Star Stuff
The star book is just about ready! But I suspect a few of you may want to have your supplies ready when it comes out, so I wanted to do a quick run down of the things I use to make my stars.
Paper
The paper you use for these really matters. It needs to be translucent (so light can shine through it and show off all the layers). It needs to be lightweight (so you can fold it several times without it becoming too thick to work with). And it needs to hold a crisp fold (so your star will have sharp edges and maintain its shape).
I’ve tried a lot of papers, and one stands out as the absolute best choice. The only tricky part is you will almost certainly have to order it online. It’s called kite paper (you sometimes see it called Waldorf star paper too). It’s translucent, lightweight, and folds beautifully. All of the finished stars in the book were made with three, four, or eight sheets of eight-inch kite paper.
This is the exact paper I used, but you can search for ‘kite paper’ or ‘waldorf star paper.’ I talk about a few alternatives in the book, but absolutely none of them work as well as kite paper. (Edit to add: Looks like you folks bought up all that paper! Here are a few links to other listings for the same stuff, I’ve bought and used these ones as well, they’re just different vendors/or sizes, but the actual paper is just the same.)
Fasteners
Each star is made up of several pieces of paper held together in the middle. Because the paper is translucent, you want to be sure that whatever you use to hold the pieces together is also translucent (otherwise you might see it when you hold the star up to the light).
I hold all of my stars together with round, clear stickers. They’re easy to use, nearly invisible and they hold up well over time. All the finished stars in this book are held together with two round, clear stickers (one on the front, one on the back), each two inches in diameter.
These are the exact stickers I used, but you can search for ’round clear sticker.’
Hangers
These want to be hung in a sunny window to really shine. I hang mine with adhesive dots (just put one in the very center of the star).
I’ve used these removable ones (great if you want to keep your stars from year to year, but don’t hold quite as firmly as the permanent ones, and you might need more than one for the biggest stars) and these permanent ones (great if you want that star to stay where you put it forever, but you absolutely will destroy your star taking it down, and you’ll have to clean the adhesive off the window), but you can search for either ‘removable adhesive dots’ or ‘permanent adhesive dots.’
I’ve included amazon affiliate links to the exact stuff I use. I fully acknowledge that amazon is evil! But they’re also convenient, especially for things that you probably can’t find locally, and I want to make it easy for you to find what you’re looking for. And if I’m going to send them a sale, I’m ok with them paying me a few cents in return. If you prefer to search for your supplies somewhere else, that’s totally cool, and I included suggestions for what to search for as well.
The book will be out at the end of November. Anyone who is a patron at one of the levels where you get stuff (so that’s the Utter, Rampant, or Complete Nonsense tiers) at any point from when it comes out until the end of January, 2023 will be able to download it.
After that it may be available for sale elsewhere, but it will only be available through patreon until then!
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