The fire was crackling, soft Christmas music playing in the background, our toddler content with his toy tractor, and a heavy snow falling outside. This was not an evening to spend working on my blog or in front of the TV. No, it had to be an evening spent reflecting and enjoying every second. To keep my hands busy with something, I began making origami star Christmas ornaments.

As you may know, we are saving every cent this Christmas to put more towards our home mortgage, so new ornaments were out of the question. Looking for a frugal, yet updated solution, I found an idea for origami ornaments and loved it!

The following tutorial is FULL of pictures, so I’ll try not to get too wordy 😉

Supplies for origami star Christmas Ornaments:

• Paper of choice (book page, music page, scrapbook paper)
• Something to hang them like string, twine, or ornament hooks
• Scissors (optional)
• Stapler (optional)

Origami Star Tutorial:

I think this first step is pretty much explained: make a square 🙂 The picture gives you an idea of the size of star you’ll get proportionally. Now, we have to make that perfect square into a perfect pentagon. The steps for that follow:

Fold the square in half, and actually you’ll want to rotate it so that the “open end” is facing away from you for the next step.

Fold the top left corner down to the edge…

…and the bottom left corner up. You just made and “X” crease on the left side of the paper.

Fold the bottom right corner up to the center of that X.

Then, double that corner back to meet the edge of the fold you just made.

Take the bottom of the paper and fold it up to line up with that funny shape you just made. Can you tell I’m not an origami expert! There’s probably technical terms for what I’m describing, but that’s what pictures are good for!

Flip the whole thing over.

And, basically fold it in half.

Now, cut along that line made by that flap there.

There’s your perfect little pentagon. If you have a “prettier” side of the paper, you’ll want that facing down at this point. The next steps are a series of 3 different folds you’ll make 5 times.

Fold 1:

Halve the pentagon at every corner, or 5 times total.

Fold 2:

Fold the bottom edge up to meet the creases of the folds you just made from center to tip. I outlined those lines in pencil below:

Repeat for all 5 sides.

Fold 3:

This one is the most complicated, but once you’ve done it a few times you get the hang of it. Start by folding the left side over. Then, take the bottom corner of that fold and pull it towards the left while lifting the bottom up. Squash all of that down, open it back up, and repeat for all 5 sides.

Ready for some magic? The next step is where our pentagon becomes more star-like.

It’s a bit tricky, but pinch all five corners at once and bring them to the center. They’ll need to rotate a bit to settle into the shape at the bottom. I probably played with this for 15 minutes the first time trying to get it to work, so don’t get frustrated if it doesn’t happen automatically.

On the left is the star we are working on and the right is the finished product…getting there!

Flip your star over. See the mini pentagon in the middle?

Start folding all the corners of that mini pentagon into the center to sharpen the points of your star. The last one is a little tricky because you have to sort of dig it out of the fold it’s under.

Would you look at that! You did it! Above is a front and back look at what you just made! We aren’t quite done yet, though!

To hang mine on the tree, I cut a 5″ bit of twine and tied a loop….

…and just stapled that to the stars. You could also punch a hole in them and use string or ornament hooks.

 

I just love how pretty they look! The fact that I didn’t have to spend any money on them makes them just that much more charming.

To see more of our Christmas Tree this year, and to see a HUGE collection of Christmas inspiration in the form of a blog link up come back this Friday (11/27)!!! It will be a post you won’t want to miss out on! In fact, to make it easy for you to remember, here’s a button to add it to your Google Calendar:

See you then!