Kusudama Snowman

As many of you may know, I have been experimenting with the kusudama design for a while, and have published various instructables on it. This is my last planned adaptation for the kusudama design. I will not go into extreme detail as to how to fold the original petals or how to glue the flowers into a ball because I have already done so in other instructables. Please take a look at my instructable labelled

"Kusudama Origami Wedding Party Jewelry" for instructions on how to fold the petals, and refer to my instructable called "Kusudama Light (Chandelier/Centerpiece)" for instructions on how to glue 12 5 petaled flowers into a ball.

For this project, I made 60 individual kusudama petals. Before gluing them into flowers, however, I cut each petal into 4 sections, each about 1/2 inch wide. I discarded the smallest section and used the other three as part of different flowers of different sizes. This project is extremely time consuming and may be tedious. It is rewarding, but you have to be committed to the process. It is also possible to make this design by making three different kusudama balls from start to finish. This would triple the time involved, but make the end product stronger.

As per my instructions in my other Kusudama instructables, I then glued similar sized petals (5 of them) into flowers. Once I made 12 flowers of each size, I started connecting similar sized flowers into flower balls of three different sizes as well.

At this point, the stacked kusudama balls are strong enough to be free standing.

To bolster the integrity of the snowman, I took a little scrap wood and glued them together to make a base.

I used a 1/4 in drill bit to drill a hole in the middle of the foot. I plugged in a 1/4 inch dowel.

I slipped each kusudama ball onto the dowel, one at a time. As each one was set into place, dripped a drop of glue into the space between the flower and the dowel to hold it in place. Once the three sections have all dried, I tried to decide how long I wanted the top hat to be. I cut the dowel with a handsaw to that size.

Once the glue was all dry, I fashioned a simple carrot nose and slipped it into a space in one flower.

I found some old construction paper (black) to make a simple top hat. I cut out a circle first and then drilled a hold in the middle the size of the dowel. I slipped the circle down onto the snowman's head, then slipped on the cylindrical part of the top hat. Lastly, I found some twigs outside and glued them to the main body. Viola.