The nights are drawing in and Christmas is round the corner making it the perfect time of year to think STARS! I love that it gets dark early enough for the kids and I to marvel at the starry skies. These Yarn Wrapped Star Ornaments are super for building fine motor skills and look gorgeous hanging alone or in clusters. You can use your stars to make a bedroom mobile, as colourful Christmas ornaments for the tree or as a craft to go along with a Space themed learning project.
Wherever you hang your Yarn Wrapped Star Ornaments you can be sure of a wonderful eye catching display!
These Yarn Wrapped Star Ornaments are made on a popsicle stick frame and I’ve got a super hack to make positioning them fool proof!
Popsicle sticks are such a cheap kids craft material and they come in a range of sizes and colours too which makes them really versatile. I’ve used brightly coloured craft sticks and yarn in this post but you can of course mix and match colours and sizes in any way you like.
Before you get started with the Yarn Wrapped Star Ornaments Tutorial you might want to take a peek at some of our other popsicle stick crafts too. Mix ‘N’ Match Snakes have been much loved and are so fun to play with because they actually move! The Chestnut Family are lovely puppets to encourage imaginative play. Button Snowflakes are wonderful if you are looking for some more pretty ornaments and our Pop Up Bunny is total cuteness and great for peek a boo games!
Enough of my oohing and ahhing over popsicle sticks and lets get back to making our star ornaments and my sneaky tip to getting those stars glued in position easily!
Yarn Wrapped Star Ornaments Tutorial
Supplies For Yarn Wrapped Star Ornaments
- Coloured Popsicle Sticks US / UK
- Cool Temp Glue Gun US / UK
- Scrap Paper
- Pen
- Coloured Yarn US / UK
- Scissors
- Optional: Glitter and Beads
How To Make Popsicle Stick Stars That Line Up Properly!
You can use white glue like Elmers to glue your popsicle stick stars but it takes hours to dry! I find a glue gun works best by far. It gives the strongest bond so I know my kids homemade ornaments can be used and enjoyed year after year and it’s fast so the kids can get straight on with yarn wrapping. The only downside to using a glue gun is that it sets super quick so you’ve got to know exactly what angle the craft sticks need to lie to make a closed star. You don’t get time to adjust them or any second chances! Eek! Don’t worry though I’ve got a simple method that makes it fool proof!
I simply make a template on paper that I then use to position my popsicle sticks correctly as I glue them. The easiest way to do this is to make your five pointed star on a sheet of paper using no glue. Because there’s no glue you can fiddle and adjust your craft sticks until you are totally happy with your star shape. When you’ve got the star shape you want use a pen to mark a dot at the end of each star point.
Now you’ve got your dot template you can use it to glue your popsicle stick stars with the glue gun and know that they are all going to be in the right position and close up at the end. 
Line each stick up between the correct dots and glue them into place one at a time.
Continue gluing around the star.
Using the template means your last popsicle stick will line up with your first popsicle stick perfectly, making a gorgeous closed star shape.
How To Make Yarn Wrapped Star Ornaments
Now you’ve got your wooden star frame children can decorate them with yarn wrapping. Yarn wrapping is a fantastic way to build fine motor and hand eye co-ordination skills as children thread, wrap and turn their stars and yarn. 
Yarn wrapping stars is a great way for kids to explore different colours together and they can mix and match as they like. You can buy some great starter sets of yarn which give you a good mix of colours for all sorts of art and craft projects. To get started tie a length of wool onto a popsicle stick star.
Children can then wrap as much or as little yarn as they like around their stars. If they want to change colours you can either tie the first colour off onto a stick and then add a second colour or tie the second colour straight onto the end of the first colour.
When the yarn wrapped star ornaments are finished make loop from the yarn for hanging it up on display.
Variations For Yarn Wrapped Star Ornaments
- A way to further stretch kids fine motor skills is to offer them beads to add to the yarn as they wrap it around their stars. Pony Beads work really well.
- If you want stars that really shine it’s easy to add a bit of glue and glitter when the stars are finished.
Where will you hang your finished star craft? I love hearing how you get on with our ideas.
More Fun Christmas Crafts To Try:
