Star on the tree....

I was looking through the Pottery Barn website and found this Glitter Music Star  which I loved but the $30 price tag gave me pause. After studying the picture closely, I figured out how to make it, so below, I'll share with you the steps I took to make my own "First Noel Star" tree topper!

What you'll need:

White card stock

Printer

Scotch tape

Hot glue gun and glue sticks

Scissors

Single edge razor blade

Glitter & spray adhesive or Spray Glitter

 Directions:

* Begin by finding Christmas sheet music that you like.  I chose The First Noel from this site, saved it to my files, and printed out 2 copies, full size so it printed over an entire sheet of card stock.

* Once you've printed two sheets of music, you will need to cut the music down to an 8x9" size.

*Next you will cut the two 8x9" sheets of music in half the long way (4" strips) and then cut the 4" strips into three 3" wide rectangles.  You will get six rectangles from each sheet.

* Now you will take each rectangle and roll it into a point with the music on the inside.  One side will be shorter than the other.

*Get a piece of scotch tape and tape the seam and up over the edge to the inside.

 *Repeat this process for all 12 rectangles. 

*Next you want to cut a notch into the the tall side of each cone.

 I didn't measure the notch, but you can see all my little elongated triangles below to get an idea.  

*Next, you want to start joining things together.  Take two cones and hot glue the top points together, making sure the notched sides are facing up and the points of the cones will touch evenly.

If your hot glue gun is like mine, you'll feel quite a bit of heat through the paper card stock.  Be careful!  Now take the hot glue and carefully put a line of hot glue down the backside of the pair so the points of both cones are joined together.  Allow it to dry.  Repeat with two more pair of cones.

 *Join the three pair of cones together by hot gluing, joining top points first, but making sure the cone tips all meet nicely.  My cone tips weren't perfectly touching and I found that sometimes the side points did not match up well, but I could cut a little bit off with the scissors to get them to look more uniform. Glue on the backside to join the edges together and the cone tips.

 Now you should have a star shape like this.  It's pretty just like that, but next we will add the "legs" of the star.

 *First you must cut a slit into the tips of the remaining cones.  I went as deep as the single-edged blade would allow and it's about 1/2 inch deep.

 *With notched edges of the cones toward the front of the star, slide them onto the edge of each cone on the already-joined star.  You'll want to make sure they are centered nicely and then flip it over to glue the tips to the back.  Mine looks pretty messy on back, but my Christmas tree faces out from a wall so I didn't fuss too much about the backside.  After the points are dry, you can glue a toilet paper tube to the back so you can slide it onto the top of your tree.  Be sure to tape one end closed first.

Ta Da!  You have a star!  The Pottery Barn star had one more set of cones glued to each leg at this point, but I liked mine this size.  If you wanted to, you could add six more cones to make longer legs on your star.

 *Lastly, you may like to add some glitter.  I found this spray glitter at Stuff-Mart and thought I'd give it a try.  It's cool stuff.  I used the opal glitter and had to spray on several coats to get it to really sparkle.  Follow directions on the can.  The spray glitter is very fine and not like sprinkling on "real glitter." You could use adhesive spray and sprinkle some clear glitter on your star if you want a heavy glitter look.  The Pottery Barn star had heavy glitter on the outsides of the cones, but I didn't feel like fussing that much.  Don't let me hold you back though, fuss all you want!

Here's the final result.  A star-topped Christmas tree for practically free!  The only thing I spent money on was the spray glitter.  Have fun!