or herbs. The word itself is a combination of two Japanese words kusuri, Medicine, and tama, Ball. They are now typically used as decorations, or as gifts.

The kusudama is important in origami particularly as a precursor to the modular origami genre. It is often confused with modular origami, but is not such because the units are strung or pasted together, instead of folded together as most modular construction are made.

It is, however, still considered origami, although origami purists frown upon using its characteristic technique of threading or gluing the units together, while others recognize that early traditional Japanese origami often used both cutting and pasting, and respect kusudama as an ingenious traditional paper folding craft in the origami family. (Wikipedia.org inf.)

The very first kusudama I made was glued. It looks really nice even made from simple white copy paper.  If you can find original colour paper you can make a real piece of art. It’s not difficult to make it, but it sure takes some time and you need quite a lot of paper - I used 60 sheets of copy paper to make a big one, using 21x21 squares. But if you ask me smaller ones look much prettier although it's more difficult to fold  pieces and to glue them together.

Step by step instructions how to make this lovely Kusudama you can find here.