Have you seen window stars made from translucent colored papers? I’ve wanted to try them for years now. The stars look old-fashioned and like modern art at the same time. I love how they glow in the sunlight. I had visions of covering our windows with them. I even thought they’d look pretty on the tree.
So I ordered a book and some transparency paper, also known as kite-paper. It comes in about eight different colors. You can also use tissue paper which comes in many different colors. Some tissue paper even has glitter embedded in the paper. Be aware though that tissue paper tears easier than the kite-paper and will fade quicker in sunlight. On the complex stars the sun needs to come through eight layers of tissue so you want to stick with the lighter colors of paper.
I made a couple of stars by myself. The good news is that assembling the stars really is easy. You start with squares and rectangles of the colored paper. The book I have recommends 3” x 3” squares and 4” x 3” rectangles. The folds are very simple to make, even on the complex squares. You repeat the folds on many small squares and then assemble the star. My book recommends small dots of glue to help hold the shapes together. I found that a glue stick worked better and didn’t soak through the paper.
The hardest part of this entire project is cutting out exact squares and rectangles. The shapes really have to be exact or the folds won’t match up precisely. Even with a yardstick I didn’t get exact squares. Plus it took me forever to work with the paper to get the eight exact squares required for the simplest star. I kept wishing for the huge guillotine paper cutter at work. I could not imagine trying to cut squares fast enough to keep up with three children. I’ve shelved this project for now until I have access to the paper cutter. I do think the stars have a lot of potential. I would not recommend them for young children. The project takes steady fingers and lots of patience.
The two simple stars I made aren’t perfect, but they look very pretty shinning in my window.
Also See:
Sticky Note Origami – David Mitchell
Magical Window Stars at Amazon