Instead of purchasing plastic holiday decorations, here are two beautiful snowflakes you can make out of paper.
The first is made by quilling, the simple act of wrapping and gluing strips of paper together. A detailed tutorial of how to quill is available at the DIY Network via Haute*Nature.
These beautiful examples are from starshaped's flickr stream. They're created using one of two PDF templates. Simply print the template, cut, fold and finally tape to create the three dimensional snowflake. Complete instructions, along with the templates are available here.
Via Haute*Nature
Originally published 2008-12-09 - CB
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Those are lovely. I need to make some of those.
The pink style is actually easier than it looks--I used to make these with a class full of third-graders. The explanation linked actually makes it more complicated than it needs to be (especially if you don't need it to be quite so perfect).
This video simplifies it some: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ausJdGcgs0k&feature=player_embedded, though I would go even further. When doing the cutting, fold the paper in half once more, corner to corner, and you only have to make each cut once instead of twice. Just cut parallel to the long side, cutting from the side with one folded edge, stopping before you reach the side with two stacked folded edges. (It really makes more sense in person!)
Unlike the video, we just used white glue to stick the parts together. They're really easy, and come out looking great!
I made the one on the left in lots of different sizes for my husband's display window at work a year or two ago. It looked very nice and was easy (and cheap!).