Kusudama in Pyjamas

This my friends, is what happens when you have a nice thick, idle stack of half-folded blue office paper, a tube of nauseatingly pungent rubber glue (read: the abominable Aica-Aibon type) and more than 4 hours of insomnia accompanied by an equally uneventful morning to follow. Apart from being another opportunity to use the "Flower-Best Shot" mode on my Exilim (I love the blurred background effect that it creates, but alas it really does work only with flowers and not so much when taking human portraits -.-) this little gem gave me around 6 to 7 hours of pretty refreshing relaxation. Oh, and if you're wondering why it took me such an atrociously long amount of time to finish this, well I suggest you look closer at the picture while keeping the following in mind: I started with 60 individually cut and folded petals, glued to make 12 sets of 5-petaled flowers, then glued together to make one stunning yet surprisingly labor-intensive origami flower ball, a.k.a kusudama.

I got the idea from - not surprisingly - a very Japanese-related source, i.e. Otomen. My friends and I were pretty much dumbfounded when we got our first glimpse of the thing (then again, a lot of the creations in this manga have always managed to stun us). Anyways, we all thought this was nigh on impossible to replicate and it was probably just some fantasy creation born out of the genius imagination of Aya Kanno, so you can imagine how surprised I was when I actually found an Instructable for this! I was going to challenge Anin to make it, since she's always been the crafty one (voted ter-kreatif sekelas gitu), but apparently my boredom got the better of me and before I knew it, I'd already started folding the first petal.

Half-started mini kusudama

I tried experimenting with blue post-its at first. Major fail. One side kept on sticking more than it should, and I couldn't even get the petal to open up right. So, I decided to turn to the less sticky, but rather over-sized blue office paper I had. This left me with a bit more work to do, since I had to tear the rectangular sheets into little squares first before I could actually fold them, but I think I got through that process pretty well. As a bonus, I got leftover sheets that I ended up folding as well to make these mini kusudamas >>>

I didn't think I'd be able to finish all this (I'm really suspecting I have at least a minor case of ADHD going on up here in my noggin, for a lack of being able to focus on anything quite sufficiently lately) but lo and behold, it turned out I had a lot more perseverance in me than I'd initially thought.

Finishing this gave me that nice feeling of satisfaction at having been at least a tad bit productive after such a weird and tiring night. I ended up dreaming about Queen Victoria for God’s sake. I’m pretty sure Will&Kate had something to do with this; them and my recent affinity for the History Channel as well -.-

*History tidbit: I found out today that Queen Victoria and King Albert were actually the ones who commissioned the building of the Crystal Palace; it was made famous for the fact that it housed England's Great Exhibition way back in the 19th century, but also because it contained a huge indoor botanical garden. So, I guess you could say this was keeping in line with the flower theme that'd been going on since yesterday.

 I really do need to do this more often. So much FUN~

Full scale kusudama. 
They're fun to hold for some reason :D

But admittedly prettier when dangling freely like this ^^