Tiny Paper Stars

Is there a TV series that you need to catch up on?  Downton Abbey?  Big Bang Theory?  Battlestar Gallactica?  Good.  You can make these little teeny stars while you do that.  All you need is paper and scissors.  And strong fingernails.  You'll find out why.  

 When I say "little teeny", I mean about the size of a tic-tac.  But they are so adorable!!

 Ok, this is the worst part of the project.  You'll need strips of paper about a quarter of an inch wide by 8.5 inches long.  I suppose you could use graph paper to have the straight lines already, which would be handy.  I, luckily, have a paper cutter at work, so this part went pretty quickly.

  

 Now, you'll be tying a knot in the paper strip, so take one end of the strip, and loop it over...  

...and then back through itself.  Shimmy it around until the paper makes a 5-sided knot.

Like this.  Try to make sure that each side of the knot is exactly the width of the paper strip.  I know it sounds tricky, but just be sure that the paper isn't scrunched up where it enters/exits the knot.  Also, be sure that it's not loosey-goosey.  So, no scrunching and no loosey-goosey.  I believe these are the technical terms.

If your knot has some of the short end hanging out (like mine did in the last picture), you can trim it off.  Start folding the rest of the strip around itself; for example, in this picture, I am going to fold the strip up, along the bottom of the pentagon.  Then I'll turn the pentagon over and continue folding it around itself.  

Kind of like this.  Once you start doing this, it will make a lot more sense!

 When you get to the end of the strip, tuck it into one of the little pockets formed by the folds.  

You end up with this little guy!  It will be pretty thick.  

This is where strong fingernails come in handy!  Using your nail, press in on one of the sides of the pentagon, while you hold two of the other sides.  Try to hold it like in this picture (rather than flat between your fingers), otherwise the star won't poof out properly.  More technical terms...

I have possibly the weakest fingernails known to man, so they can never work this part right.  I use the edge of my scissors to push in the sides, but you could really use anything with a sharper edge.

Push in all the edges like that, and now you have a little star!  A little, teeny star.

You really could make one of these in less than a minute.  Use colored paper, use graph paper, add a little rhinestone to the center.  Make ten or twelve, and stick them into a clear ornament with some glitter.  Put them on a homemade card. 

Am I sounding bossy yet?

One word of advice: you can make these bigger, but you need to use thicker paper.  Try cardstock or doubling up on strips of regular computer paper.  The reason these work out when they are tiny is that there are so many layers of paper, so you need to try to replicate that thickness in a larger star.  

Whew!  Finally a craft without felt!  Told you I could do it!

(Oh, and I originally learned how to do these on this cute blog...)