Good morning and happy 10th Day of Christmas! We got such good reviews from our earlier origami gift that we decided to give you all a second ‘DIY’ origami download today. Instead of a seahorse, we’re giving out a more traditional shape – a star to top your tree.

The star is actually a great shape to bridge the gap between nature conservation and the holiday season. In nature, starfish often act as ‘keystone’ species, meaning that starfish have such a disproportionate impact on its environment that the entire ecosystem it belongs to depends on its presence to maintain balance. Wolves in Yellowstone National Park and even figs in the Tropics serve as keystone species. These animals are so important that when scientists want to check the health of a particular habitat, it’s keystone species like these that they check on first.

And for the Christmas tree, the tree-topper is the first thing visitors see. It literally sits on the tree where a keystone would rest in an archway, and it visually holds together the whole tree. I mean, what tree would be complete without the Christmas star? OK – so maybe we stretched the metaphor a bit, but we can’t help it, we just get really excited about conservation!

This particular star is a module origami design, so you should prepare 5 pieces of paper to do each arm of the star before putting them all together. Let us know if you have a hard time with it (it’s a bit more complicated that our seahorse). And remember everybody, only two days left, so stay tuned right here for the rest of our 12 Days of Christmas Digital Giveaway.

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