DIY parchment paper stars

I like to make some kind of DIY Christmas star every year and this year I made these parchment paper stars. After all, no Christmas decor is complete without stars!

These parchment stars are quick and easy to make and they look so festive and pretty! Since parchment paper is so sheer, it lets the light through giving the stars a luminous look. For this reason, I recommend hanging the stars on a window or in front of one.

Read on to find out how to make parchment paper stars — I’ve tried to explain the steps but I recommend watching the video at the end which will make it much clearer.

How to make parchment paper stars

Materials:
parchment paper
jute twine string
glue stick
hot glue gun

There are a few different ways to make these parchment paper stars depending on how big or how full you want them. But the principal is the same for all. So I’m sharing the basic tutorial so you can adapt it as you like.

Cut your parchment paper in to squares — I went for 19 x 19 cms (approx 7.5 inches). You’ll need two squares per star.
Fold each square like an accordion, making slim folds until you’ve folded the whole square.
Fold each accordion in half and cut the tip — you can cut it in a pointy shape, a round shape or however you like.
Take one folded accordion, and glue the two halves together. Do the same with the other accordion.
Now glue the two accordion pieces together — I used a glue stick for all these steps as I found it worked better than a glue gun.
Now you need to make sure the middle comes together and a little bit of hot glue is perfect for this bit.
Finally hot glue on some twine to hang it up with.

One adaptation you can try: For one of my larger stars, I used only one extra large piece of parchment paper and glued it to itself. I wasn’t sure if the star would look full enough but it did and gave it a different look.

As you can see, once you hang them against the light, these parchment stars take on an almost ethereal look, making them beautiful Christmas decorations. I’ve made these types of stars before with regular kraft paper but I’ll never go back to that. The transparency of the parchment paper makes these stars look so amazing.

If you wanted to mix it up a bit, you can even make a few different sizes and glue them together, one on top of another starting with the largest star. That will make one stunning Christmas star. Also, you could use a mix of brown parchment and white parchment paper to vary the tones.