I tried out 5 different paper ornament styles using book pages. Don’t worry, no good books were harmed in the making of these. Librarians always have junk books lying around, ones that no one wants (water damage, Where’s Waldo books with every Waldo circled, 5th copies of Patterson books) Readers Digest condensed books make great doorstops (we use them behind DVDs to keep them from sliding back.)
- I made Christmas trees using a half-circle pattern (find it here). They were easy to make. I punched a hole in the middle layer and added a ribbon to hang them. It was very handy when the boss came to visit my library and give us presents (thankful that she didn’t question me doing crafts at work, I love my job.)
2. I made paper stars. It was a bit fiddly and I didn’t like the way it looked. Here’s the pattern.
3. I made 12-sided modular balls (dodecahedron). I’d made them before, but I’d forgotten how huge they were, if I were making them for a tree ornament I’d want to make each side much smaller, maybe tweezers might help pinching the sides together (use a glue stick). If you want the pattern, I can email it to you, I can’t figure out how to post PDFs on the new WordPress yet.
4. I made a snowflake (pretty self-explanatory. I think, after looking at it, that it would be better as plain white paper. Or maybe with shiny glitter.
5. This one is the winner. I stumbled across this as a fabric design, but my fabric stars looked lumpy, using paper strips is crisp and neat. I used an old (2002) road map atlas we were throwing out, folding it in half and cutting 4 one inch strips. There is no glueing, so if you screw up you can take it all apart and start again, and extra bits that hang out can be tucked in tidily. Plus, it looks great. I think I’ll make a bunch of these. I just stapled the ribbon on, but you could glue it if that seems more clean looking.
I am in no way capable of making these, but they look really cool. I especially like the map one!