Origami Paper Stars! Pin.009

Hello all! so I was considering which pin to do this week when I came across this tutorial for origami stars by Minna May. The great thing about this pin is that all you need is a piece of paper! the stars can be used for loads of things... cards, decorations... um.. cards and decorations??

Okay so I'm feeling particularly unimaginative right now but I'm sure you can think of lots of things to use them for... right?

Anyways... They were quite fun to do, quite quick and not too tricky after a bit of practice. I practised with plain white A4 paper then used the pretty patterned paper afterwards.

Got an A4 piece of paper? Then you're ready to rumble!

The tutorial asks for strips of paper 8.5" x 0.5". However, the shorter side of A4 is 8.3" so I used that measurement and it worked fine :)

Make a ribbon shape with the paper, fiddle around with it until it looks like this:

Poke the short tab inside the hole and gently pull through

You then need to flattern the paper a bit and fold over the excess tab:

Then begin folding the long strip of paper over the base of the star:

 And fold it over the back of the star:

And keep going. You will find that the paper sits comfortably in one direction so you don't have to worry too much about folding it in the wrong angle. Eventually you'll get to the end of the strip of paper and have something that looks like this:

You then need to tuck the tab inside the folds so it's hidden. Like this:

And you should have something like this:

The next bit required two hands so I couldn't take a picture, so I have borrowed one from Minna May. Holding the star, push your nail into each side of the star, forcing it into a star shape.

And Ta Da! You are finished!

Like I said before, it takes a bit of patience and practice, but they came out really nice! It's trickier with thicker paper, but I think the trick is to make sure the stars are folded quite tight - though take care not to tear them!

It took a couple of attempts, but I soon got the hang of making these stars. To do it properly it's not super quick but it doesn't take ages either! I think they look best on pretty patterned paper. I have yet to use them for anything but I'm impressed with how well these came out. I am by no means a seasoned origami maker! Please let me know if my instructions need clarifying - it's a hard thing to describe!