I promised to post some low budget christmas decor tutorials. Here’s the first:
How to make a 3D paper star:
But one of my ‘by the way’s first. If you’re looking for a book to read or christmas gift, Marian Keyes novel “The Brightest Star in the Sky” might be worth checking out. I ‘accidentally’ bought it at the airport and read it. Normally it’s not a book I’d grab, but I rather liked it. The characters are pretty awesome and so is the story for the most part. But I hated the end. It ruined the whole thing. So if you’re someone who never finishes the book they started reading, it’s perfect.
Back to the paper star.
First, you need 30 sheets cut into squares. I used pages from an old book (side length 4,5”/ 12cm).The whole star is about 8”/20cm in diameter. So if you want your star to be bigger or smaller, adjust the size of your paper squares. But don’t make them too tiny, it might get to hard to fold the paper.
Now start folding your 30 sheets of paper like shown in the pictures. It’s important that you always fold the lower right corner in the second step.
Now comes the fun part. After following the instructions you should have a pyramid put together from 3 pieces of paper. Starting from one of the pyramid’s corners you now build a second one.
Open one of the folds as done before. With two new pieces you build the second pyramid.
Go on like that until you’ve got five pyramids/spikes. Make sure that it looks like it does in the picture. If you only have four spikes, something went wrong. In that case it’s way faster to start again from the first pyramid than trying to figure out what went wrong.
From whatever angle you look at the star, there should always be 5 spikes that go together. Each folded paper square is part of two spikes if that helps figuring it out.
Once you finish your first star, it gets way easier and the second star won’t even take half as long. They look best in a group of different sizes or hanging from ceiling lights. You could also use a single one as topper for your christmas tree. Have fun!!
Great tutorial, thanks so much! Here is my version: http://craftingknowledge.blogspot.com/2012/12/star-challenge-day-thirteen-3d-20-point.html
Hi Kendra, thanks for stopping by! Your star looks great!
It’s beautiful! I am so impressed…
I love how you used bookpaper… what great charm…
hugs x
Crystellle
very difficult to make.
Thanks for the tutorial!!! Can’t wait to do one for myself! I wonder how the stars look like if I use colorful magazine paper. Haha. It actually is a great way to make less throw-aways. As a student, I myself would print out many lecture notes and all other study stuffs, and it is kinda wasteful since I got a bunch of used paper. If I can make the advantage of them, and make something useful and lovely, I actually save the environment in a sense. So I recently started a campaign called ‘A Little Sparkle in Life'(http://alittlesparkleinlife.wordpress.com/), aiming to let more people get invovled in recycling and upcycling:)