Twinkle, Twinkle

     Several months ago I bought a kit to make 15 German Stars, last night I sat down and made them all, plus a few gold ones. I like to have something a little different on the table at Christmas, nothing too tall, so I have filled a bowl with the stars and added some battery operated LED lights.

      The kit had full pictorial instructions with it but I found a YouTube tutorial much easier to follow, here's the link to part one, you can reach part two from there.
     Once I had done four with the tutorial I could carry one and make the rest with out it, next week may be a different story!

      Having made so many I would suggest cutting the ends to a blunt point as it makes them easier to thread through, don't pull too tight and don't crease the paper unless it tells you to.
     I wanted a few gold stars in with these patterned ones so I had to work out the size of the strip needed. The paper needs to be about 120gsm, patterned both sides and long enough to be a continuous strip. This limits things slightly as most papers only have pattern on one side and the biggest I have is 12x12 inches (about 30cm).
     The kit had strips of 86cm for the large star and 45cm for the medium star. I could only get a maximum of 30cm in length from an A4 sheet, this meant the strip had to be no more than 1cm wide, finding gold on both sides was easy.
     I placed a medium star in the bottom and built the large ones around the outside, keeping one for the top. I mixed in the lights, medium stars and the gold stars as I went, finishing with the battery pack on top covered by the last large star.

     This would be a great way to use up strips of patterned paper, make half a star as a gift wrapping topper. It doesn't have to be Christmas paper, these stars would look great for a birthday or a congratulatory party piece. If you have the time you could stamp a pattern on both sides of the paper or a message.

I would like to enter my star bowl in the following challenges:

CraftyHazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - Anything Goes

Sparkles Monthly - Anything But A Card

The Sisters Of Craft - Anything Goes

Through The Purple Haze - Christmas

Simply Papercraft - Anything Goes

The Glory Of Christmas - Anything Goes