I made some lovely 3-D paper barn stars with one of the classes at school and I liked them so much I made one for home too. This craft is fairly simple, so I thought I'd share in case some of you are looking for an easy, last-minute craft to keep or give.
Start by printing a star from the internet. I made mine almost as wide as a piece of printer paper. Cut the star out. This one will be your pattern. Precision is important in your tracing and cutting for this craft, but if things are a little off it will still turn out nicely.
Next, use a sharp pencil and a ruler to draw lines from each "point" of the star to the "valley" of the star across from it. All of the lines will intersect in the middle.
You will need to use the two parts that make up one of the points. Label one "L" for light and the other "D" for dark.
Trace the star pattern onto a piece of thick paper. This will be the base of your finished star, so pick a color that will coordinate with the colors you will use for the star. I used a piece of white card stock. The paper should still be thin enough to bend.
Now, cut out the two triangles that you labeled light and dark. Choose two colors of patterned craft paper, one that is lighter in value and one that is darker in value. Trace the "L" triangle five times on the lighter paper and the "D" triangle five times on the darker paper. Do not turn the triangle patterns over. The letter you wrote on it should always face up. Carefully cut them out. Cut them inside the pencil line that you traced so that you cut the line off. That way it won't show and the triangles won't be too large.
Now, it's time to start assembling your star. You will glue a light and a dark triangle on each point of the thicker star you cut out of card stock. The whole thing will fit together like a puzzle. If there is a little extra space in between each triangle that is fine. It will help when it is time to fold. It is important that none of your triangles overlaps another one. That will impede folding the star.
Mine are all glued. You can see that it is not perfect and that there is a small gap between the pieces.
It is time to fold. The alternating light and dark triangles will add to the 3-D look. Fold each point individually so that the ridges running to the points stick up and the ridges running to the valleys stick down. All of the folds meet in the middle. The small gaps between the triangles should make folding very easy. The paper will want to bend at the gap. Voila! Your barn star is complete.
I hung mine by a little loop of ribbon on the bathroom wall. Where will you hang yours?
If you have more time and want to be even more creative you can do what we did in school. Each kid painted their own paper first. They painted colors and patters and used stamps. One area of the paper they made dark and one light. They made sure each of their areas were big enough to cut five or more triangles out of it. They used reds and greens, burgundies and metallic golds. They painted with craft acrylics on drawing paper that was about the weight of card stock or just a little lighter. It was thick enough not to buckle when they painted on it. They were lovely!
Experiment and see what you can come up with.
Happy creating!
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