Making Tin Stars

There was this one time that I used a left-over catering tin to make stars and I cut my finger on the sharp edge. I got the idea here (and she gives a better tutorial than I do, just fyi). 

We first fell in love with tin stars and lamps while visiting Mexico. 

One day, I'll make these, too. 

Until then, I'll be taking baby steps until I reach that point and this was a good way to start.

Step 1: Here's the tin in all her glory. We actually got this from our caterer at an office Christmas party.

Step 2: I cut off the edges. This is where it became dangerous. Those edges were sharp.

Step 3: Flatten it out. I had to cut it in half to do so. 

I bulldozed that sucker like a boss with the rolling pin.

Step 4: Print out some nautical stars. I printed out a couple of different sized stars. You can just find these by doing an image search on Google for "nautical stars." (Be prepared to see some gnarly tats while you're there.)

Step 5: Use a pen to trace the image on to the tin.

It will leave behind the indented image of the star, which you will cut out in step 6.

Step 6: Cut out the star, but leave about 1/4 of an inch around the edges. 

This is what it will look like after you have cut it out. Make cuts at the angles between arms.

Step 8: Fold the edges. You can use a ruler to do this, but I just re-traced the star edge and they folded easily (you can see that some of my lines were a litte crooked, which I fixed when folding). 

Fold away and you cut the extra from the points. 

Step 9: Fold along the middle lines - this will make it pop out. And you're done, unless you want to paint it. We didn't because we liked the reflection of the tin.

We put them in our tree for a little while, but then decided to use them to decorate some garland we bought for the banister. In the tree, we just had them sitting, but you can also poke a hole in one of the tips with a safety pin and add a hook to hang them. This is what we did with the garland.

I'll keep you posted on more progress towards making these:

Speaking of which, anyone have a tutorial (or Moravian star making artisan friend) to help me out?