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Bascetta star by Soul |
Today we'll be trying out modular origami by building one of its most famous creations: The Bascetta-Star, a popular Christmas-Star that was created by
a maths-teacher named Paolo Bascetta. The difference between modular origami and the regular one is that a model in modular origami always
consists of multiple pieces of paper that first have to be folded to create a so-called unit and then assembled. This CAN be tiresome, but it's definitely worth it.
What do you need for your Bascetta-Star? Enough time (around 2 - 3 hours), papercraft skills and at least 30 pieces of square folding paper.
For this tutorial I decided to create a three-coloured star (10 x red, green and purple), as each of its 20 points (not sure if that's the correct term but I'll be using it from now on) will later consist of 3 units...
...but it's of course up to you how many and which colours you use...there's no right or wrong - just be creative.
The unit Before the Bascetta-Star assumes its final form, you'll have to do some preparatory-work, as we'll need 30 units and for each of these units you'll need one piece of paper. 1) Fold the paper in the middle and unfold it again.
2) Fold both the upper left - and the lower right corner to the center. The fold from 1) will help you.
3) Flip the unit and fold the lower and bottom edge towards the diagonal.
4) Flip the unit again and fold the ends along the yellow line.
Optional: If you have problems doing so, you can also bend it along the green-dotted line before. This will make it a little easier and should look like that, when it's done:
5) If you did everything right, you should now have this unit in front of you and only two smaller steps are left:
6) Fold the two remaining parts. This step will show you how exact your foldings were.
7) Fold the unit in the middle.
1st unit done, - 29 to go.
.
.
.
. Tadaaa!
Assembling the units The easy but tiresome work is done. Now comes the complicated part of this tutorial. I sadly coudn't describe every step in detail, but you should still be able to follow the steps without any bigger problems. Feel free to ask me any questions though. First of all it's important too understand that each point of the star is made of three units:
Every unit can be unfolded...
... and will then look like that:
1) Unfold all three units and place them next to eachother:
2) By "connecting" them cleverly a point gets created. The following pictures should be self-explaining:
Each unit has to be placed in the "pocket" of the unit to the right...
...and the final (third) unit will then have to go into the "pocket" of the first one, which means that the orange-shaded part shouldn't be visible afterwards.
It can be rather hard to do that and you'll have to do it another 19 times, so you may want to practise a little. Once done, the point should look like that:
3) There are now 3 "free" triangles (hatchets?), so choose one and create the second point by connecting it to two new units.
Does it look like that?
Great! 4) Choose another one of the now 4 triangles and use another two units...
...to create the third point:
5) Guess what's next? Yep - you'll be creating the fourth point. The picture should be self-explaining.
6) Only one point is missing until we have our "base". Use the two adjacent triangles and a new unit to create it.
Well - if we wanted a star with only 5 points - I guess it would look nice on presents - we'd be done now...
...but we want MORE and thus need to flip the "star" - it should stand on its 5 points perfectly. 7) There are now 5 free triangles and every single one of them should now be turned into a new point. So grab 10 units and do what you have to do.
Half of the work is done!
8) This step is the exact opposite of the 7th.
It's quite easy to get confused here, so be sure to remember the triangles you already used.
9) If you did everything right, there should now be 5 more free triangles...
Pick one and connect it with two new units to form the 16th point.
10) 3 units left. Use two of them to connect the two new triangles with their neighbors.
Almost done...
11) The final unit will finish the star! Unfold both of the units at the hole
...and place the final one as shown on the picture. 12) Looks great, doesn't it:
So...what's the star for? Apart from the fact that you should be astounded how stable and awesome-looking this star is despite it being creeated from a few sheets of paper it can be mainly used as decoration. Smaller stars could be hung on the Christmas-Tree or pretty up your presents, larger ones can be placed next to the windows.
The size of the star is of course connected to the size of the paper you use. As a rule of thumb one can say that the star will be 1.66 times larger than the paper, meaning that the star from the tutorial is about 25 cm and the smaller one next to it, whose paper was 9cm x 9cm, is around 15 cm. If you want to hang you star somewhere, it's best to use one of the tiny holes for it. Simply let a stick with a thread around it sink in:
Enjoy creating your very own Bascetta-Star!
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