Paper Stars

I saw this in the December 2 issue of Woman's Day magazine. What a simple craft, I thought, and so pretty. I could use them to decorate the tree, in a wreath in inside the house, hanging from the ceiling, or strung on a garland. With so many possible uses, I got right to work.

Okay, pretty was right. But easy? You would think so by the directions in the magazine. But when I tried it, I found that 1) the directions were pretty vague, and 2) it was not so easy as it looked. Or maybe I'm just dense.

Many, many attempts later I had a star that somewhat resembled those in the magazine photo. But mine was little--theirs were all sizes, some of the huge. All I can figure is they used BIG paper to make the big stars, not the standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper.

Here is how I made the stars. If you try this and come up with a better way, or better instructions, please do tell! WD did not include photos of the process, so maybe that's why I had problems. I took photos as I made one tonight; I hope they are good enough to clarify the steps of the process.

Step one: Supplies. All you need is paper, scissors, rock (no rock--just joking!), stapler and tape. Simple so far.

Step 2: Cut your paper into the size you want. Bigger paper will make a bigger star (but I found it harder to work with).

Step three: fold the paper into accordion pleats. 4 folds made a nice star--more folds made it difficult to do the later step of taping.


Step four: fold the pleated paper in half.

Step five: Staple in the center. The directions in WD said to staple parallel to the folds but for me it worked better to staple across the folds (perpendicular to them). In the photo I followed directions; but I later pulled the staple and stapled across the pleats.

Step six: cut each of the two ends into points, starting about halfway down towards the staple.

Step 6: fan out the folds and attach the open sides together with tape as near to the center of the star as you can. (Goodness, I need some lotion on that hand!)

The finished products! As you can see, my stars came out in many different ways. The number of folds, the size and shape of the paper (square or rectangle, long narrow strip or wide) and how deep I cut the points account for the variety.

Can you imagine making these with gift wrap, or origami paper? I'm sure you more creative people will think of many ways to make these even prettier, like using those scissors that cut fancy edges for the cuts, or cutting designs into the folded paper before you fan out the folds.