Wow, two posts in two days for me. Cah-raaaazy. Happy Birthday, Jamie! You sweetie.
We were in a paper snowflake mood here after watching
Elf. During the movie, I find myself getting really distracted from the antics by the profusion of snowflakes and paper chains Buddy festoons everywhere he goes.
So we made a bunch and taped them up everywhere in honor of the first day of winter. You can make some too with these
great templates at Yarn Owl (via
How About Orange). Print them at whatever size you like. All you do is fold on the dotted lines and cut out the black areas, and poof, a beautiful snowflake.
I found myself wanting to experiment with other shapes, so I also created this blank template (
click here to download). With the hexagonal shape it is pretty easy to make an impressive snowflake with even very simple cutouts. Like this:
1) cut out the hexagon
2) fold in half
3) fold in half again
4) fold twice more on the dotted lines until you have this wedge
5) if you like, draw your shapes in pencil before you cut. Or just wing it.
6) cut out your shapes
7) unfold. poof! pretty snowflake.
The hardest part for kids is cutting through the thickness of the paper after it is folded. Little hands may need some help cutting. After a while, my girls also enjoyed just letting me do the cutting, then unfolding the snowflakes to reveal their shapes. That's the really fun part after all.
It occurred to me that this could also make a nice last-minute handmade gift for someone on your list. Neatly cut out a particularly spectacular snowflake, iron it flat, then mount it inside a nice frame with some pretty paper or fabric as the background. And there you go. Christmas decor.
Or, snowflake cards! Ooh. Or snowflake embellished stockings! Ooh! Or snowflake appliques on dresses! I could go on and on.
