Stars, Stars, & More Stars

I know the number of post are beginning to decrease and I'm deeply sorry for that. There has been a small crisis along with other things going on; however, I was able to somehow get a few things accomplished during this period.
Although my son's room has a little ways to go before its completed, I figured I would share a couple ideas with you.

This first project is a simple and perfect way to include your child in the process of redesigning their room, even for children as young as 4 or 5 years of age.

Simple as baking cookies!!! ... and what little boy doesn't love space stars??

Clay Stars:   We used polymer clay and star-shaped cookie cutters.                                                                    

1. Using a roller, roll your clay on wax paper to your desired thickness.
2. Cut out your stars with the cookie cutter just as you would cookies.
3. Once you have all your stars cut out, bake in oven (on low)  or hot-plate (on low-medium). I prefer to use a hot plate; it allows you to bake them with more precision being you don't have to look at them through an oven door. If you choose to use an oven, you may want to keep them on low and check every 10-15 minutes, and adjust heat as needed.
4. After you have taken your stars out the oven, allow them to cool. Once cooled, you can then paint them. I use white acrylic gesso on this particular star before painting and the color came out much better than the other stars.
5. Now you can place these stars any where you wish!!

 Here's a photo of the stars my five year old cut out and painted!!

 These stars were embellished with additional stars and made into hooks for the wall.

 

While my son painted his stars I started working on these paper stars!!!

It's amazing how simple these are to make:

• I used the same cookie cutter we used for the clay stars as my template.
• Fold your paper in half or as I did, folded a fourth of my 12X12 paper and traced half of my template placing the center (of the template) on the paper's crease.
• Cut out your stars once you have completed the previous step.
• Now here comes the step that give the 3-D effect (refer to photo for better understanding): 
•  Take the points of your star and fold them in half. You want the pattern side of your paper to be showing when you make this crease. ONLY FOLD TO THE CENTER OF YOUR START
• Unfold point from previous step and lay flat on your working surface.
• Take two of your points and fold them toward each other; you should see the underneath of your paper once you have done this. (refer to photo if needed)
• Again, unfold and lay flat.
• Repeat for each point and inner-point of your star.

It was complicated for me to understand someone elses' description; I had to figure it out on my own. Hopefully this tutorial is more helpful and remember if you have any questions, please e-mail me. I receive my e-mails as soon as they are sent, so I usually respond quickly.

Remember: The point is to make the outer-points of the star pop out and the inner-points pop-inward.