When You Are in the Mood for Cute

Folding Origami stars is very relaxing. All those available cute designs make it incredibly tempting to just keep making more. 

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

I wanna be the very best like no one ever was. 

To catch them is my real test,

To train them is my cause.

I will travel across the land, 

Searching far and wide.

Each Pokemon to understand

The power that's inside!

There is just something about this song that always makes me smile and want to sing along (and if I'm at home, I do :P ) The Pokemon TV show was part of my childhood and at one time, I knew all 150 pokemon. Of course now, there are a lot more than that and I have stopped following this series but it continues to be a part of all my younger cousins' childhoods. 

While surfing the internet looking for interesting patterned origami star paper, I came across these two designs: one from RosyAutumn on Deviantart, and the other I found through Google Images. 

Gotta Catch 'Em All! Pokemon! 

Ten Thousand Paper Wishes

Last year, I thought of doing a feature chronicling the creation of a vast collection of origami stars. It would span several posts as I gradually added more and more stars made of different patterned papers and materials. It needed a catchy number so I thought that "One Million Wishes" had a grand ring to it. Then my rational, analytic mind kicked in: just how long would it take to fold one million origami stars? Therefore, I did a little math. Assuming that it takes about one minute to fold a star (it doesn't really but I decided to give myself a little leeway in terms of time) and I spent about one hour per day folding stars, then it would take me 45.6 years to finish - WHOA! That was definitely not happening. Then I thought, 'Am I really going to count all the stars that I make?'. The answer is no but that's still no excuse for faulty advertisement ;).

So as much as one million is a sexy number, I have decided to lower it to a less sexy but far more manageable number: 10,000. Doing the same calculation, this could be achieved in 5 and a half months. Shall we begin?

Origami stars are my fall-back craft. Even though they don't serve any useful function (although, come it think of it, pretty much most of what I make falls under this category) they are fun, quick and almost meditative as you get into a rhythm of folding them. Whenever I browse through Chinese/Japanese novelty shops, I am always tempted to get more star folding strips. Anyone with an internet connection and a colour printer however, will find that there are hundreds of free patterns to be found on deviantart, pinterest, tumblr, etc. I came across this one on deviantart. It's by CandidCandy and you can find the printable sheet here. They would be great as baby shower decorations - provided that there are no children around (definite choking hazard unfortunately).

I am still on the hunt for interesting jars to display my stars in. I will probably be combing through garage sales come summer :)

[Linky Parties this post has joined: Friday Finds Link Party!]

Patterned Star Garlands

I picked up a trick about how to get more out of that expensive star paper you buy in stores. When folded, you really only see the last half of a strip of star paper; the other half is buried inside. So what I do is cut strips of plain white paper of the same wide as my star paper.  I cut my strips of star paper in half. I use the white strips to make the core and then wrap the patterned star paper on the outside. This way I get two stars out of every strip of star paper – neat, eh?

Dimensions: Stars ~2cm wide, garlands of various lengths

Materials: commercial star paper, white printer paper, cotton thread, green and blue bicone plastic beads, green and blue round plastic beads

Tools: safety pin, sewing needle

Time to make: several hours…exact time uncertain…

Twinkle, twinkle little star...

Cutting paper strips can be very tedious. I would much rather have someone or something else do it for me. Hunting through my basement, I found a wonderful old paper shredder which cut paper into even, thin strips. Perhaps not the best for paranoid people’s confidential documents (a really patient person could probably slowly piece the papers back together) but great for cutting star paper. Of course that’s only if you are okay with making tiny stars. A bit challenging and quite fiddly but very cute.

Foil paper can end up getting a stressed look when handled a lot.  Not crisp but the look has a charm of its own. 

I made these from floral wrapping paper from a present that I had given to someone. He thought I did such a nice job with wrapping that he was careful not to tear the paper and then he gave the paper back to me to wrap something else.
: P

Elephants and bunnies were the original pattern of this baby-shower-type wrapping paper. Too bad  you can't really tell now that it has been made into stars.

Dimensions: ~ 1cm wide

Materials: assorted wrapping paper

Tools: paper shredder

Time to make: Length of several movies…though I won’t tell you which ones ; )

Stars in Jars

The classic stars in a jar. They are just so bright and colourful. They helped me wile away the time during many a boring lecture.

Dimensions: ~1.5 cm wide

Materials: assorted coloured printer paper

Tools: knife, ruler

Time to make: indefinite…whenever the mood strikes

Music of the Stars

I love the look of music notes and generally cannot bear to just throw away old music sheets even if I no longer need them. These cute little stars were made from recycled, photocopied hymns. And the music lives on… : )

Dimensions: ~1.5 cm wide

Materials: old music sheets

Tools: knife, ruler

Time to Make: ~ 2 hours

Oh My Stars!

Dimensions: A little over 6’3 long, stars ~2cm wide (I know, I am mixing up my units : P )

Materials: white printer paper, white cotton thread, pink round plastic beads, red round plastic beads, silver round plastic beads

Tools: safety pin, sewing needle,

Time to Make: Not sure since this was spread over several weeks…

The strips that I used to make these origami stars were the scraps left over after I had finished trimming the edges of an agenda I was putting together. The cheerful little beads were a gift from a friend (from way, way back in junior high... how long ago was that?) which I never found a use for. A few meters of cotton thread and voila! A star garland. I got bored of having my stars just sitting around in jars.