One day I was in my fave Japanese book store in the City and I was perusing the origami
books when I saw this interesting volume with origami statues of Sanrio characters on it.
A few months later I received the book for Xmas and during my Xmas break I started trying to figure
out how to make one of these statues. Ya see, the book was all in Japanese, and I don't know how
to read any ^^; After a few false starts and a couple hours of cutting paper I was well on my way.
My Melody was the first statue that I made. I made about four more in the months
following Xmas, working on folding and assembling when I watched TV at night. When I was in the middle of my
sixth project I had to take a little break from origami because of school, but now the summer has
started and I've gotten back into it.
Alright, I'm sure you're wondering how these statues are assembled, right? Well, it's hard to explain cuz
all the books I have are in Japanese, so I usually do it by looking at the pictures. So I scanned a few
to help ^^
Each statue is made of hundreds of tiny folded triangles, that looks like this:
The triangles can fit together in a number of different ways. They're put together in circles to make bodies, but
can also be stacked to make ears, tails, hair, etc.
woo hoo! I finally found a book for this type of origami in English! Here's how the triangles are folded...
Now, the hard part is the "base" (the first ring of triangles). I don't have any pics of it yet, but i'll put up a more detailed explanation later. To put it simply, you start with a base that is a ring of the triangles and you just keep stacking the triangles on top of one another until you get to the top. For neck lines, you first put a row of triangles "backwards" and then stack more "forwards" triangles on top. Add-ons, such as eyes and mouths, are glued on the front. Inside, the models are hollow. The statues can stand on their own, but I always add glue when I'm finished to add some strength (you don't know how terrible it is to be completely finished and have someone bump into your work and have it all fall apart... >_<)
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