Tips for Better Paper Snowflakes ❄️✂️

some tips for cool looking snowflakes

Happy Friday!

Let’s take a craft you probably made in elementary school and elevate it a bit, shall we?

Here are some tips that should help:

Thin Paper Is Easier to Work With

Try tissue paper, paper napkins, or coffee filters! Last year, my son taped together pieces of tissue paper to make a gigantic snowflake. It couldn’ve been prettier, sure, but he had a blast making something so large! (See arm for scale 😅)

Paper napkins actually work super well. Here’s a tutorial we made for you:

Make Sure Your Snowflake Has Six Sides

If you feel like the snowflakes you’ve made have looked a little off, that might be because they’re geometrically inaccurate! Real snowflakes have six sides. To achieve that shape, you want your paper to be folded in half, then folded in thirds.

Also, it’s totally okay if you do the folding part for your kid and let them focus on the cutting 😉

Err On the Side of Cutting Out Too Much

Too many snowflakes (especially kid snowflakes) turn out like the one on the left. Invite your kids to snip away and make it a really fragile, shrimpy triangle before they unfold it 😅

It’s Okay to Copy Other Designs

If you google “cool paper snowflake patterns” you will find a wealth of ideas and even printables. For example, here’s a link to a really cool R2D2 design!

Last year, we had a paper snowflake contest, and one of my favorite entries was Jennifer D.’s Olaf snowflake! What a fun thing to show your kid.

Display Your Works of Art!

It’s always bittersweet when Christmas decorations come down, but that doesn’t mean your walls need to be bare! Tape up some of your favorite snowflakes throughout the next month or so for some wintry festiveness!

Try Other Versions

• You can design pattern block snowflakes by cutting out shapes like these, starting with a hexagon in the center, then letting your kids go crazy making patterns. All you need is glue and paper, and the only rule is that it has to look the same on all six sides. Even kids who don’t like crafting might enjoy this a lot. See this tutorial for inspiration.

  

• Make a hexaflexaflake. This paper magic trick of sorts is for teens, tweens, and grownups who want a challenge. Youtuber Vihart’s videos makes math and geometry super interesting and fun! (You might want to watch Vihart’s original hexaflexagon video first. It can be a bit of a rabbit hole 😉)

I hope you like these ideas, and as always, I would love to see your creations! Tag @family.scripts on Instagram or email us your favorites!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts