A proper snowflake!

My paper snowflakes, made today; altered photo

Everyone else is posting about their nominations for the 2012 Art Ed Blogger of the Year, but since I wasn't nominated (sniff, sniff... sour grapes...) I'm going to post about something completely different - SNOWFLAKES!  (But I did take some time out first and vote for a few of you.)

Anyhow, I have a personal pet peeve: 8-pointed snowflakes. (Disclaimer: if you have recently posted a lesson or project with an 8-pointed snowflake, you are not alone; there have been many such posts recently.  It is not the intent of this post to criticize or belittle you.  Rather, my intent is to share information and raise awareness.)  Disclaimer done, now on to the lovely little snowflake!



The crystalline structure of snow is 6-pointed, so, while all snowflakes are unique, starting with a six sided radially symmetrical shape will make a world of difference in making a 'real' snowflake.  But you can't fold a square paper into six points, can you?  So instead we will begin with a circle. My students always made their circles by tracing the bottoms or tops of buckets, etc.  Thin paper, like computer paper works best for detailed cutting.

Fold the circles in 1/2, as shown in the photo above.  We call this the 'taco fold'. (But do not insert meat and cheese.)

 Find the center by gently folding in 1/2 again, but do not crease.  Pinch the center, and mark with a pencil.

Next you will need to fold the the taco shell into three equal triangles.  To be nice and perfect about this, you can put the center of a protractor on the center that you just marked on the folded paper, and then mark off at 60 and 120 degrees (photos below).  If you want, draw a pencil line from the center through the marks, as shown in the photo.  Or, you can just fold from the center, through your marks, and crease without the pencil lines.  If you don't  have a protractor, just 'eyeball it' to get equal triangles.  Once you've done it a few times you won't need the protractor at all.  I used it on only one of my snowflakes today.  I like to fold one triangle forward, and one back, to make for a nice crisp fold.  Press down well to crease. (Note: if you open it up, it should look like a 6-slice pizza.  If it doesn't, you've done something wrong.)
 You are ready to start cutting!  Make sure you have a nice pointy sharp scissors, not too big.  Blunt scissors will not work well.

 
By the way, blogger is not cooperating tonight, so please forgive the crazy formatting of the photos and text in this post.  It was important to get them into sequence, but it seems that blogger had something a little different in mind.  Hopefully you'll understand...

 The following photos are pairs of snowflakes, before and after unfolding.

 

Note the scoops cut on either side of the center point on the snowflake above (as indicated by my fingers).  They will form a lovely flower shape as you can see in the open snowflake. Also note that I cut the top edge so that it is no longer a circle.  It's important to change the upper edge shape or your snowflakes will all look like gears.

 

 In the snowflake above, you can see I have cut a little triangle out of the point at the center of the folded snowflake.  In the open snowflake, you can see (where I am pointing) that it will form a star.  I've done a much bigger version of the same thing on the snowflake below.  I've also made a lot of dramatic cuts down from the upper curved edge of the circle and in from the sides.

 Check out how I cut the point on the snowflake below.  Also note how much of the top of the triangle I removed. 

 The more paper you remove, and the less thick areas of paper you leave, the more lacy and delicate it will look, and it will look more like a 'real' snowflake. Cut away from all sides leaving narrow lines of paper.  I recommend cutting symmetrically from both sides of the folded triangle.
If you want, draw an object (preferably symmetrical)  that touches the sides and cut it out.  Great ideas for this could be the shape of a bell, an angel, a tree, or, as in my cuts below, a star and a snowman.

 

 

Below are a couple more interesting cuts.  Feel free to print any of these photos to help you get started.  I'm not worried about my snowflakes getting copied. 

 

 

 I thought I'd end with my attempt at a menorah (above).  It was too small a circle to be cut effectively, but you get the idea!  Happy Chanukah!

Oh - one more thing (there's always something else, isn't there?).  You may notice from my demo photos that I am left-handed.   I struggled with cutting as a child, and my mom got me paper dolls to encourage me to cut more.  (And of course I designed all my own clothes for them.)  My point is, don't give up on your lefty students, and please, reconsider those lefty scissors.  It is, sadly for us lefties, a right-handed world, from the soup ladle (we have to pour out of them backwards) to the  hand mixer and the iron (the cord comes from the wrong side), we need to adapt.  Leftie scissors didn't exist when I was a kid, and frankly, I'm still not sure they should.  There's some weird flaw about the way we hold leftie scissors; they just don't cut as well.  If you can get your lefties to cut with their right hand, they'll be better off.  After all, they will use the computer mouse with the right, shift their car with their right, and cut their meat with their right hand, so why not also use a scissors right-handed?   Plus, if we lefties ever find ourselves without the use of our left hand (due to injury, stroke, etc), we generally will function better with our right hand that a right-handed person will do with their left.  We lefties are very ambidextrous!  Left on!!!