Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Dodecahedron Origami

It's occurred to me that while geometric origami was the first inspiration for my beaded beads (and it's still a source of inspiration), and while this is reflected in my business name, I've never actually posted any pictures of my origami creations. Well that ends today!


This origami dodecahedron is constructed from thirty pieces of identically-folded sheets of paper, or "modules", in five different colors. The module is the "Double-Sided Concave Hexagonal Ring Solid" from Unit Polyhedron Origami (2006), by my favorite origami master, Tomoko Fuse. I'm not sure why she called named it after a hexagonal ring, since it can be clearly used to construct a structure composed of pentagonal rings, but she uses the same module to construct more complicated polyhedra in her book.


My own twist on this design is that each pentagon face has five colors, and each corner of the dodecahedron has three different colors. I used this same coloration in a couple of simple dodecahedron beaded beads. One in pastel colors:


And another in jewel tones:


The beaded beads are quite small compared to the origami construction!


Many beaded bead designs are based on a dodecahedron structure, whether it's my own Teardrop Bubbles design, Gwen Fisher's Infinity Dodecahedron, Laura Shea's Plato Bead along with its many variations, Laura McCabe's crystal rivoli docecahedron, or Diane Fitzgerald's peyote dodecahedron. I've been thinking about trying out this color pattern on more complicated beaded bead structures such as these ones, but I'm wondering if the result would look too complicated... What do you think?

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6 comments:

  1. Wow Cindy...!
    I really didn't know how "into" origami you were (other than your moniker)...and I love your inspirations. Refreshing, interesting and wonderfully intricate...just as your beaded beads are.

    Thanks so much for sharing!!!

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  2. Your orgami is wonderful and it's awesome to see your inspiration.

    I think that using the 5-part coloration on a more complicated bead would be cool. You'd need something about the bead to keep order, though, be it monotone seedies(with multicolor crystals) or monotone crystals (with multi color seedies) it shouldn't become too chaotic

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  3. Thanks everyone!

    DTQ - Yep, I used to do much more origami before I was bitten by the bead bug. Unfortunately I don't have as many pictures of my old origami pieces as I'd like... Beads are much more durable than paper!

    Spyder - That's an excellent idea about keeping the seed beads in a monotone palette... I think I'll try it!

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  4. I too was into origami before beads. Yeah origami, and yeah dodecahedrons. Thanks for writing about the beauty of math in these different art forms!!!

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  5. Thanks Gwen! With this module and its convex sibling, in her book Tomoko Fuse makes all the platonic solids and most (maybe all? I haven't counted...) of the Archimedean solids. She also goes on to make some neat irregular structures that look like something out of a Pokémon game. It looks like quite a versatile module!

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