Fold An Amazing Miniature 3-D Star

I learnt how to make a beautiful star from a Taiwanese friend of mine. What amazes me is that the star is so simple to make yet so pretty! When a bunch of them are folded from strips of glossy and colorful junk mail and exhibited in a little glass container, people just stare in amazement. And best of all it looks so great - yet nobody can tell these are made out of junk!

The little objects on the right are the miniature stars.
The big one on the left is a 30 unit model by Fuse (I think).

How to fold
You may use any colorful paper starting from junk mail and discarded magazines to gift wraps. You can also use fancy origami paper that you can buy at stores. You have to cut perfect strips that are about 8 to 11 inches long and between 3/8 to 1/2 inch wide. Any wider or longer does not necessarily end in great results. Make a perfect knot at one end of your paper strip without crumpling the paper widthwise. You will arrive at a perfect pentagon and there is a cool proof by Alexander Bogomolny.

You will learn from experience that the number of times you should wrap around the pentagon will depend on the width of your strip and the thickness of your paper. If at step 7 your object is too thick it will be very hard to push in the sides so use shorter length strip in that case. On the contrary if your paper is too thin, the pentagon will bend and you can't form the hollow inside of the star, so use longer paper. Well, it is not as complicated as it sounds, so go for it. Couple of times of trial and error and you'll have a perfect star...

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