3D Christmas star DIY
I was just traveling in England to visit the Christmas markets and OMGOSH IT WAS AMMMMMMMAZING and inspiring and so beautiful! I was inspired by gorgeous paper stars that I kept seeing at various booths (done in various ways…..some with cut outs, some glistening with glitter and others that folded up). But I fell IN LOVE with one for sale at Fortnum and Mason in London that was full of color and glitter (and that was actually a tree topper) but I decided to take this idea and make one for myself! The full PDF pattern, SVG file and instructions are below!
MATERIALS:
- Chipboard (I got the thinner chipboard from Michaels, it’s medium weight)
- An x-cto knife or sharp blade
- A ruler
- Cutting surface or mat
- Glue (your fave will work)
- Paint and paint brushes
- String and needle for stringing to hang
- optional glitter
- clothespins or washi-tape for holding together while drying from glue
- PDF pattern (triangle shape)
- SVG file (triangle shape)
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Cut your shapes
Use the PDF pattern (or SVG) to cut out 16 (or more) of the triangle shapes. You can resize these to be your desired sizing for your final star. Just know that the smaller the star, the more intricate the cutting, folding and gluing will be.
You will first cut out the outside (darker lines) of the shapes. Then you will use your xacto knife or sharp blade to make score lines for folding. The score lines just help to make the folding super crisp so that your shapes are uniform and even. To do this, I laid my ruler along the line to score, then cut the lines with about 1/2 force so that the blade does’t go all the way through the chipboard material.
2. Fold triangle pieces
Fold your triangle pieces along all of your score lines – there should be the 3 main lines and the 5 tab lines.
3. Glue each triangle together
You will glue your triangles into 3D triangles. Use the tab at the top near the point of your triangle to glue to the “inside” or underside of the triangle (and since you already pre-folded from scoring your triangles, this part should be fairly easy)
I chose to use a bit of wash-tape to keep each triangle held together nice and tight while it dried.
Set aside each triangle to allow to dry
**note: the smaller the triangle, the more likely you are going to have to trim off a small part of the tab near the top point of the tab that you will glue. Test this out on one of the triangle shapes and then adjust if necessary
4. Paint if desired
I chose to paint each triangle separately (before gluing) to keep lines crisp before gluing. This step isn’t necessary if you plan to glitter your whole star or leave it as plain chipboard which is also lovely! 🙂
5. Glue pairs and then clusters
With each triangle that is glued, you are going to match the sides to glue in pairs
**note: depending on how precise your cutting was in step 1, you will likely have a “long side” and short side of your triangles, be sure to match accordingly (ie, match short to short or long to long)
I also found that clothes pinning (or washi-taping) your pairs together helped to keep them nice and tight while drying (just like in the previous step). Set each pair aside to dry 🙂
Once the pairs are dry, you will make cluster of 4 together (2 sets of pairs). Glue together just like you had done before (matching short with short and long with long if necessary).
Set aside each cluster to dry
6. Glue all together and finish
Using the same technique as in step 5, you will glue the clusters together to make one bigger star of all 4 clusters.
I then cut out a little circle of the center of my stars (I mean, the math was LIKELY right when I made the template, but mine didn’t work 100%) so a little circle to make the center more uniform and VOILA! 🙂
7. Add any glitter, embellishments and a hanger string
To add the hanger string, I used a thick needle and strung my string through one of the star points near the end to hang.
