How to make Christmas star decorations
Watch this video No Fuss Guide to create pretty Christmas star decorations from cornus stems.
Many species of dogwood, such as Cornus sanguinea and Cornus alba are prized for their colourful stems that light up the winter garden. In this video No Fuss Guide, Kevin Smith, BBC Gardeners' World Magazine, shows you how to use the stems to make simple, homemade Christmas decorations – perfect for adorning the Christmas tree.
How to make Christmas star decorations: transcript
Making your own Christmas tree decorations from things you find in the garden really couldn't be easier. It's also a great way of giving your Christmas tree a really personal touch. This star is very simple to make. It's just made from cornus stems and garden string and it's going to take just a few moments to make; and I'm going to show you how.
First of all, you need to cut four pieces of cornus. They all need to be roughly the same length. So, just line one up against the next to make sure they're roughly the same length. Now it's time to bind the pieces together to form the star. Start off by attaching the string to one of the pieces of cornus. You want to leave quite a long length as you'll be using this to form a loop to hang the star at the end. Place the pieces together and then bind them with the string. So, go in both directions to make sure that the shape is really tight. Now, add the other pieces, bind them in exactly the same way.
And now for the last one - just hold it in place and bind it round. The stems might move a little bit as you're going along, but don't worry, you'll be able to straighten them up and make sure the shape is okay, once you're finished. So, to finish off, just cut your string.
Now it's time to make the loop to hang the star. So, tie the string together with the piece that you left long at start, create a knot so it's firm - and then draw the two pieces of string together and knot them together to create a loop. And then just cut off the remaining string to need to neaten it up. It's time now just to make sure the star shape is there, and there we have it - just ready to hang on the tree now.
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