Fancy papers make excellent jewelry after laminating (back-coating with paste) for adding body and strength.
Back-coated florist’s foils make versatile folded “beads.”
Wearability is Critical
Durability and comfort are the greatest concerns expressed by potential customers. Few materials available to the jeweler are as amazingly varied as paper.
Origami jewelry components are lightweight. Nevertheless, fancy papers, especially the most beautiful, are usually too soft for jewelry use, and so we recommend reinforcement by pasting them to a stronger material. Adding this extra layer with paste is called “back-coating” and it provides added body to otherwise flimsy papers.
Durability and comfort are not just about the materials, but also about the design of the piece. For example, our necklaces often have stone, plastic, glass, or metal elements placed around the back of the neck to ensure comfort where the necklace hugs the skin. Good design should allow the paper elements to be pretty up front, while letting the more durable materials do the job they do best.
Finally, the folded elements do not exist without support, and there is a huge variety of fittings, findings, and adhesives that integrate the components. Take care when attaching, stringing, mounting or connecting your painstakingly folded elements, and use the highest quality materials that you can afford.
Folded, multi-layer pasted paper “jewels” can be used with most conventional jewelry-making materials. Shown above left: Single Barrel paper “beads” held between chains with crimped, metal jingle-bells. Right: Triple Barrel paper “beads” on a glass bead necklace.
Origami “Jewels”
As Earrings...
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page 43
page 58
page 36
page 49
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...and as Necklaces!
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page 20
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Square Beads
Designed by Michael G. LaFosse from a traditional base
The Square Bead is easy to fold, quick to make, and it displays the paper’s features beautifully. This bead is the real workhorse of our origami jewelry design system, and we use it time and again. Combining various sizes of Square Beads with other elements provides end less possibilities for distinctive folded jewelry. This bead consists of two squares, each folded to the “upside-down sailboat” shape (step 5) used throughout this book.
1. Begin with the display side up. Valley-fold in half, bottom corner to top. Unfold. Turn over and rotate 45 degrees.
2. Valley-fold in half, edge to edge, both ways, unfolding after each. Rotate 45 degrees.
3. Valley-fold the top and bottom corners to meet in the middle, where the creases cross.
4. Use the existing mountain and valley creases to collapse the model, folding the left and right corners in half and moving them to meet at the bottom.
5. Your paper should look like this. You will need two units of the same size for each square bead.