Hang these wire stars along your mantel, over your desk, or use for holiday tree decorations. They look lovely with different colors and different gauges of wire, too!

Difficulty level: Advanced
Time required: 30 minutes
Age range: 10+

Things you’ll need:
Foam block
20-30 gauge wire
Wire cutters
6 toothpicks
Paper and pencil

Things to do:
1. Draw a 5-pointed star on a piece of paper that’s no wider than the width of your foam block. You’ll be using this to place your toothpicks underneath it, as shown.

2. Push the toothpicks fairly deep into the foam. Add the sixth toothpick off to one side.

3. Cut about 9-10 feet of wire, and loop one end to the 6th toothpick to hold it in place.

4. Start by wrapping the wire around the top toothpick. Bring it back around the toothpick on the lower right, and up around the toothpick to the left of the top one.

5. Loop the wire around the toothpick to the right of the top one and then around the lower left toothpick – it’s the only one that’s empty.

6. Continue wrapping this way until the star contains about 6 layers of wire.

7. Now you’ll need to wrap some wire around the middle to allow the star to keep its shape. From your ending point on the star, bring the wire across to one of the the inverted points and feed the wire underneath the first one.

8. Go back over the top and then feed the wire underneath the inverted point across from the first one. Repeat this so that all the inverted points have been wrapped a 2-3 times.

9. Bring the wire back up to the top point and wrap it a couple of times.

10. Take the star off the toothpicks. Wrap the first piece of wire (the one that was looped around the spare toothpick) around the final piece of wire, creating a sturdy hanger.

11. Loop the hanger” wire into a circle. You can re-use your toothpick and foam block to make as many stars as you’d like! As long as you don’t pull on the toothpicks too hard while wrapping, the block you created should last a long time.