For day two of my 12 days of blogmas I wanted to make some bookish star place holders that were inspired by these lovely thanksgiving pumpkins. A larger star would make a good photo holder.

What I really like about these is that you could make tiny versions to hang from the tree. They’d be good to make with older children as a STEAM craft activity as they’d have to work out the best way to rotate the shapes and how to coordinate the cut lines to create a 3D shape. Thicker card is best for this to ensure that the final star decoration keeps its shape and stands up independently.

Younger children will probably need a lot of help with this and an adult to do the cutting. When I made them, Phoebe decorated her own 2D shapes that I’d cut out ahead of time while I sat with her and made my 3D stars.

To make a 3D star place holder or ornament you will need:

• A star template if you don’t want to draw free hand (I used a biscuit cutter)
• Gold card
• Decorative paper (book pages in this instance)
• Scissors and/or craft knife
• Glue stick
• A needle
• Fine wire to mount a piece of card or string to hang

How to make a 3D star:

1. Trace matching star shapes onto the wrong side of your gold card and cut out.
2. Smear the wrong side of the card shape with glue and stick on your decorative paper so that the gold side of the card is facing up. Allow to dry.
3. Cut around the stars on the decorative paper so you have a star that is gold on one side with decorative paper on the other.
4. Take two stars and sing a scissors or craft knife, carefully cut a line half way through the star- one from the top to the centre of a star, and on the other star from the bottom to the middle.
5. Slot the two stars together through these cuts so they stand up by themselves.
6. Using the needle, carefully poke holes through the top of the star, then thread with wire or string.
7. To make a place holder, curl the wire in a spiral and then flatten as in my picture so that the name for the placeholder can be slotted in between the wire.