Star Shaped Love Notes

I like making these small stars with lovely notes inside! I hide them in places I know the people I love will find them :) I put them in my sisters lunchbox, on my mothers nightstand or in my boyfriends pencil case, and I believe it is a really nice way to remind the people you love, that you care for them.

They are really easy to make once you know how to, it's just a little bit difficult explaining how to make them, which it why this tutorial is so long! It takes me just about 20-40 seconds to finish one.

They are really cute, and can be used for much more than just love notes! They can be used as table decoration for a birthday party, Christmas ornaments if you put a string through them, they can be glued onto cards, or you can collect them in a jar in all sorts of colours!
A really fun party idea to use them for, would be to write a quest inside of each star (like "sing 'Happy birthday' really loudly" or "answer 'Yes' to everything"), and put one on everyone's plate. Then when your guests sit down, you tell them to open up their star and do whatever it says :)

What you need:

• Paper (A4)
• Pencils, pens or something else to write and draw with
• A pair of scissors (unless you are really good at ripping!)

You really just need to cut an A4 paper the longest way.

I cut mine just about 2 cm (about 0.8 inches), but it really doesn't matter. If you make them a lot thicker though, you might want to use some longer paper.

You only need one strip, I just made a few so I could make a bunch of stars at once :)

You really just have to tie a normal knot here. Once you've done that, you just have to go ahead and fold it into a flat pentagon shape, with two snips coming out of two sides. This part can be a bit tricky, but once you get the hold of it, it's really easy :)

When you finished your knot, you have a tiny snip of paper sticking out of one end, and a long one in the other end. Just go ahead and tuck the small one in underneath itself, as shown in the pictures.

You have to write your note on the side of the paper shown on the picture. Otherwise your note will be on the outside of your star :)

You have to bend the long snip around the star. Make sure it follows one of the other sides perfectly! And also make sure that your message is on the side which goes towards the pentagon!

Basically you just have to keep folding the snip around the star along the sides, until it is so small, that it can't reach around it anymore :)

Just like the first snip, you have to tuck the last snip inside the pentagon, to make it disappear.

This is the hardest part, and the part that can really mess up your star! It's looks really easy, but sometimes it just doesn't want to cooperate!

Basically all you need to do is to press your fingers onto 2 of the pentagons sides at once. Then it should pop right up like on my picture here, and then you can just go on to the next sides.

When you've popped up all of the sides, it should look something like the star on my picture!

I like to decorate my stars with small patterns in pretty colours. And then you are done!

I opened up my star again, so you can see what it will look like when the one you made it for opens it up :)

And for those of you who didn't manage to make a pretty star the first time - try again!
I think I made at least 5 starts before I was satisfied with my result the first time I tried it! :)

A tip for some of you: My sister thinks it's easier to make them pop right open if you don't press the edges a lot while folding the star. Personally I don't find it easier, but I suppose it's worth a try for you if you are having trouble :)

Good luck!

(Bonus: Christmas Ornament on the next page)

If you have a needle and some thread (I couldn't find any white thread, otherwise I would have used that in stead!), it is really easy to hang up the star.

You can easily use these cute stars as Christmas decorations, and you can colour them with small reindeer or Santa :)