Paper Plate Constellations

Ready to see what I made for the "Something Beautiful" prompt? I took the suggestion of stars and used it to make a cool paper plate constellation craft. 

While you could certainly do this alone or as a family, I'm imagining this as a craft for a group. Back in my teaching days, I took my students camping each year (3 different camping experiences over the 11 years). Our school also had an annual Space Week. It would have been so cool to assign each kid one constellation to make, then they could work in groups to try to find their constellations in the night sky. Affiliate links below. 

Paper Plate Constellations

Materials:

• paper plates
• acrylic paint (navy blue and gold)
• pushpins
• gold embroidery floss
• star-shaped brads

Steps: 

Paint the paper plate dark blue and let it dry. Use an old toothbrush or stiff brush to flick gold paint over the blue. 

Meanwhile, draw your constellation on a piece of scrap paper. I did the Big Dipper (*not technically a constellation), but you can choose whatever you want. When the paint is dry, place the scrap paper on the paper plate and use a pushpin to poke through each star in the constellation. 

Thread a needle with 3 strands of gold embroidery floss. Stitch the lines of the constellation. The easiest way to do this is to orient yourself toward a window or lamp and hold the plate vertically in front of you as you sew. This makes it easy to see the holes. 

Put a star-shaped brad into each hole. 

*As I noted above, the Big Dipper is technically not one of the 88 recognized constellations. It is actually an asterism that is part of Ursa Major.