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Make a paper star

Well, I have to admit I'm feeling quite pleased with myself.  I wasn't convinced I could make this work, but it's really not too bad at all.  My first attempt at making a paper star.  

This all started because I was trawling through YouTube, looking at videos on how to successfully print using the gelli plate.  Too many of my prints were ending up muddy messes, so I needed to learn some techniques.  I came across an American artist called Elizabeth St Hilaire and one of her videos called 'Fabulous Shimmery Gelli Printed Paper Star, Easy!'  I mean, with a title like that, how could I not watch it?  

She made a wonderful looking decorative star, very bright and bold, and constructed out of paper bags.  Yup, a stack of humble, everyday paper bags.  After they were printed on, complete with metallic and iridescent paint to make them shimmer, she cut the bags into a point at one end and glued them together.  The construction's quite straightforward, and I wanted to try it straight away.

Not having a handy stack of paper bags, and not wanting to wait until Amazon or eBay could deliver them, I used photocopier/printer paper instead.  

I printed sheets of it in various colours, and ended up with twelve I liked.  Then I folded and glued two sides of each sheet of paper to make the bags.  

Deviating slightly from the order in which it's done in the video, I found the centre point at the opening of each bag, and cut the top part into a point.  So each bag looked like the shape a child draws when they imagine a house.  

Stacking up my twelves 'house' shapes, it was time to assemble the star.  It was a case of being heavy handed with the glue stick, firmly pushing the glued pieces together to ensure them bonded well.  

It was a lovely feeling to unfurled my star and see it take shape.  

I punched a hole in two points and threaded a ribbon through for hanging, and am already planning to make another star.  Maybe Christimas colours, lots of red and gold?  It'd look good to print on both sides of the paper too, so when the star's opened out there's no white paper on view.  Unless I printed on coloured paper in the first place?  

I'd love to think some of you might have a go at creating a paper star too.  You could use actual paper bags instead of making them, to speed up the process, or use fancy wrapping paper instead of printing on plain paper if you don't want to mess about with acrylics, stamps and stencils.  The link for the YouTube video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvbPzUpg224&t=7s.  (I'm not great with technology, so I hope that gets you there.  Otherwise just type in the artist's name, Elizabeth St Hilaire.)  If you don't want to watch the entire video, simply watch the first four minutes or so, then skip ahead to about 24 minutes and see how the star's constructed.   Good luck!   


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