How to make a festive paper decoration

My daughter convinced me to share with you the tips and tricks on making this wonderful paper decoration for Christmas,  Sukkot, birthday or any other celebration.

She made it in school and I noticed how every math-curious person who came into our house in the past week (including my father and cleaning lady) carefully folded it and tried to reverse-engineer the creation process. We did it as well and after a few failed attempts finally managed to figure it out.


You will need: two pieces of regular (A4 size, white or better colorful) paper, scissors, ruler, pen, eraser and stapler.

Start with a full sheet of paper.

fold it in half and again in half:

Hold on from the folded corner and cut the open corners of the sheet diagonally:

You are left with a folded piece in the shape of a triangle. Use ruler and pen to make the following lines on this triangle.  Note that lines are parallel to the triangle's base. They start at the opposite sides of the triangle and neither line goes all the way to the other side:

Cut along the lines:

Unfold the triangle:

and unfold again very carefully:

Gently tilt the middle part so that you can hang the decoration from it:

You got it!

Now you can make another one of those and staple them together:

Enjoy:

And now when you mastered this try reverse-engineering this Escher's drawing: