How to use Christmas snowflakes in your decor? What do you need to create crafts? Tips for beginners, popular techniques on how to make Christmas snowflakes with your own hands.
New Year's snowflakes are not just a part of the pre-holiday decor, but a real symbol of the coming winter. For many, New Year's paper snowflakes are the easiest and most affordable way to escape from the gray everyday life. Making them is very simple and quick, but the occupation captivates the whole family. True, in order for each snowflake to turn out really unique, you will have to make a little effort and figure out how to make a New Year's snowflake. And for those who have already become a true master of working with paper, we suggest studying new materials and techniques for festive decor.
How to decorate your house with Christmas snowflakes?
Before the New Year holidays, many fall into a rage and strive to decorate every corner of their home. There is a deep tradition behind such a seemingly unobtrusive occupation. Festive decoration of the house is a talisman against evil forces and the desire to attract wealth to oneself. Our ancestors thought so.
Psychologists say that New Year's snowflakes on the windows, tinsel, garlands and homemade toys are another way to relax and switch from pressing problems. And if you are preparing for the holiday with your children, then such decoration perfectly strengthens relationships and provides the basis for wonderful family traditions.
Carved snowflakes can be called the first New Year's decor. Perhaps this is even a real symbol of winter, and not just the holidays. And it is quite natural that with the arrival of January, they begin to decorate the house with handmade New Year's snowflakes. Many are in no hurry to take them off even at the end of the holidays, but only with the arrival of spring. After all, a beautiful decoration makes the house elegant and always cheers up.
New Year's snowflakes made of paper or other materials can be placed:
- On the windows … The simplest location. Here, the decoration looks appropriate and gives a sense of celebration not only for the residents of the house, but also for passers-by. And if you make such snowflakes out of white paper, then the amount of light from the window will not decrease at all. This decor is appropriate until the end of the cold weather.
- On fir branches … Small snowflakes look very beautiful and unusual, but in such a decor it is important to choose proportions (so that the decoration is not too large in relation to the tree).
- On chandeliers, floor lamps and sconces … It is good to place decorations with lacquered or metallic elements here: shining from the electric light, such snowflakes will remind you of a frosty winter outside the window and at the same time create the feeling of a fairy tale.
- On the bookshelves … Placed next to the books, snowflakes allow you to make a small accent in the decor.
- In doorways … Volumetric decorations or garlands with New Year's snowflakes created according to stencils look original here.
Such decorations are appropriate not only at home, but also in the car, like a small pendant, or in the office if your office does not have strict decor rules. Bulky decorations are much more valuable if they are made by hand or donated by children, but guests will also notice the efforts and care with which you were preparing for the holiday.
Note! Snowflakes for the New Year look appropriate if a lot of them have been done. Moreover, their size and complexity can be different - from small simple ones to large volumetric ones. But if you already decided to decorate the house with their help, do not be lazy to make at least a few dozen. Only then will the design look complete.
What materials to use for the snowflakes?
Children in kindergarten are taught how to make a New Year's snowflake, for this they are given paper and safe scissors. Indeed, it is this material that is still the most popular for snowflake making. For work, both office paper and newsprint, from notebooks or designer, coated paper are suitable. Most people prefer to make pure white snowflakes, but multi-colored decorations also look original.
Paper decorations look weightless and very beautiful, they are easy and quick to make, but such toys are not stored for long. With intensive use, by the end of the winter season, such decor will lose its appearance. If this flaw does not bother you, feel free to use New Year's snowflake patterns for paper.
But paper is not the only material suitable for flat or voluminous New Year's snowflakes. For creativity, the following materials can be used:
- Cardboard … Decorations are made of it denser than paper snowflakes for the New Year, such clippings keep their shape perfectly and can be used for several years. But the disadvantages of cardboard crafts include the relative weight of toys - they cannot be glued to the window, but they will look very beautiful on the Christmas tree.
- Felt … Thick, but very soft fabric, pleasant to the touch, felt decorations add warmth and comfort to the room. Such snowflakes are additionally decorated with beads and beads and hung around the room or serve as part of a New Year's installation.
- Threads … Woolen, acrylic or cotton threads will be an excellent material for making DIY snowflakes for the New Year. You can crochet or even knit large jewelry from thick yarn. But thin cotton threads are best used for openwork knitting on planks. Various techniques allow you to diversify the assortment of crafts, which you can then use for many years.
- Beads … It can be not only an auxiliary decorative material for crafts, but also a full-fledged base element. To form a New Year's snowflake, it is enough to put on the required number of beads on the wire and bend the decoration of the appropriate shape, or weave it with a fishing line. The beads shine beautifully in the sun or next to the lights of an electric garland, they look elegant and at the same time are easy to clean.
- Polymer clay … Requires knowledge of specific material processing techniques (for example, filigree), but with enough patience and willingness to experiment, you have a chance to make exclusive snowflakes for the New Year (not only white, but also multi-colored).
- Gypsum … Another material for creating voluminous holiday decorations. With the help of an easy-to-handle material, it will be easy to create not only snowflakes, but the entire decor of the holiday in one common style.
- Glue … Hot glue or even regular PVA can be used to form light snowflakes. Such decorations are immediately drawn on the window or made separately using a stencil.
To work with each of the materials, you may also need scissors, knives, a cutting board, and threads. It will greatly simplify the task of having a printer at home on which you can print stencils of New Year's snowflakes found on the Internet. Otherwise, all the blanks will have to be drawn by hand.
Note! The tradition of cutting paper toys is popular not only in our country, but also far abroad.
How to make Christmas snowflakes?
Flat paper snowflakes for the New Year are the most popular among lovers of homemade toys due to the availability and ease of processing of the material. To create a craft, it is enough to fold a square sheet of paper in half, and then in a triangle (one triangle is 1/12 of the entire square). After drawing a diagram on folded paper, cut it out. By changing the pictures, you will receive a new craft every time. Flat New Year's snowflakes are glued to windows in most cases. To make the design deliberately beautiful, you can use ready-made schemes for New Year's snowflakes.
The availability of paper as a material for creativity has led to the development of various techniques for creating volumetric toys. The simplest one is to cut 10 identical snowflakes, and then glue them together (first, combine 5 and 5 snowflakes into one "sun", and then glue the rays of such a "sun" to make an openwork ball).
But voluminous New Year's paper snowflakes can also be created from several layers of paper or from one in which the edges are notched and glued together in the form of cone-shaped rays.
The origami technique, which is used to create snowflakes for the New Year from paper, does not require the use of glue or scissors: the toy will turn out to be voluminous by laying several layers of material.
Quilling toys look very original, but their creation will require a lot of patience. For work, you need to prepare long narrow strips of paper. Then these strips are twisted into tubes and, flattening at different angles, are combined into an elegant ornate snowflake.
Felt snowflakes for the New Year are made very simply: first, a blank is cut out and additionally decorated with beads or beads. For the convenience of placing such a decoration, you can sew a loop from a ribbon to it.
If it is difficult to surprise your guests with knitted toys, use a machine tool for working with threads. To do this, stick 12 needles into a soft surface (for example, a large pillow) (the number of needles is equal to the number of legs of the future snowflake). The thread must be moistened with PVA glue before work. Pull the thread in random order from needle to needle until the lacework is formed. When the glue is dry, you can remove the finished New Year's snowflake from the makeshift machine.
Another technique that deserves attention is polymer clay filigree. To make beautiful New Year's snowflakes with your own hands, you need to roll the clay into thin long wires or "spaghetti", and then form "stars" of any design and size from them. In this technique, snow-white monochromatic snowflakes are obtained well. But if you want to decorate the Christmas tree with colorful crafts, you can use the polymer clay injection technique.
While creating volumetric origami jewelry using knitting needles, crochet hooks or an extruder requires the study of highly specialized creative techniques, working with glue does not require any specific skills. In order to make a New Year's snowflake with your own hands, the printed template must be put in a plastic file or tightly wrapped in a transparent bag. Trace the template over the polyethylene with glue. Until the substance has dried, sprinkle generously with glitter. When the glue is dry, carefully scrape the snowflake off the plastic file and, having organized the pendant, attach it to the Christmas tree.
This same technique can be used by painting directly on the window. The easiest way to work with gun glue, but you can experiment with PVA or silicate.
The number of ways how to make snowflakes for the New Year, of course, is not limited to those listed above. In order to find your favorite technique, you need to try at least a few of them.
Tips for beginners
It is very important to think over the complete design of the room with the help of snowflakes and other New Year's decorations, and only then start creating them. One or two snowflakes, like real ones on the street, will simply "melt" into the general extravaganza of the scenery, so if you have already decided to decorate your house, then create a real snowfall.
If you want to try different techniques for creating jewelry, then think over a common component for each type, for example, it can be a color that is the same for all snowflakes, regardless of the execution technique. If you want to use only one type of materials, then experiment with color, size, volumes.
But the attachments of DIY Christmas snowflakes can be the same for all crafts and depend on the size of the toy. It is better to hang large heavy snowflakes on a fishing line or strong thread, and a paper clip is enough to fix light decorations.
For those who like to glue New Year's paper snowflakes onto windows, it is no secret that at the end of winter it can be quite difficult to wash them from glass. If you are making such a decoration for the first time, then it can be an unpleasant surprise. To easily remove glue from surfaces, try ammonia (found in most window cleaning sprays) or acetone, which is included in inexpensive nail polish removers. Well, in order not to bother with washing windows, it is enough to use soapy water instead of glue. A light snowflake should be moistened with a concentrated soap composition so that it fixes on the glass. True, the method does not work for long - a few holidays.
How to make New Year's snowflakes - watch the video:
Christmas snowflakes are an easy way to create a festive mood. It is fun and quick to create decorations for an entire house. But if you have time, take the time to learn new techniques for working with familiar materials. Homemade crafts will appeal to adults and children, and in their beauty they will not be inferior to purchased ones, even more, because snowflakes made with your own hands for the New Year keep the warmth and love with which they were created.
