Late in the evening after decorating my tiny apartment-sized Christmas tree, I decided that I needed a nice big star to top the tree. This is an origami pattern I learned a long time ago, so long that I don’t remember the source. I regularly forget how to make it and then spend 20 minutes trying to make it work, so I thought I’d post it online in case I forgot again…pardon the dark photos.Start with a square piece of paper. Place it color-side down.

Fold it in half on the diagonal.

Unfold it again so you have the creased white side open to you. Then fold the left and right corners in toward the center, so the edge lines up with the center line.

Take the top left and right edges and fold them in so they line up along the center line.

Fold the bottom tip up at an angle, so that it lines up with the bottom of the edge of the new flap, like so:

What you want optimally is for your two edges to be parallel like this:

(if you disregard the fact that my paper isn’t lying flat in this picture…oops)

Unfold this crease and repeat so the point folds up toward the right. Unfold the crease again, so that your paper looks like this:

Flip the paper over.

Follow the guidelines created by these last two creases to fold the tip toward the top again.

Unfold and repeat in the other direction. Your paper should look like this:

Fold the paper in half along the middle.

Unfold the paper again. Now comes the tricky part. When you let your paper sit naturally, it should look something like this:

Following the creases, push the two tips of the paper together. The paper will fold into this shape:

Flatten it and firm up the creases. This is one of eight pieces that will make the star. So that means….yup, you need to repeat this process again from the beginning seven more times. When you finish you should have eight identical pieces.

Once you have these, you’re ready to assemble your star. If you open up the inside of one of your pieces like so…

You can see that you have two triangular flaps tucked inside.

Open up these flaps.

What you need to do now is match up the triangular flap of this piece with the triangular shape of the next piece, like so:

Here’s another picture with no graphic and better focus:

Use these flaps to wrap the one piece around the other. If you look at what you’re doing from another angle, you see this.

Tuck both flaps in tightly.

Turn the two attached pieces on the side.

Add the next piece following the same technique. Repeat for each piece until you only have one piece left.

As you add pieces, you can see the star shaping up. The last piece is a bit tricky. Slide in the paper so it fits between the pieces, like so:

Open up the flaps on the remaining piece and your last piece and slide your last piece into place.

In order to make the flaps tuck in nicely, you will probably have to slide things around a bit. You will get a messy middle.

Gently slide and shimmy the pieces in toward the middle to tighten everything up.

Ta-dah! One Christmas star. You can poke thread through a tip with a needle to hang it, or use the hole in the center to attach it to wire to stand upright at the top of your tree.