Fold an Origami Star {in 5 simple steps}

In today’s post: Learn how to fold an origami star – it only takes five simple steps.

Origami is basically magic, right? Taking a flat piece of paper and turning it into something else entirely is pretty cool! But it can also be intimidating, and I rarely have the patience to work through long instructions. That’s why I like simple origami projects that I can master quickly, like these origami stars. They only take 5 steps to make and the finished stars make great Christmas decorations!

For more easy origami tutorials, click here.

The little paper stars look great on your Christmas tree, and are also really nice strung up as a garland. Depending on the paper you make them out of, these would be pretty cool for the Fourth of July as well!

I have a instructional video for you today that walks you through each of the five steps to folding a paper star. Your first star might take you about 15 minutes to make, but once you get the folding process down you can easily complete one in five minutes.

Origami Star Supplies

You really only need one supply to make an origami star: a piece of paper. Normal copy weight paper (or just slightly heavier printed scrapbook paper) works very well. Cardstock will not work because it’s just too heavy and stiff to perform well with all the folding. I tried making stars out of lots of different patterned papers and I found that I preferred the ones that have a fairly uniform background (like the sheet music paper in the first photo of the post).

Before you can begin folding your star, you need to cut your paper into a perfect pentagon. To make it easy to get a pentagon shape, I’ve created two printable templates for you. You can print the templates, cut them out, and trace them on the back of the paper you’ll fold into a star. Printing the templates onto cardstock is a good idea so your tempates will be sturdy and reusable. Click below to download the templates, and print them at 100% or full size.

Click here to download the small/medium template

Click here to download the large template

The small + medium template prints onto one sheet of 8.5×11 paper. For the large template, you’ll need to print 2 copies and tape them together as you can see below:

If you’d like to turn your folded stars into ornaments, you will also need a hole punch and twine. A small hole made with a small hole punch (like this one from Amazon) looks better on the stars than a standard size hole punch, but either would work. Alternately, you can use a needle and thread to make a loop without leaving a visible hole at all. The stars are so lightweight that they can easily be hung with thread.

If you’d like to turn your stars into a garland, I’d recommend using a needle and thread to string them together. Or you could punch small holes and string the stars along a strand of fairy lights, like these battery operated lights from Amazon. Just be aware that battery operated fairy lights usually only last 3-4 days if the lights are left on all the time, so you could also consider this longer strand that plugs in.

Origami Star Instructions

I’ve created a step by step video that shows you exactly how to fold an origami star. Watching the video is the easiest way to learn how to fold a star as it explains each step in detail. However, if you don’t want to take the time to watch it, you’ll find written instructions and photos after the video.