On the Third Day of Christmas. . .

. . . we finally got our lights on our house.  And we made paper snowflakes.  We make them every year and hang them from the ceiling in the play room. 

Usually we make this traditional flat kind. (We found this really great website for patterns.)  But not this year.

We decided to try something more complicated.  Turns out it's actually easier for the girls to make these than to cut all those tiny pieces out of the fold and cut kind.

Start with six strips of paper. (These pictures aren't great.  I forgot that my ISO was set really high so it created a lot of noise in these pictures.) I took an 8.5 X 11 piece of paper and cut in lengthwise into .5 inch strips.  You will need 12 for the one snowflake.

Cross the two stripes exactly in the center and glue in place. (I used double stick tape--it's faster).

Then glue 2 strips over the horizontal strip.  (Opposite of the middle one--it's hard to see in the picture.)

Weave two horizontal strips on each side of the center horizontal strip--crossing over the 1st and 3rd and under the middle strip.

It should now look like this.

Next, turn the top right corner strip back so that the backside of it is facing you.  Match it to the top right horizontal strip--turning its backside to face you also.

Repeat on all four corners.  It should look like this when you are done.

Repeat above steps until you have two.  Lay one face up with the other face down on top of it so that the straight strips match up with a turned loop.

Match the straight strip to the point of the loop.  The edges will stick off the sides.  You will trim those later.  Glue each straight strip to a pointed loop.  Trim.

It should look like this.  Done.

We put one on our tree, because we don't have a star.   We have a snowflake theme going anyway.  

Here they are with their lovely creations.  Unfortunately we only ended up with three.  Perhaps we'll make more tomorrow.  

Do you have any fun paper crafts ideas for the holidays?

Movie of the night:  Borrowed Hearts (It's old, but I love it)  & Rockefeller Center Christmas Concert