Making Your Own Recycled Snowflakes

Here in Louisiana we don’t get much in the way of snow, except a few pleasant surprises here and there. Lucky for us, we’re a creative folk.

This is a great idea for simple decorations using recycled materials. A great busy task for children old enough to use scissors, and a fun past-time in front of the fire!

Instructions:

1. Take a thin, recycled sheet of paper, and cut into a rough square. You can use old wrapping paper, wrapping tissue, newspapers or junk mail.

2. Find the center and fold in half. Find the center of this, and make a crease on the folded side.

fold example3. Now, with the folded side facing you, bring the bottom right corner up 2/3 to the left, so that the rectangle is now split into thirds, as illustrated to the right.

Making Your Own Recycled Snowflakes4. Fold the left side up in the same fashion to fit on top of the other fold. This creates a 1/3 triangle.

5. Fold the entire thing in half, and cut off the top to make a smooth curve.

Now that the pesky folding is done, time to get down on the serious business – cutting shapes. These shapes can be anything you like; triangles and half circles are a good start. The more varying shapes and sizes, the better. You must make sure that you don’t completely remove the outside edges however, or the whole thing will fall apart.
Making Your Own Recycled Snowflakes

When you are done, unfold your snowflake (gently!) and see what beautiful unique design you created!

Making Your Own Recycled Snowflakes