Kaleidocycle!

I completed my second kaleidocycle last night, and that exclamation point is very well justified, because I have been bouncing happily ever since.

What is a kaleidocycle, you ask? The short, denotative answer is: a turning toy composed of six or more tetrahedra. Much better: A kaleidocycle is a bundle of joyful awesomesauce rotating colorful patterns.

Pictures and movies will help. Words are my main mode, and this was a clear case for visuals. So I documented the process. I was interested in how to place a triangle exactly where I wanted it on the final form. Now I have a model and a procedure so I can make pictures on my next kaleidocycle (already in process).

This kaleidocycle started with 24 triangles. Here I have completed the triangles and am preparing for the next step:

Next, I assembled the triangles into jellyfish nets, or jellyfish for short. A kaleidocycle need not be made of beads – the form exists regardless of the materials. However, creating one from beads is amazing! I learned to make kaleidocycles from Kate McKinnon and her Contemporary Geometric Beadwork project. She has a YouTube channel, and here's a great video to start on kaleidocycles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Gb_CwdW_k. CGB also has a bead diagram guide to kaleidocycles here: https://beadmobile.wordpress.com/cgb-free-pattern-library/basic-kaleidocycle-pattern/. Betsy Ramsey of www.redpandabeads.com designed the color palette, Macaw Monday. This is a teaching kaleidocycle – I added counting beads to make each triangle distinct – so a bright, primary palette matched my purpose.

It matters which side of the triangle is up and how the triangle is rotated.

It also matters which way you roll the jellyfish. On my first kaleidocycle, I rolled one half-jellyfish a different way from the others and had to separate it and try again. It's good to stop and check alignment before closing the edges of each tetrahedron. 

And complete! 

Here are pictures of the jellyfish and the faces of the kaleidocycle they became. I made this kaleidocycle to have this map! On my next kaleidocycle, there will be two faces that have pictures spread across their six triangles.

That was fun! And now I have a kaleidocycle!