How to Make Paper Bag Stars and the 6 Most Beautiful Patterns | Tutorial

With the right tools and this how to make paper bag stars every child can craft delicate, beautiful poinsettias. A few ingenious tools help to create some of the most beautiful patterns! Here’s how.

Paper bags, glue sticks, scissors and a ribbon to hang them on – that’s all you really need  to make paper bag stars. Even small children from 4-5 years (depending on their dexterity) can make simple patterns without sketching with a little help. In fact, some of my favourite patterns are amazingly easy to cut out. But then there are the extra delicate, filigree paper bag stars that only become so accurate with the right tools. And the best part?

Everyone has a hole punch at home and if you want, you can buy circle punches for little money, which are ingenious helpers for many handicrafts. With these tools you can create the most beautiful patterns – alternatively you can also use nail scissors for some of these patterns.

All the materials I used are on the material list.

Are you looking for more beautiful Christmas crafting ideas? Do you already know the toilet roll Christmas star and this pretty clothes peg stars?

Material List*

• 8 lunch bags per star (white / red available in stores)
• Glue stick
• Scissors
• Nail scissors (to make the 2 heavy paper bags stars)
• Hole punch
• Round hole punches (I use this set with 9mm, 16mm and 25mm hole punches)
• Satinribbon or cord
• all purpose glue or hot glue gun
• red / white paper clips or powerstrips if needed
• white / red coated cardboard

How to Make Paper Bag Stars and 6 Beautiful Patterns to Make

Lunch bags or paper bags are available in drugstores not only in white but also in a beautiful rich Bordeaux red and there are many more colours for paper bags on amazon*. Make sure you use a colourless glue stick, otherwise the glue strip can show through. If you want to use the paper bag stars every year, don’t glue the stars together but fix the paper strips together with paper clips of the same colour. You can also use Tesa Powerstrips, but I have found that they are not always easy to remove from the paper.

1. How to Make Paper Bag Stars?

To make a paper bag star you need 8 paper bags. Glue them one after the other. Place the first paper bag in front of you with the opening facing downwards. Run the glue stick vertically down the middle, starting with the translucent edge of the opening about 1 cm below the top edge of the bag. Then run the glue stick down along the bottom edge of the paper bag, thus drawing an upside down T with the glue stick.

Glue all 8 paper bags on top of each other as flush as possible and smooth them out after each time. Then place a book on the bags to weigh them down and give the glue a little time to dry.

Now use the scissors to cut a point and make spikes on the right and left. Knot a ribbon as a loop and glue the knot in the middle at the top about 3 cm below the tip. Now grab the tips at the top and bottom and fan out the star and glue it together in the middle or use the same colored paperclips or power strips to hold it together if you want to use it again next year.

Tip: I made 2 x 3 cm wide strips of thick coated cardboard with a tip, which I glued on in the middle to stabilize the stars at the point where I glued them together.

2. 6 Patterns to Make Extra Delicate Paper Bag Stars

Only 2 of these 6 paper bags stars are a challenge for children. That’s why I marked it as “difficult”. To make the patterns symmetrical, I used a pencil to draw these patterns as orientation lines.

1. Star (easy): Punch out half of the smallest top hole with the hole punch, punch out half of the hole below it with the smallest hole punch (see materials list) with about 0.5 cm distance and cut out a curved half heart below it with 1 cm distance on each side.
2. Star (difficult): Pre-paint the curved top with a pencil and cut out the curved prongs with nail scissors. At the very bottom I cut out a prong about 1 cm wide and punched out the tip with the hole punch.
3. Star (simple): Cut out a curved bracket and punch out a semicircle at its beginning and end with the smallest hole punch.
4. Star (simple): Cut out a curved diamond in the centre and two narrow prongs on the right and left that get larger towards the outside.
5. Star (easy): Cut out half of a curved star and punch out a semicircle 1 cm below it with the smallest hole punch. Punch out another semicircle 0.5 cm below it with the hole punch.
6. Star (difficult): Cut out a narrow half of the heart at the very top, then two narrow prongs curving larger towards the round of the heart underneath. Cut out a curved half heart and below it a narrow prong curving upwards.

Have fun making the paper bag stars!

Are you always on the lookout for new crafting ideas? Take a look at Abenteuer Freundschaft – there are lots of instructions to discover! And if you’re not in the mood for crafting, you’ll find ingenious leisure tips for activities with friends, partners and families in our colourful treasure trove. Get ideas to try out!

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