The beauty of the New Year is that the aura of everyone's favorite holiday extends far beyond the dates indicated on the calendar. For many, the New Year mood season opens with the first snow. And what if winter is not in a hurry in your area? Everything is gray outside the window, a dank wind is blowing - and not a snowflake. A method familiar from childhood is to make snowflakes out of paper and decorate them with a window, door or wall clock. So what's up? Stock up on stationery and go! We will show you some interesting options so that your round dance of snowflakes this year will be stunningly beautiful.
Let's start with a simple
Probably, everyone remembers this simple scheme: we make a square from sheet A4, bend it diagonally, then again (median to the previous bend) and again (turning a right angle into an acute, 45 °). On this multilayer construction, draw a segment of the future pattern, cut it out, expand it - and voila! Openwork snowflake is ready.
But not everything is as simple as it seems. Someone gets a cross-shaped snowflake, not a round one. At someone - as if cut down by an ax. It happens that it completely splits into 4 parts: it was cut not where it should be. If you are not a snowflake master, you can spend the whole evening in unsuccessful experiments.
To save you from the role of the annoyed Grinch, we have prepared templates (you can download here).
Just print them on A4 sheet, cut and circle, applying to the folded triangular blanks. Then carefully cut along the contour, unfold - and here you have beautiful snowflakes without extra time and effort.
To successfully cut through several layers of paper, you need good sharp scissors. If the blades are dull long ago, the snowflake will turn out “shaggy” and sloppy.
Re-flipped
If you managed to get paper, the sides of which are painted in different colors, you can make an interesting version of a snowflake. The trick is this: based on the standard scheme, you need to cut out the elongated "peaks", and then wrap them so that the color of the back of the sheet is visible. It becomes easy, it turns out unusual!
The snowflake pattern can be downloaded here.
By the way, from flat snowflakes you can make magnificent skirts - you just need to cut cardboard blanks in the form of fairies or ballerinas. Dress them to your liking and arrange a mini-scene on your desk or window sill. For children, especially girls, this is a mega-entertaining activity.
Adhesive for lovers and professionals
Having at your disposal not only scissors, but also glue, you can make a snowflake in a completely different way. The advantage is that you can fantasize to the fullest: a snowflake can be large or small, multi-tiered or minimalistic, round, like a daisy, or with sharp edges.
What is needed:
- a sheet of paper or thin cardboard;
- ruler;
- pencil;
- scissors or clerical knife;
- glue.
Snowflake is done like this:
- Cut the paper strips (for example, centimeter wide), marking the sheet with a pencil. The length does not matter much - you can cut A4 sheet along or across. The number of stripes is at your discretion, but not less than 5. The more modules, the denser the snowflake will be.
- Bend each strip, but not in half, but so that one part is longer than the other. The fold on each strip should be in the same place.
- Bend the short part with a drop and fix with glue.
- Glue the “droplets” so that you get a “daisy”, between the petals of which the loose ends of the paper strips will stick out.
- Now do something with the ends - you can also bend them “droplets”, or you can give the shape of a peak, fin or any other. The main thing is to stick to the core or to the "petals" so that there are no free ends. The snowflake is ready!
Snowflakes are more difficult to do using quilling technique. In fact, the principle is the same: paper strips of different colors are bent so that stable modules are obtained, and glued them together, getting fantastic patterns.
Office Origami
This method is especially for those who spend the days before the New Year holidays in a boring office. If you got 15 minutes free, then, as they say, do not expect a miracle - chud yourself.
Your stationery arsenal probably has a block of note paper - square sheets of 9 x 9 cm (color or plain white). So they will become the building material for a neat little snowflake. Yes, not simple, but voluminous!
You will need:
- 5-10 leaves (9 x 9 cm);
- pencil;
- ruler;
- scissors;
- glue.
Follow this pattern:
- On a square leaf, draw 2 vertical lines, 2.5 cm back from the edges. It is better not to draw the lines with a pencil, but to push them with the edge of a metal ruler, not a writing pen or, for example, a nail file. The bottom line is that it is convenient to bend the sheet along the outlined lines.
- Bend the edges along the marking inwards. They will close a bit with an overlap - it should be so.
- Glue the bent edges so that you get a through elongated module.
- Step away from the edges by 5 mm, again draw 2 vertical stripes. Bend gently along these stripes. With a force, draw a fingernail around the edges to make the fold line as sharp as possible.
- Now, carefully, trying not to wrinkle the workpiece, fold the edges with an "accordion" along the same fold lines.
- Bend the workpiece in half across.
- Mark with a pencil the shape of the future snowflake segment. Cut out the resulting shape. We advise you to sharpen the free edges and in no case touch the transverse fold.
- Using the resulting module as a template, make a few more of the same (four will be enough).
- Glue the modules together, stacking them in a stack. There is a nuance: apply glue with a thin vertical strip, do not cover the entire surface of the workpiece.
- When the stack is set, gently fan the workpiece with a fan and glue its edges together (using the same glue strip) to make a symmetrical volumetric snowflake.
Snowflakes are neat and compact - just to decorate a desk lamp or corner of an office monitor. But you can make them even larger - then you will need to take not the notes for recordings, but the 21 x 21 cm squares cut from A4 sheets.
Another interesting modification of this type of snowflake:
So, now you have four techniques for making Christmas snowflakes. In fact, none of them is difficult - acting in stages, even a child can cut and glue from. It will take no more than an hour to create a New Year’s atmosphere with your own hands. Holiday greetings!