Paper Gold Star Tree Topper

Need a glorious star to top your tree, but you just don't have one? You can make your own! It doesn't take that long and if you're new to origami or papercraft, it's a nice little introduction to the wonders of folding paper.


This Instructable was brought to you by Krylon

Step 1: Supplies

For the star's construction, I used Bristol board that I then cut down to 8.5" x 11" pieces so I could print on them. Any letter-sized piece of paper will work, but the thicker the better.

For the painting, I used Krylon® Short Cuts® Gold Leaf, Krylon® Glitter Blast, and Krylon Crystal Clear Gloss

Comments

[misterjester]

I have been looking to try and see how the calculations for the template are made, can you help with the calculations ??

How did you make the template ?

[capricorn]

Thank you for haring, the template will be most useful

[RanaRavens]

I'm excited to try this one out. We just got our first tree and the top is bare! :)

[kewpiedoll99]

Amazingly, this is the first time I have actually followed an instructable (rather than simply being inspired or impressed by it). Our little table-top tree is pretty pathetic and needs help. And now that I have made my star, I realize the star is almost as wide as the bottom of the tree. :P derp

So, I tweaked two pieces of the star just a little so that the hole was cut before I glued the pieces together. You can see, I think, in this picture, how I did this. It also helped when I was closing up the last seam.

Great instructable!

[fungus amungus]

Thanks! Nice tweak there. It does make it a little easier to plan ahead.

As for the size, it's true, it's very large for smaller trees. I made a couple more PDFs with smaller templates and added them to Step 2.

[kewpiedoll99]

Cool! I might get some more heavy paper tomorrow (today I used manila folders that I cut down to 8-1/2x11 for printing) and try again with a smaller template. I was thinking that these would be cool with fancy paper as well, you could hang them from the ceiling using fishing line. Oh the possibilities!

[hammer9876]

Brilliant! And a perfect star for the kids to make. Congratulations on being featured. It looks like it's about 17" (about 43 cm) which is pretty big for my little four foot (1.22 m) tree. What's a good way to cut this down to a smaller size?

[fungus amungus]

You're right, it is rather large. I meant to add smaller sizes, but forgot. I just added 2 more PDFs at smaller sizes to Step 2. Even better, more pieces can fit on one sheet of paper.

[hammer9876]

Yippee!

[idesignstuff]

you could print it at 50% size to get a star half the size. 66% would be about a foot across.

[hammer9876]

Thanks!

[omalachowski]

Love it, that looks so great!

[sunshiine]

Thanks for sharing! I love the star!

[raviolikid]

This is lovely! I'll give it a try. Thanks for the clear instructions.