Cheap, easy, effortless crafts are my jam. I love making stuff, but in amongst the making of the food, the cheese, the butter, the bread, the mess…hard core crafting has to be max 15 minutes worth of effort, including clean up. There aren’t a lot of crafts that hit those marks, so when I saw these on Instagram a few years ago, I instantly knew these were my thing.

We have been making paper bag stars for years. They are such a fun riff on snowflakes, biodegradeable and in the impressive-but-easy category of making.

While we buy bags in bulk from our box supplier as we use them in kits and around the house all year, but grocery stores often sell sandwich or paper gift bags. Ideally, you are looking for box-bottom or block-bottom bags as these have the structure you want for these stars.

Materials:

paper bags (boxed or flat bottom work best)

string or fishing line

glue

scissors

Instructions:

1. For each star, you will need between six and ten bags - more for smaller bags, fewer for larger ones.

2. Keeping the bags, closed, glue the back of each bag in a T shape - down the centre and across the bottom

3. With the bags facing the same direction, place another bag on top, press in place.

4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 until you have the desired number of bags.

5. Once you have all the bags glued together, cut the corners off the top and triangles into the sides of the bags.

6. Open the bags to make sure the ends meet, add more if needed.

7. You can add glue to the top bag for added security, If you want to be able to take them down, and fold them away, leave the top layer unglued.

8. Open bags into a circle and hold sides together for a minute to let glue dry, if you are using glue.

9. Punch hole in the first and last bag where they meet, loop string through, and tie off.