How to Make Origami Lucky Star Christmas Cards

I have now made all of my Christmas Cards - I made two designs which I put in the post (see here for my machine stitched design, which was a pre-cursor to this one). I will also post my embossed cards shortly (see the labels section along the right to navigate to this one). Both the machine stitched and embossed cards went in the post, but this design I have only hand delivered. The reason for this is that they have these cute little origami lucky stars, which I'm pretty sure would be squashed by the post man and they would lose the impact. 

What you will need

Card Blanks (Mine are 5" x 7" white card)

A Sewing Machine

Some Scrap Card

White Paper

Pencil, Ruler, Scissors (or craft knife)

Strong Glue (I used 'all purpose glue')

Christmas Phrase Stickers or Stamper

Patience...!

Method

1. First of all, I started with my scrap card and made a template of a Christmas tree. If you see my tutorial here you should be able to get a close up of the template, with all of the measurements. 

2. I used the sewing machine to stitch around the template so that when the template is removed, you just have a tree design sewn into the centre of the card. If you use the needle as a pivot on the corners, it's very easy to do this type of design as it requires no more skill than being able to do a straight line with the machine. A star would work just as well. 

I stitched my tree in white as the theme of my card was "I'm dreaming of a white christmas", however, if you were just saying Merry Christmas as your phrase, I would go for red, green or maybe metallic thread. 

3. The next step was to add the Christmas Phrase. I used a customisable stamper - you could use stickers or even just hand write Merry Christmas. I also toyed with the idea of printing out little phrases and sewing them to the card, or printing them directly onto the card.

4. This is where your patience comes in. I made lots of miniature origami lucky stars... (As I made around 15 cards and each card needs 6 stars I did this in front of the tv in the evening). Once you get the hang of it you can do it without really looking. 

First, take an A4 sheet of paper and cut across the width of the paper into strips 7mm wide. I used a craft knife and a ruler, rather than drawing a line with a ruler and then using scissors as it was quicker. 

Next, tie a "knot" in the end of your strip and flatten it, as in the picture below. You should basically have a flattened pentagon at the end of your strip. 

Fold the extra short bit in along the line of the pentagon. 

Next, take the long strip and fold it up with the fold being in line with the bottom of the pentagon. This should fold at an angle that means it will line up with one of the top sides. Continue to wrap the strip around the pentagon tightly, keeping the folds so that the underlying shape is a pentagon. 

Once you get to the end of the strip, tuck the last part of the paper into the fold (you may need to cut a little bit of paper off, this depends on your initial knot though and may differ from star to star, so I'd wait til the end). 

Next you have to dig your nail into the middle of each of the sides of the pentagon and this will make the star puff up into a 3D star. If you don't have strong nails, I would suggest using the edge of a ruler. 

5. Once you have all of your stars, the only remaining step is to glue them into place on the stitched tree as below. 

Although they're not ideal for the postal system, they're great for hand delivered cards or to put vouchers in as a gift to show some extra thought. 

If you don't have a customisable stamp or would rather have a more colourful card, I would suggest making the stars out of christmas wrapping paper strips and stitching the tree in coloured thread as a pretty alternative.