How to Make a Paper Ninja Star (throwing star) with 2 dollar bills

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To do this all you’ll need is two dollar bills (I imagine most people would want to use $1 bills, but you could, technically, make a $200 paper throwing star if you were so inclined), a flat surface to fold on, this article, and

5 or 10 minutes you don’t have anything else better to do with (you’re at work, aren’t you? :mrgreen: ). Mind you, you could use just about any kind of paper you wanted as long as you end up with two rectangles of roughly similar proportions to dollar bills–if you want to use origami paper the

easiest thing to do is to simply cut a square sheet right in half and voila, two rectangular sheets of paper perfect for doing a paper ninja star design. First, a few tips, then I’ll show you how.

A few things before you start

  • Make sure that you do each fold well–a single bad fold can mess up the whole design. Each fold should be well flattened and a nifty little trick that you can do quite quickly once you get it down is to use your thumbnail by running it along the side of the fold.
  • If you’re using a square sheet of paper that you want to make into two identical halves but you don’t have scissors, just make a nice sharp fold down the middle, wet the edge with your mouth, and then gently tear it in two.
  • If you want to use traditional origami paper, you can get it very cheaply either here from Amazon or from a local hobby store (Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, etc. should all have it; stationary stores may have it as well).

Let’s do it

Get a couple dollar bills ready and start the video (watch a step, pause the video, do it yourself, start the video again, repeat, etc.):

Additional Resources and Further Reading

There’s a book for everything, including how to make nifty origami designs out of money–if you enjoyed this you might want to check out Money Origami Kit: Make the Most of Your Dollar!.

Also, if you’d like some additional instructions there’s this lovely article over at PaperCrafty.com on making an origami throwing star.

And for more general origami awesomeness head on over to Origami Club where you can see animations of how to fold almost every kind of design you can think of.