Christmas is probably the perfect time to get all crafty. Actually I am working on ideas for Christmas things all through the year. I'm not really about a last minute dash, so I have some Christmas gift things done by March lol!

But Christmas is a great time to make some little crafty things, and an even better time to keep idle little hands busy.

You can make this woven Christmas star for the top of the tree. Or actually if you do them in white, I think they look like snowflakes. At that point I have made the perfect excuse to make dozens of them at all different sizes.

To start making our woven Christmas star decoration, we need eight strips of the patterned card. Each strip needs to measure:

Now we have all our strips cut, we can use the zig-zag scissors to cut along the all the long edges of only the two wider strips.

Once we have zig-zagged the edges of the two wider strips, cut these two strips down the middle. This will mean we will now have four strips of length 15cms or 6 inches.

Now we take two of the shorter zig-zag strips we have just made. Glue them together in a cross shape. Now layout two of the longer strips on either side of the vertical centre of the cross. It doesn't matter if they go above or below. Make sure they are all evenly spaced like the image above.

Now glue them in place.

Then weave two more strips in from the other direction to form a grid. Make sure these strips are weaving through the others. Slide above and below the other pieces.

Make it look even. When happy, apply a little more glue with a cocktail stick for precision and glue the card in place.

Let the glue dry up a bit until it's holding nice.

Make up the other cross in the same way. We need two of these cross collections to make one woven Christmas star.

Now we use the dowel to work on one corner of the grid of our woven Christmas star decoration.

Put the dowel on the table at a 45 degree angle. Lift the grid and place on top of the dowel.

Now we are going to use the dowel as a guide. Gently wrap the two long strips from the corner down and around the dowel and back up towards the front. Glue the tips together to make a twisty loopy shape. Hold in place for the glue to take.

Then glue underneath where the strips crossed each other. Use the cocktail stick again to get the glue in the gap.

Repeat for the other corners. Then repeat for the other cross. We need two of these cross pieces to make one woven Christmas star.

So we should now have two matching cross pieces. With the zig-zag crosses in the middle and the twisty loops at each corner.

Take one of these shapes and turn it upside down and place it on top of the other one. Rotate the shape that is on top 45 degrees so it now looks like a star with eight points.

Now we just need to glue the two halves together. You can probably see that when they are on top of each other and in the eight pointed star configuration, that the zig-zag strips line up with the loopy points.

Slot the ends of the zig-zag strips into the loops. Our woven Christmas star is coming along nicely.

So now we just need to glue the two halves together. Make sure everything is lined up and even. Then use a cocktail stick to more accurately apply glue to specific places. 

Glue the ends of the zigzag strips to the loop parts to secure the two halves together.

And we are done making our woven Christmas star decoration. What a fantastic effect. A little fiddly but actually pretty easy once you have made one.

To complete you could punch a hole on one of the points and thread some ribbon through. Or maybe attach a loop to the back and place at the top of the Christmas tree.

I like to make these in white and all different sizes like snowflakes. The hang them on white ribbon around the kitchen.

Have fun crafting.