We've been making stars again...

Last year we made some wooden stars with led lights in them, and as we try to make some kind of decoration for Christmas we decided to make some more stars using the same method.

Here are the ones we made last year -

They survived the loft I'm pleased to report.

Here's a link to the blog post I wrote about those - Wooden star decorations. (opens in new window)

We used the same method to make this years star decorations, only this time we've made a load of smaller stars so that we could make some garland type decorations, and my daughter also wanted to make a star to hang in her room, so a lot of the pictures in this post are of my daughter making her star, she made a few to decorate in different ways.

This really is a simple make, and even with out power tools it's really easy to do, my daughter is quite young and apart from me cutting the parts out with my bandsaw all of the other work was done by her, at least on the larger stars anyway, I made the fourteen smaller stars for the garlands.

So using a template we made last year she marked out the five parts of the star - 

Templates make life easier.

All the stars we made are made from pallet wood, so basically these were free to make.

I cut out the segments roughly with my bandsaw, and my daughter then sanded each segment to the lines she'd made.

Sanding using a bench sander - 

Handy things to have.

I made sure she wore a dust mask whilst sanding the stars, I also wore one and she also wore a set of goggles to stop dust going in her eyes.

Almost done, nearly ready to glue it all together - 

Good fit on each segment.

Sanding off the feathering - 

Nearly ready for some glue.

Time to glue it all together - 

I highly recommend gorilla wood glue.

Left alone for the glue to dry - 

Looks good.

Once the glue was dry it was on to sanding the stars off so they could be decorated.

She used the smallest sander I have, the larger ones are bit heavy she said, and quite noisy, but this little one works well.

Sanding - 

Ready for some decoration.

She decided that she'd stain one of the stars with a purple wood stain, this one now hangs above her bed, and the other ones will be decorated in something festive (probably involving glitter....shudders) the wood stain is water based and was mixed especially for the star and for another Christmas decoration project.

Applying the stain - 

It looks black, but it really is purple honest.

Stain drying, it did dry a lot lighter than in the picture - 

Phone camera didn't really do the colour justice.

And here are the other three large stars we made, ready for something glittery (shudders) -

Nice wood considering it used to be a pallet.

We (mainly me for this one) made a load of smaller stars to hang from the ceiling, they were made in the same way, just on a smaller scale and to hang them we drilled a small hole through one of the points and then threaded a bit of natural string through, this allows the stars to hang from another long length of string which we pinned to the ceiling.

Like so - 

Easy peasy.

We made two garlands, each with seven stars, and in total each garland is about nine feet long, that allows for a gap of about a foot between each star with about a foot extra each end.

Here's one hanging from the ceiling - 

It was difficult to get a good angle, but you get the idea.

And that was it, not much too it, yes it was a little repetitive cutting out each star segment and then sanding and gluing, but it's worth it in the end as they look good, well we like them, and like the larger stars these were also made from pallet wood so cheap as chips.

My wife has also made garlands before and this year she's put a simple how to on her blog on how to make some excellent pine cone garlands, you can read her how to here - Pine cone garland. (opens in new window)

Thanks for reading.

Wooden star christmas decorations.

For a while my wife has wanted some wooden star Christmas decorations and to be honest I haven't managed to get around to making any until now, I always seem to be doing other things or time just seems to run out.

But I've finally managed it -

Very festive.

The lights on the right hand side one are brighter because I made that one last so the batteries are a bit fresher.

I did only mean to make one large star, but I ended up making two large stars, a small star and two small stars for the tree.

Rather than cut out a star shape from a sheet of wood I have made these stars in sections glued together, the three in the picture above also have lights in.

I spent a grand total of four pounds on lights for these, I bought the small sets of led lights you can get from pound shops rather than wire up a load of led's from scratch.

It would have only been three pounds but I forgot how to do maths and for some reason didn't realise that if you have five points and you want to put five lights in each point you're going to need twenty five lights, and not twenty, so I had to buy an extra set of lights.

First I made some templates of various sized star sections, and one complete star, which I didn't actually use, the idea being that I would draw round the templates onto some wood and then cut out the sections and stick them together.

Templates, just printed out and stuck onto card - 

You can find star templates online.

I decided to make a test star first, the main reason was because I wanted the grain of the wood to run in line with each point, rather than in the same direction over the entire star, this is why I made them in sections rather than cut them out of a sheet of ply or some other type of material.

Test star sections cut - 

They need to be sanded.

I cut each section out roughly using my bandsaw, but any type of saw will do and then I sanded each section to the pencil lines using my bench sander, you could just as easily use a block of wood and some sand paper to finish each section, it'll just take a bit longer.

Sanding each section to the pencil marks makes for a tighter fit with no gaps where the sections meet in the centre.

Once that was done I glued the sections together to see what the finished stars might look like.

Test star finished - 

Not bad.

Once I was happy with the test star and that I'd got the grain of the wood to run in the right directions it was time to make things a bit bigger, to make the larger stars I used some wood from an old pallet and in the end the large stars measure about 14 inches across, so they are quite big, I also used the off cuts to make the stars for the tree in the same way, just smaller.

Marking out the sections (using one of the templates I made) - 

Nice and easy.

Once you have five sections cut out and sanded all you need to do then is glue them together, I've used wood glue, but you could use epoxy or most other types of glue, the only difference really is the time you need to allow for the glue to set.

Test star, one large star and one tree star glued, ready for sanding - 

Nearly done.

To fit the lights all I've done is to mark out five points on each section of the star and drill a hole the same size as the led lights, in this case that was about 5mm and meant the led's were a snug fit in each hole.

Marking out where the lights will go - 

You can just make out the pencil marks.

A quick test - 

It works well I think.

As you can see I went for quite a uniform arrangement of lights, there's no reason you can't be more random, had I gone for a random arrangement I could have got away with just using twenty led's on each star.

Once I'd drilled all the holes I needed I sanded the pencil marks off each star and then gave each one a coat of clear wax to bring out the grain of the wood and then on was on to tidying the wires up a bit.

Now for some tidying up - 

Hot glue to the rescue.

Using a glue gun I stuck the wires to the wood to stop them moving about, I also stuck the battery packs to the wood as well, but in such a way that I can still get the covers off to change the batteries.

You can see in the picture above where I had to join the extra led lights, this was an easy job, all I did was cut of five lights and then join them to the other ones to make a string of twenty five.

Gluing done - 

Keeps the wires out of the way.

And that's about it really, there are numerous ways this could be done, I may end up making them into light boxes so that the wiring is hidden a little better, but as they are they look nice when lit up and we like them, and it goes with our tradition of making some kind of decoration for Christmas every year, I even used the test star and put some of the spare lights in that in a random pattern.

Waste not, want not - 

I'm actually quite pleased with them.

The small ones I made for the tree don't have lights, but there's no reason they couldn't have lights fitted, although you'd want to use smaller led's.

These I made in the same way as the light up stars, they're just smaller and I've used some natural fibre string to hang them on the tree with.

Tree star, I made two of these - 

These go well with our other homemade decorations.

And there you have it, a cheap and simple Christmas decoration, that could also be used in a kids room on a dressing table or chest of drawers as a year round decoration.

Merry Christmas - 

Merry Christmas and thanks for reading.