I went to the ranch this weekend to work on wedding stuff. My main project was to get as much of the craft stuff out of my house as possible so I can move on to the next phase of craft stuff.

And so, 23 days after I started, my Kusudama Origami centerpieces are done. I love them!!



I folded 800 sheets of origami paper and formed 120 flowers over the course of two weekends. I used the Folding Trees tutorial to fold them, and I used glue sticks to keep them together.  It wasn't a big deal once I got the hang of it, and I even took to folding paper at the office while on conference calls.   I threw them all into a massive IKEA tote bag, and mixed them up.  Then, this weekend, I went about forming them.




These are the basic materials for assembly: a glue gun and six flowers.  I just picked six flowers at random out of the bag, and the only rule I had for myself was that I didn't want more than two of any given color in any cluster. Otherwise, I wasn't concerned about which colors ended up on any given cluster.  This by and large worked out.  I had six colors, with doubles in the dark purple and the dark green.  My basic color scheme for the wedding is a peacock color, but I decided to add the mango for a flash of brightness.



I used glitter glue and regular glue, because that's what I had. Theoretically it shouldn't matter because the glue seams shouldn't show.  At any rate, starting off, I just applied glue to one side of a flower.



At first, I was lining the petals up, but I later just stuck them together however they naturally fell.



I'm not sure how many glue sticks I went through, but it seemed like a lot.



It's mainly a question of ensuring that the inside lines are even. Other than that, there's no real method.



After I completed a circle, I lined all five petals of the final flower with glue and stuck it inside the hole formed by the other five.



26 plus one.  I ended up spending maybe three hours with all the gluing.  It wasn't very hard, just a little time consuming.  I am really glad that I had a pretty large work area to put them on when I was done.



Next, I sprayed them all with mod podge in order to ensure that the paper wasn't quite as fragile as it had been.  It is pretty fume-y, so it's best to do this part of the project outside.



The next and final step was to stick on the centers.  I've seen all sorts of materials used for this part.  I chose plastic jewels from Michaels, which weren't all that expensive.  Maybe $3 per pack of 30?  At any rate, the glue gun is back.



Fairly straightforward. Stick a dab of glue on the back of the crystal.



Place it on the center of the flower.  The glue dries quickly, and it's a good idea to get it on relatively quickly. This is the time most likely that I found I would burn my fingers.



Then repeat 5 more times.  Having clusters of six was nice, because I knew that I'd go through five centerpieces per pack of crystals.  If I had crystals left over, it meant I missed something.



This last bit didn't seem to take that long at all.  I just had to trim the little trails of glue that seem to be everywhere after using a hot glue gun, and I was done!

I'd originally thought I wouldn't finish this project until the end of March, but it didn't take me long at all!

Materials:
http://www.asianfoodgrocer.com/
1X Blue Green Origami Paper 6      $2.75
1X Blue Violet Origami Paper 6      $2.75
1X Light Blue Origami Paper 6      $2.75
1X Green Origami Paper 6      $2.75 plus shipping    Total: $19.63

1X Mango Yellow Origami Paper 6      $2.75
1X Blue Violet Origami Paper 6      $2.75
1X Light Purple Origami Paper 6      $2.75
1X Light Green Paper 6      $2.75 plus shipping  Total: $19.63

http://www.michaels.com
6 x Jewelry essentials 30 piece 16 mm faceted acrylic jewels    approx $3.00 Total approx $36.

Had on hand:
2 small and 1 large Avery glue stick
Hot glue gun
Hot glue

Total cost: Approximately $65.

Tags: making things, pictures, wedding