Notes from the paper palace

 

Why are these ladies all smiling?  Because they've just made some Finnish stars like the one below.  We did this after the Creative Convention last Sat. night.  Big thanks to Julie M?? (second from left in the front row) for bringing all the supplies and showing us how to do it.  But some of the Rubber Queens had already left and they wanted to know how to do it.  So I'm going to try and explain it.  But if it's just to confusing you can always go to You Tube and search for Finnish Star.

 

 

You need 12 strips that are 1/2" X 6".  Julie had our strips already cut for us and she made the strips out of 2 pieces of fabric that had been adhered to each side of a piece of card stock.  The easiest way is to use Heat and Bond.  This makes a real stiff star that will last for a long time.  For this blog I just used designer series paper but it's really flimsy. 

Julie made it real easy for us by having the template below so that we could see exactly where we had to put our strips.

 

Here are my strips woven together.  Put adhesive on each joint.  When we did the fabric ones we used Lock Tight super glue.  But be careful not to use to much because you run a chance of glueing your fingers together or to the star.  You need two of these woven pieces.

 

 

Now you're going to take the corner pieces and glue them together.  I'm not sure just how to explain this but in the picture below you can see what I mean by corners.  In the picture above you'll see how the corner strips are glued together.  You're going to twist the strips so that what was face up is now face down.  And glue them so that they are square corners. Do this to both woven pieces.

 

 

Now lay the two pieces together with the twisted pieces off set.  One piece should be face up and one piece should be face down.

 

Now you're going to glue the single strips to the opposite twisted piece.  Got it?  This is where the video might come in very handy.  If the single strip extends beyond the edge of the twisted piece just use scissors and trim the corners.

 

Here's my finished paper star.  The fabric stars are much sturdier and it's so much fun to look for two pieces of fabric to use.  At this point you could add some embellishments to the center of the woven pieces.