As part of the Star Gazing Blog Hop, I was excited to send on a few simple centerpiece ideas to help decorate the photo shoot space.

There are three star centerpiece options here–stars with tissue tassels, quilled shooting stars and a bit of stars and fringe. Mix and match the star wands to create your own unique starry centerpiece! I placed them in a lightly decorated mason jar, but these would be beautiful in a bunch in any sort of vase.

Tissue Tassel Star Wands

Materials:

5 sheets tissue paper
Dowel rods of assorted lengths
Yellow card stock
Ribbon
Hot glue gun/hot glue
Star template

Using the provided star template, print your stars to the yellow card stock. Cut out the stars with scissors or an exacto-knife. I find the exacto-knife to be faster than the scissors, but do what is easiest for you, there is no right or wrong here.

Now were’s going to start making the tissue tassels! Fold your five sheets of stacked tissue paper in half lengthwise. Cut the paper into 1/4-inch strips. A rotary cutter and a steel ruler will make this infinitely easier to do, but a pair of scissors will suffice if that’s all you have in your craft closet.

Take three of the cut tissue strips, and stack them together for a total of 15 strips of tissue paper. Start twisting them in the middle until they are firmly together. Continue to twist the tissue paper until you are easily able to twist the paper in half and create a loop in the top as in the picture above. Twist a few more times, and this will keep the tassel together.

Hold up your tassel by the looped end and trim the bottom so all the strands are even. As a bonus, you’ll have lots of ready-made confetti for your party after this is done!

Hot glue the tassel to the dowel (or bamboo skewer.)

Use a little bit more hot glue to attach the star to the tassel/stick. If you want more decoration from here, knot a piece of ribbon and glue it to the bottom of the star or create a small fringed bow as an accent. Make a group of these tassels wands with the dowels cut to various lengths to make your starry centerpiece.

Quilled Star Wands

Paper crafting is one of my loves! This project includes quilling–an art form that uses strips of rolled, folded and shaped and glued together to create designs.

Materials:

Star Template
Colored card stock
Dowels of assorted lengths
Tape
Hot glue/glue gun
Striped paper straws

Cut your stars from the yellow card stock as instructed in the tissue tassel tutorial above.

Cut six (6) strips of colored card stock into 1/2-inch by 3-inch pieces, with a slit cut up the middle to 1/4-inch from one edge. I found the easiest way to make the make the multiple strips needed was to cut a single 3-inch wide piece of card stock and make all the slits at once, then trim the strips off in pairs.

Fold all your strips in half and stack them together into two groups of three (total of 6 loose ends in each bundle). Trim the paper so it is in varying lengths. This will allow your curls to be in different lengths while keeping the size of the loops the same. Place a piece of tape around the top of your stack of paper strips.

Using a toothpick or something of a similar size, roll up each strip of paper in the exact same way towards the taped top of the paper stack. Repeat for each bundle of paper.

You’ll end up with two groups of six tightly curled papers. Pull on the curls softly to get them to loosen their shape and create sweeping curls. Glue the groups of curls to either side of the top part of a dowel rod. Glue one of the cut stars to the top of the stick to make it look like a shooting star. I finished these wands by sliding a red and white striped straw over the dowel rod.

Fringed Star Wand

Materials:

Star Template
Colored card stock
Dowels of assorted lengths
Tape
Hot glue/glue gun
Striped paper straws

Cut your stars from the yellow card stock as instructed in the tissue tassel tutorial above.

Cut a 2-inch by 1 1/2-inch piece of colored card stock. Using your scissors, create a fringe by cutting many small slits up to a 1/4 inch from the top of the paper.

Roll the fringed paper around the dowel rod and tape or glue the edge down. Glue a star to the top and fluff out the fringe to finish. Striped straws over the dowel also work well here.

Decorative Mason Jars

Mason jars in assorted sizes
Colored card stock
Glue stick
Circular punches in assorted sizes

Mason jars are pretty cute and fabulous on their own, but they seemed to need a little something extra with the stars flowing out the tops. I used a few sizes of circle punches from 3/4 inch to 1 1/2 inches to punch out colored circles. These circles were glued with a spot of gluestick to the inside of the mason jars. A 1/2 inch paper strip finished the top–but you could use a ribbon bow here just as well.