I actually had some leftover material from the lamp I created last month by folding over 500 fortune tellers which I then glued to a Chinese Lantern. One of the leftovers was a perfectly good 40 cm diameter Morup light from IKEA, but in red...

Still, I found another beautiful example of how you can turn an ordinary Chinese Lantern into an eye catcher with minimal cost on the 3 R's blog and wondered how the result would look by glueing white pendants to a red light (and, also important, I expected this to take considerably less time that the >> 40 hours I spend on the Fortune Teller lamp)

Although (and understandable) there is no explanation on how to create one for yourself on the original page (and therefore I'll try not to tell too much here), the fold can easily be understood by looking at the photos. So, I suspended the Red Chinese Lantern above my desk. Got out a stack of printer paper, paper cutter and of course a Glue Gun

After having folded about 100 Helmet bases I wasn't really sure where to start; top, middle or bottom? In the end I chose the middle so I would have the best location to know how many Helmets would fit on the widest part.

Going upward was very easy. However, once I finished the top and had to start glueing other Helmets below what was already on the lamp I was seriously questioning my idea of starting in the middle; I just didn't have enough hands to steady the lamp, hold up the Helmets and place a new Helmet right below the existing Helmets...

Eventually I used some elastic bands and a weight to have a flexible way to keep the lamp in place, top and bottom, when I tried to glue something on it. Not perfect, but at least I could get the job done with just my two hands :)

This light contains about 160 folded Helmet Bases (so 160 squares as big as you can make them if you take 2 per A4 sheets from 80 sheets) and about 20 small Helmet Bases (made from leftover white square memo sheets from the fortune teller light) to primarily glue on top and on the bottom to hide some leftover red from the paper lantern

I am guessing here, because I did not time myself (except that I could fold a nice Helmet Base in about 35 seconds), but I made this light during the course of about 4-5 days. A bit more time on the last day, but in all it probably took me approximately 8-9 hours

In the end, I am happy with the result. It is quite a unique looking lamp and I like the 'surprise' you get when you turn the light on and there is a warm red-orange glow coming from it, instead of yellow-ish

Still not the kitchen lamp I had set out to make before the Fortune Teller lamp, but perhaps I'll get there some day ;)

I wasn't actually looking for a new lamp, but when I came across a post on the 3 R's blog showing a standard Chinese Lantern completely covered with the folded fortune tellers I used to make when I was a kid I just had to have it in my house as well!

If you want great suggestions on how to create your own copy of a 40 cm (16 inch) lamp shade with 200 fortune tellers, head over to the 3 R's blog. Here is just my own little story of how I took a bigger sphere with smaller squares (I think) than in the original post and folded over 500 little fortune tellers

I could only find a 50 cm (20 inch) paper lantern in the stores, which was a bit bigger than I had in mind (IKEA was sold out of their 40 cm white Morup), but, hey, how many more fortune tellers would an increase of 10 cm in diameter really be...

Since I did not want to cut all my printer paper into perfect squares (mostly because it would take too much time and I did not trust my paper cutter) I actually ordered a block of those white square memo pages online from an office supplier for about €5. Two days later I had 900 perfectly squares of 9 x 9 cm

I actually did not own a glue gun at the start of this project. I could always get away with the clear glue-for-everything from a bottle, but when I tried to glue a few fortune tellers on the side of the lamp they just kept falling off, so frustrating! 

Next day, I used my lunch time to bike to an art shop near my work and bought a glue gun. If I had know how cheap (and amazing) they are, I would have gotten one ages ago

Then I got into a certain rhythm. Get home from work, dinner, glue on the 30-50 fortune tellers I made the night before onto the lamp, put the table in front of the tv and watch a movie while folding 30-50 new fortune tellers, go to bed

I did time myself sometimes. My fastest was 10 fortune tellers in 20 minutes, but then I wasn't watching a movie. During a movie my folding rate dropped to 10 in 40 minutes (still have to keep track of the story of course). So 500 of them would have taken me at least 20 x 50 = 1000 minutes (about 17 hours), but since I did a lot of them while watching tv, it probably took me more in the range of 20-25 hours of folding

For the glueing part, I could glue about 60 of them onto the lamp in one hour. So 500 would have probably taken me 9-10 hours. I am glad that I did not know that it would take me that long before I started, haha

I started glueing on the "equator" and wanted to make a band, but after one full circle the band had become more of a spiral, not lining up at all. However, in the end, this was rather fortunate, since that way I never had any space left that could not fit an entire fortune teller. I just had to spiral my way all the way up and down

This would mean that at the top and bottom the row would stop rather unsymmetrically. And yes, you can see from the picture below (that shows the top) that it doesn't look very nice. However, since this is the part that you can't actually see once it hangs from the ceiling, I did not mind

The bottom has a similar hole, but to solve the spiral-stopping-suddenly problem and to make the sphere almost complete, I actually cut a paper into a circle and glued this over the hole at the bottom. This way I could easily keep on adding fortune tellers until the entire bottom half was completely covered

I was so happy when every available spot on the original Chinese lantern was covered in small fortune tellers. Even happier when I finally tested it with a light inside to see the play of light through the different number of layers of paper of the fortune tellers that the light had to go through

I had intended the new lamp for the kitchen, but it was just too big and I would almost bump my head against it (with 187 cm (6 feet 3 inches right?) the ceiling is usually rather close ;) ), so I moved our lamp in the bedroom to a vacant spot in the hallway and now this enormous ball of spikes has a lovely spot above our bed

It took much longer than expected and I think it will be at least 20 more years before I fold another fortune teller, but I am so happy with the result that I have no regrets!

Playing a bit with the camera settings to make the play of light even more visible:

(This wasn't the first lampshade I made using origami, see this newer post for an older light based on the Magic Ball)