Let’s Make Beaded Snowflakes

January is here and so are cold temperatures and snow for some of us! Let’s make some snowflakes today that won’t make us any colder! These are easy to make and so pretty! (And they are great for practicing some fine motor skills.)

You’ll need 3 pipe cleaners (or chenille stems), a pair of scissors or wire cutters and some colored pony beads.

Cut the 3 pipe cleaners in half.

3 half pieces will make 1 snowflake so you now have enough pipe cleaner pieces for 2 snowflakes. Here are 2 different ways to wrap the pipe cleaners into the snowflake shape: #1.) Fold 2 pieces into a “v” shape.

Put the 2 pieces together at the bends.

Wrap the 3rd pipe cleaner around the center of the other 2.

OR way #2.) Hold the 3 pieces of pipe cleaner together…

And give them a twist or two in the center.

Now it’s time to use the pony beads. You will need 5 beads for each “spoke” of the snowflake for a total of 30 beads. The colored beads can be in whatever order you decide to use. You can make a pattern of colors for your child to duplicate like the following pattern: green, white, blue, pink and purple.

When they have enough beads laid out in the right order, it might look something like this:

Slide the beads onto the piper cleaner spokes in the same order.

After the 5 beads are on the pipe cleaner, bend the rest of the pipe cleaner spoke into a circle and push the end back into the last bead.

Continue sliding the beads onto each pipe cleaner spoke and bending the end in until all 6 spokes have been done. Isn’t it pretty?!

You could also have your child find 5 beads of the same color for each spoke. These beads match the color of the pipe cleaner spoke they will be placed on.

This way is also quite pretty!

Or you can let your child put the beads on in any order that they like. If you would like to hang your snowflakes up, simply add a piece of thread or string through one of the circles. I hope you will have fun making these beaded snowflakes! 🙂

Craft Stick Snowflakes

Are you looking for something to occupy the kids while they are off school for Christmas break? Here’s a super easy but fun way to make some great snowflakes. Our grandkids made these and shared these pictures with us. 🙂 (Thanks, Megan!)

They used colored craft sticks, glue, glitter glue and curling ribbon. If you only have the plain craft sticks you could add an extra step and paint them first. If you don’t have glitter glue, regular craft glue and glitter will work too.

Glue the colored or painted craft sticks together into a snowflake pattern. As you can see from the pictures, there are several ways you can glue them together.

After the glue has dried a little, use the glitter glue to decorate your snowflake. Or if you are using glue and glitter, put drops or lines of glue on the craft sticks and then sprinkle glitter over it. Gently shake the snowflake to let the extra glitter fall off.

Tie a piece of curling ribbon onto the snowflake and hang your snowflakes up for everyone to enjoy.

If you open a pair of scissors and pull the ribbon across the blade part of the scissors, the curling ribbon will curl up and look pretty. You can do this to some extra pieces of curling ribbon to add a little more pizazz to your snowflakes. Hope you enjoy making craft stick snowflakes!! 🙂

Do You Want to Make Snowflakes?

I don’t know if Elsa and Anna would be impressed, but we can have fun making our own snowflakes too! 😉 And we can stay warm while doing it! All you need is a piece of paper and a pair of scissors. I used a piece of white printer paper to make mine. Here we go! First, you’ll need to make a square from your paper. All you have to do is fold one corner over across to the opposite straight side and make a triangle…look at the picture for help to understand what I mean.

Cut off the extra paper with your scissors so you just have the triangle left. (If you open the triangle, you’ll see that you now have a square piece of paper.)

Now fold the triangle in half from left to right…or right to left. 😉

Turn the triangle around so the longest edge is at the bottom. Then fold the right side over about 1/3 of the way…

Then the left side over to meet the right side edge. If the sides don’t quite meet evenly, go back and move the first fold a little and try again.

Now trim off the extra to make a triangle.

Cut designs all around the edges but don’t cut all the way across. Leave some of the fold on both sides. Take a look at the type of cuts I made on mine. Small children may need some assistance with this step as the thickness of all the paper can be a bit hard to cut through.

Carefully open your paper up and you’ll see the beautiful snowflake you made!

Isn’t that awesome?! They say there are no 2 snowflakes alike so every one you make will look a bit different and that’s just the way it should be. Let’s look at another one I made…first you can see the type of cuts I made…

And now look at the pretty snowflake!

You can make different sizes of snowflakes just by starting with a different size square piece of paper. Look at this little one I did!

And here’s what it looks like opened up.

I hope you found this to be another fun winter project! Make as many as you can and decorate your house with snow that won’t melt any time soon! 🙂