
As part of the Octans Christmas Decorations project I speak about on the last post:
Octans Bar Christmas Decoration I created some Himmeli Ornaments to represent the different stars on the constellation.
Himmeli is a word in Finnish that means sky or heaven and this type of ornaments are very minimalistic and simple, used mainly on the Scandinavian countries. Additionally the ornaments are made out of plastic straws which bring an opportunity to upcycle an item that would normally end up in the trash and transform it into something useful and beautiful.
So I created a tutorial for you now, where you can follow step by step the instructions to create different geometrical shapes and get your himmeli ornaments ready for Christmas.
Here are the instructions, enjoy!
Materials:
- Straws
- Yarn
- Scissors
- Golden paint

Directions:
1. If you are using second hand straws, wash them very good and disinfect them. Then remove the edge of the straw that is used to place the mouth and that contains the flexible area of the straw.
2. Cut the straws according to the size desired for the geometrical figures, on my case I used around 10 cm long pieces.

3.Once you cut the straws make sure they are all the same size and adjust the cutting if they are not.

4. Take a long piece of yarn, around 1 meter and start passing it through the straws, first into 3 pieces so you are able to form a triangle.

5. Tie the yarn to secure the triangle.

6. Continue adding 2 pieces of straws to create a second triangle.

7. Twist the yarn at the end of the rectangle and add 2 more pieces of straw to create a third triangle.

8. Pull up the two triangles on the edges and tie a knot on the yarn to form a pyramid as seen on the picture. Now you have a pyramid shaped ornament.

9. To have a diamond shape ornament, repeat steps 1 - 7 and an additional piece of straw.

10. Pull the additional piece of staw up as seen on the picture and twist it.

11. Add last piece of straw and tie a knot on the yarn, you have now a diamond shaped ornament.

12. To create a six sided prism you can repeat steps 1 - 7 but keep adding triangles until you have 6 of them, then pull the two from the edges up together and tie a knot.


13. Finally when you have finished all the shapes you want to create, cut the additional yarn and place the figures in a shape where you can paint them.

14. Paint the figures and let them dry and you are finished! You should get something like on the pictures below.