Guest Blogger: The Hobby Room

Today I would like to introduce Jody from the hobby room!! She has a fabulous blog, and I’m so happy she is sharing with us today. Please make her feel at home :o) 

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I can’t tell you how excited I am to be posting for Laura Beth today!  

Do you not just want to get a latte with the girl and kick back?  Okay, well lattes are what we do here, but maybe some sweet tea?  She is just the nicest to have me guest post and I am so thankful for the chance to get to know her lovely readers.

My name is Jody and I blog over at the hobby room, which is all about making crafts and delicious food and inspiring others with ideas and tutorials.  I’m from Seattle and my husband and I have two delightful (read: rambunctious) boys and all three of them are super taste-testers and great encouragers.

I did a stint in the dorms in college (go Huskies!) and while it was a pretty good experience, the rooms were sterile and straight out of the 1970’s, you know, dormish.  My mom did her best to help spruce up the place (twinkle lights! closet organizer! upholstered study bench!), but my favorite thing was when she brought me stars to hang from the ceiling.  Talk about instant ambiance.

Here are those same stars, but in a classier arrangement.  They would be great to hang in a window or from a chandelier or from branches like I have here.  Have you seen people using branches in their decor this year all over the blogsphere and Pinterest?  It’s because it looks awesome; 

just make sure you don’t skip the bug-check step before you bring them inside.

heavy paper (I use watercolor paper, but scrapbook paper would work, too)

pencil

scrap paper (for template)

ruler

bone folder (or butter knife)

scoring board (optional, but useful if you have one)

glue gun

fishing line

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Here’s the thing: making the stars is dead simple.  The hardest thing is making a template that you’re happy with.  Once you get some stars traced and cut out, you just score lines.  The other tricky part is making sure you score adjacent lines on opposite sides.  Or, score from center to the points on one side and the center to the corners on the other side.  You can’t have lines next to each other scored on the same side or you’ll just end up with a kind of dome-shaped star.  Not as cool.  Fold on the scored lines, then add a fishing line loop with hot glue and you’re good to go.

 

To make a four-point star, follow along with these pictures.  Score from corner to corner of the paper to form an “X” and then score down the middle both ways on the opposite side of the paper to form another “X”.  Cut from on middle score mark down to a point about a third of the way from the center point on the next score over (a diagonally scored line).  Cut from the next middle score mark to meet up with your previous cut on the diagonally scored line.  Repeat around to form the other three points.

 

Okay, time to fess up.  I originally told LB that I was making “3D Glitter Stars” and I’m sure you can see there is no glitter here.  This is because I am terrible with glitter.  I ruined tried it on some and my husband told me it looked like a Kindergarten project (it’s true).  Cute when Kindergarteners do it, not so much here.   If you have adult-level glitter skills, some well-applied glitter could look really great.  Or, some metallic paint pen around the edges.  I prefer the clean simplicity of plain white, so that’s what I went with.

 

The beauty of the stars are that, while they go great with Christmas, they are great with any decor, year-round.  Think how cool a vase of these would look with that barn star on your wall or hanging from your patio umbrella for a summer S’mores ‘n Stargazing party.

Thank you again Laura Beth for having me, I love that I get to contribute to such a fun blog!  And I hope you fabulous readers get a chance to stop by the hobby room sometime soon.