Snowflake Tutorial

When I found out I was pregnant, I instantly knew that the baby's 1st birthday was going to be a "winter wonderland." My winter wedding plans were derailed by the little miracle growing in my belly so I vowed to have my wonderland come to life one way or another! Now here I am, exactly one year from the day I was originally supposed to get married, writing about my little snow baby's 1st birthday plans. :)

For the past few weeks, I've been obsessed with snowflake-making. If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you may have seen me churning out quite a few of these bad boys. I originally learned how to make them from a holiday craft handout that the boys brought home from school. Over time, I refined my technique and after numerous requests, agreed to post a tutorial on how to make them. This is my version of the many, many 3D snowflake tutorials out there. I promise it's a lot easier than it looks once you get the hang of it. :)


Materials:
6-8 sheets of paper*
1 pair of scissors
Tape
Stapler

*The size of the paper you use depends on the size you want your snowflake to be. Keep in mind that smaller snowflakes are much harder. With that being said, I suggest you use a standard 8.5x11 paper for your first snowflake. For the example below, I quartered one 8.5x11 sheet of paper. It's easier to photograph a smaller snowflake for tutorial purposes. (I used vellum paper, but you can use any paper you want.)

Materials

Step 1: Take the paper and fold it at a diagonal as pictured below.

Step 2: Trim off the excess paper to make a triangle. You can skip this step if you're using 12x12 scrapbook paper for your snowflake.

Step 3: Fold the triangle in half to make a smaller triangle.

Step 4:  Take your scissors and snip the folded side leaving approx 1/8" at the end of your cut. (I put 5 straight slits.) You can eyeball the spacing -- it doesn't have to be perfect.

This is what it looks like when it's opened up.

Step 5: Now comes the fun part. Take a pencil (or your finger) and tape the two points of the inner slits together.  

Step 6: Flip the paper over and connect the next row of slits on the opposite side. Flip over again and connect the next row and so forth. Repeat until all ends are taped together.

Flip & Tape.

Flip and Tape

A side view of the flipped & taped sheet.

The final product: One "arm" of your snowflake.

Repeat Steps 1-6 six to eight times depending on how many arms you want your snowflake to have. Note: Things go a lot faster  if you mass produce your triangles before hand.

 Step 7: Once you've created all of your snowflake pieces, it's time to connect them together. Take the center "x" on the side of the individual arms and tape or staple them together to create a chain. 

Before being connected

Hope this picture clarifies where to connect them

The "chain"

 Step 8: Take a small piece of tape and connect two arms together. Repeat this step until all of your arms are taped together in pairs.

For the sake of the tutorial, I took a picture of how to connect the ends BEFORE I made the chain.

Step 9: Close the chain once all of your centers are connected and stapled in the middle.

 And there you have it, the finished product. :) Happy snowflake-making ya'll! :)