Yesterday and Today: 3D Cardboard Stars

If your like me and you love those metal stars for decorating but find them way to pricey, then here is an alternative that is really easy to make and costs almost nothing.

What you'll need is a star template, some cardboard, and some metallic craft paints. Of course you'll need some scissors and some primer too but I just used what I had. I printed my smaller star on the computer but to make a larger one I added an inch to each point and valley, then connected the dots.

For my cardboard I used the side of a box of frozen chicken nuggets for the two smaller stars and a side of a beer box for the larger one. You'll want the sturdy cardboard these boxes are made of. My stars are about 8 and 30 inches.
Open up your cardboard box and lay it flat so you can trace your star template on the back side. The front of most of these boxes is waxed and hard to draw on.
Cut out your stars and then using something with a firm edge score each star from the V to the point ...repeating for all five points.

Fold on your scored lines so you have valley's between the points. This will make sense once you start folding and see what happens. When your done folding you will have the 3D star shape you want.
Now paint a couple of coats of your primer on the front of the cardboard. Paint on what was the waxed or printed side of your box. I used a thick version of my DIY chalky paint adding a little more Plaster of Paris than I usually do.

For the metallic look I used two different colours, a bronz gold and a champagne. I used a stencil brush and loaded it with both colours at the same time and pounced it onto the stars.

I painted the little ones with a white primer but thought it would be better to use a dark green for the base. This way when I dabbed on the metallic paints it had a bit of patina. For the smaller ones I added tiny bits of green trying to get the right look.