Incredibly Easy But Classic Christmas Decorations: The Paper Snowflake
51History of Paper Snowflakes
Most of us spent countless hours in elementary school making these easy and inexpensive decorations. All it took was paper and scissors, but making a snowflake (or sometimes 10 snowflakes) that was (were) completely individual was something that I took great pleasure in during the Christmas season.
The practice of making paper snowflakes probably began shortly after the industrialization of paper production. Paper became more readily available at more reasonable prices and therefore it could be used for more than books and documents.
Creating your own individual holiday decorations is easy and I will show you how with the help of my very cute assistant and my sub-par photography.
Step-By-Step Photos
How to Do It
- You need a piece of paper. No need for boring white, we like GREEN snow in this family.
- Fold a top corner of the paper diagonally so that you end up with a right triangle with a little extra paper below.
- Trim off the extra so that you are left with only the triangle.
- Fold the triangle in half, and then in half again. You should now have a much smaller triangle.
- Cut out shapes from the triangle. Be careful to leave plenty of edges so that your snowflake doesn't fall apart when you try to unfold it.
- Once you are done cutting, unfold your snowflake.
- Cover your house with this super easy, kid friendly, and incredibly cheap decoration.
You can make snowflakes of many different sizes, the key is to make sure you start with a perfect square (after you've trimmed off the extra paper.) Enjoy!
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Thank you for reading and commenting! This really is such an easy craft, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
An oldie but still a goodie! Have you ever found that some kids miss out on these kinds of BASIC activities that we assume every child on the planet has a chance to do?
Recently I made cinnamon-applesauce ornaments (made a hub on them) with a group of girls. Some of them had never used cookie cutters. NEVER. Can you imagine?
Thanks JimmieWriter! Wow, really? Cookie cutters? I suppose we live in a society where almost all the socialization is done in front of some kind of screen. It's a little sad.
ktrapp Level 7 Commenter 5 months ago
This brought back wonderful memories. I remember making tons of paper snowflakes when I was a kid. It was always fascinating to see how the random tiny cutouts created a wonderful design when the full snowflake was revealed. It was a surprise every time. This is a great craft to still do today and I will suggest it to my daughter as something she can do with the children she babysits.