Kusudama Origami Guide for Beginner

1. Sonobe Unit First skill in kusudama origami is to make Sonobe units and master how to assemble 30 units which is a foundation to assemble another regular kusudama.

2. Sonobe Base + Insert Once you gain experience in Sonobe Unit, you can easily add elements to the Sonobe shape by decompose paper into many parts as Base and Insert.

3. Spikey Star Tab Next, you should learn some technique from well-known design. From Bascetta Star, you will learn how to do tab assembly.

4. Little Roses Alignment Another well-known design is Little Roses. We use technique for flap and edge alignment to get a compatible hinge for a unit.

5. Geometric Module Well-known design usually connect to geometric form which is use in Mathematics. You will learn a lot of kusudama technique from these category.

6. Triangle-legs Assembly and more The common assembly method maybe triangle-legs. It is common for edge module. This time you will want to try different assembly method from various design.

7. Curler Unit Curler Unit is a niche category for making a kusudama and we can have many interesting variation.

8. Bronze Rectangle and others Square paper maybe limited, you can use other ratio such as Bronze, Silver, (1:2), (1:3), (2:3),(1:4) etc.

9. Try to Design Sonobe-style Unit After folded many designs from many artists, you may want to tinker some new innovation. Let’s begin with Sonobe-style Unit.

10. Discover New Shape When you try design kusudama many times, the new shape or technique may have been born and become interesting in origami community.