Folding Paper Stars

I made these stars as a little exercise to do something with a newly acquired cutter-plotter and thought I would share my process and files if anyone else would like to make these.

Paper - I used 18x24 Master's Touch Mixed Media, which comes as a bound block of 36 sheets and it's a good cost effective way to get large pieces of heavy paper that can be cut up to size

Cutter - I used a Brother Scan-n-Cut DX, but really, you can use a blade and straight edge to cut it all by hand too - it just takes more time (and patience)

Bone folder and straight edge for scoring the edges that need folding

Glue - E6000, superglue, anything works here that is good for paper

Here are my patterns I designed, A is the plain version, B is the medium version, and C is the big one with the most detail. These are one element of the star that needs to be repeated 7 times to achieve the end result.

It's also a great canvas to put your own designs on these, just use the A version and have at it!

Not much to describe here since this might be up to your cutting machine how to deal with setting up and making the cuts. I supplied my files in SVG, which should be handled by all cutter software.

If you go the manual route, just print a pattern to a piece of paper and cut the lines.

This would also be the step where you can pick different color paper for each individual element ;)

The dashed lines on the illustration marks the edges that need to be folded, they all fold inward and this arrangement of folding edges is the same on all the three patterns.

I used a bone folder to score the edges with a straight edge and I did it on both sides of the paper to make it easier to fold the somewhat thick paper. The thicker your paper, the better off you'll be scoring it sharply on both sides.

There's only one edge that needs to be glued on each element, the flap on the top left. I used some paper clips to hold them in place while the glue dried. If using super glue, just press the edges firmly together and it will cure within a couple seconds - just be careful because it sets sooner than you think if you need to adjust the edges to line up.

Once all the individual elements are glued up and ready we just need to stick them all together. The solid faces need a couple drops of glue near the corners and then pressed together. You can stack them all as you go along.

You can choose to glue them all together, or leave the last two faces unglued and use a paper clip to hold the star together - the cool thing about this approach is that the star can then be collapsed and stored for later use.

Depending on how thick your paper is it might be enough for the star to hold up nicely once hung. However larger stars tend to slack under the weight of the paper. The big one I made is about 24 inches across and mounting it would've required for each arm of the star to be mounted to keep the shape up - so I made this support with my 3D printer to hold the star up nicely and also to have a clean mounting hole. I used command strip hooks to attach the support to the wall. Each arm of the support has a groove where the paper can get clamped into, no glue needed.

Packing the stars flat was a key part of this design so that it can be stored easily and enjoyed over and over without risking damage to what is otherwise a pretty delicate piece of paper sculpture.

If you happen to make one, I'd love to see it!