Small 3D Origami Star Puff : Origami Tessellations

Small 3D Origami Star Puff

Here's a cute little origami star based off of the the classic triangle grid. The grid is made from the method demonstrated in Eric Gjerde's awe inspiring tessellations book. I then cut out a hexagon from that grid. This results in a hexagon with 7 rows per half.

I find it much easier to cut an accurate hexagon from this technique than from the other methods. But you do loose a row per side this way.

So it's a 14 row hexagon to start. Classic hex twist at the center.

Smallest center twist is a mountain fold, then a valley on the next row, then another mountain. We're creating a 3D star at the center. Then we just finish it off with creating the arms/petals.

A very rudimentary crease pattern is shown below. Squiggly lines are valleys. Solid lines are mountains. All the folds are a part of the original triangle grid except those little diagonals between the pointed petals. Those are valley folds. Add them before you begin folding the star. It'll make it much easier to achieve that three dimensional central star puff shape.

To finish the design you'll need to 'work' the paper. Pressing in the outer arms toward the center and down to flatten the outer portion of the model and raise up the center. I also recommend folding over the back corners of the outer petals to help lock the paper into place.

This pattern could, no doubt, be tessellated. I haven't tried it yet, but it would seem to make for an interesting composition.

Comments

Infinite Triangles Origami Tessellation

This is just a flash idea I had. There was no planning involved. No inspiration. I just started folding and followed the lure of the creases in the paper. Upon seeing the finished result, It kind of reminds me of Robin Scholz's Triphilia tessellation, but the construction is definitely different and I was not thinking of that as I was crafting it. The similarity is that you can arrange the layering of the triangles into different patterns of your choice. I went looking and discovered I had folded this a few years ago and called it Triangle Temptations . I didn't realize this until after I'd completed this model. Apparently, according to my original post, I'd seen someone else fold it on flickr and recreated it. This happens sometimes. You hit on an idea and it's something you've done and forgotten. They linger in the back of your brain and come forward unexpectedly. That previous version differed from this one slightly, in that it used double sized cross g

Micro Rhombus Stars Origami Tessellation

This tessellation is micro rhombus star twists. I'm pretty sure I've seen this done with larger size rhombuses, but not with ones this size. They are the smallest natural rhombuses of the triangle grid. The center is achieved by collapsing a small hexagon. On the other side there are small hex twists and open back triangle twists. Since the shapes are rather small, it's a little bit difficult to fold. It's probably more of a cool weather tessellation. Humidity does the paper no favors on such small designs. But the ideas come when they do. Reverse view and crease pattern images follow.

What If Caviar Could Talk Variant

This origami tessellation is a variant of one by Arseniy K. He named his 'What If Caviar Could Talk'. After I had solved his design, I decided that I wasn't up to reproducing it exactly as he had folded his. Perhaps another time, in the future. So I changed things up a little to make it slightly less difficult. Both designs have a foundation of open back hex twists with triangle twists around them, He used micro rhombuses between the repeats. In my case, I used larger natural rhombuses instead. Still a difficult fold to execute, but much less so. It still required thick paper. I used tant folded into a 32 pleat triangle grid. You can see from the photo of the reverse side how densely packed everything is. It's a few layers deep. So be prepared to wrestle with that. My crease pattern for this iteration is included at the end. To fold his, sub out small natural rhombuses in place of my larger ones.

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