What a great way to use all of those worksheets that come home from school with your children... make your house a winter wonderland! Follow these simple instructions to make your own 3D paper snowflake.
What you need:
6 pieces of paper
Scissors
Tape
Stapler
What you do:
1. Fold each of the 6 pieces of paper in half, diagonally. If the paper you're using doesn't make a perfect triangle, cut off the edge that sticks out (rectangular edge) and make it align perfectly.
2. Cut 3 lines each side of the triangle from the folded edge, making sure not to cut through the unfolded paper edges. The cut lines should be parallel to one another on each side and they should come close to meeting in the middle but not touch. To make this easier, you can fold the triangle in half. This way you'll cut both sides at once, making a very symmetrical snowflake.
3. Unfold your paper and turn it so that the diamond shape is facing you for working with.
4. Still keeping your paper diamond side-up, roll the first two innermost paper lines together to form a tube. Tape these two pieces together. You should see triangle shapes on each side of the roll.
5. Turn the diamond over to the other side. Take the next two paper lines and pull them together on the opposite side of the tube and tape together as before. This will be a more rounded shape and wider than the first tube.
6. Keep turning the paper and joining the paper lines together on opposite side until all paper lines have been joined.
7. Repeat this process (steps 3 - 7) with the remaining 5 pieces of paper.
8. Join 3 of the completed rolled pieces together at one end (draw together with your fingertips) and staple together using the other hand. Do the other 3 pieces the same way. Now you will have 2 pieces consisting of 3 strands or "arms" each.
9. Staple the two new pieces together in the middle. You will almost have the snowflake shape now.
10. Staple where each of the 6 arms meet. This ensures that the snowflake shape is pulled into place. See illustration at top for the finished snowflake.
Use a paper punch to hang your snowflake with string.
4 comments:
Very cool! They had one of these hanging in Lauren's classroom and I was dying to know how they did it! :)
That is amazing! I'm trying that later!
I work for a small Community College and was given the assignment to find a snowflake pattern that could be used to decorate the room we are using for our holiday party. I don't know how I found you but I did and we made 30 of your snowflakes and hung them from the ceiling to make a winter wonderland. We made them with a light weight glossy photo paper so they would sparkle under the lights. Small white round labels were used to reinforce the holes we punched so they could be hung with fishing line and paperclips. We also made four cuts rather than the three and they were outstanding. Thank you for making our holiday decorations a big success for little money.
Very cool, Marty! Thanks for sharing that with me; I work in a school and we decorated my classroom with them, too. I'm going to try to do it with four slits next year- I bet it fills in nicely!
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