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The Iron Craft challenge for this week was to craft something using paper, and I went through a lot of ideas before I came upon the plan to do some simple paper cutting.
Along the way I decided this would be a great use for some kid art you might not otherwise want to keep, and would make a fun decoration for the kids’ room, holiday decor and beyond.
What You’ll Need
- paper: you can use just about any kind and any shape you have on hand, though thinner paper is easier to fold, and there’s a fair amount of waste involved so bear that in mind when choosing (for the tutorial I used half of a standard-sized sheet of construction paper
Fold the paper in half longwise if there is a long side.
Take the left-hand corner and, folding at the center fold, place it so the corner touches the horizontal center line. This is the hardest part.
Fold that edge over to the left until it lines up with the far left edge. Press these folds in well.
Take the right top corner to the left and fold so that the edge lines up with the edge you’ve already folded (here the picture shows what that looks like from the back).
The instructions I learned from (which you can find at the Betsy Ross page at US History.org) advises folding the whole thing in half in both directions at this point to give some guidelines for cutting, because you would cut diagonally from the edge through the fold line and to the other edge.
I cut out a couple of stars from a drawing the girl made, and a couple more from a painting. I’d love to do a bunch, sew them together and hang them in her room. They’d also be fun between sheets of contact paper to make a quick placemat for Flag Day or the Fourth of July.
Have you ever cut out stars like this before? Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually pretty easy!