DIY: the easiest, prettiest snowflake ever!

If you're looking for an easy, beautiful, festive, and eco-friendly craft, this six-pointed snowflake DIY is for you!  It transforms any scrap paper, leftover magazines, newspapers, junk mail, or whatever into an elegant decoration in 10 easy steps.

Basically, fold a rectangular piece of paper (you can see I've used an old itinerary above) into a triangle.  Cut off the rectangular strip at the bottom.  Then fold again, cut off the triangular strips, and go to town on the remaining triangle!  The snowflake in the top left corner is the result.  Leave your snowflakes under a heavy book for a couple of minutes so that they lie flat or keep them in their natural form for nice dimension.

There are no limits to how or what you create.  I recommend working on top of a sheet of paper so that you can throw the scraps away easily.  Or you can save the scraps (like the hearts in the top right corner) for future projects.  Use colored paper, sheets of music, or glitter for extra pizazz.  The uses for these snowflakes are endless: gift tags, glue to the front of folded cardstock for a sweet Christmas card, glue to plain wrapping paper for an unforgettable gift, tape them all over your windows for a winter wonderland (I used artist's tape [it's like masking tape but less sticky so it doesn't damage the paper] to tape them to the living room window in my apartment in L.A. and someone across from us tried to copy us), string them as garland, etc.  Once you start making one, you won't be able to stop!

If you're interested in making snowflakes for every holiday, check out the more elaborate designs by Cindy Higham.  I came across this book in the library probably ten years ago and I haven't forgotten about it ever since.

I'll post some more pictures of how I've been using them later because the cookie madness is going to start soon and I want to include pictures of that.  If you know my mom, you know she LOVES to cook and bake.  Her gourmet cookies are one of the best things about Christmas.