Tuesday, January 17, 2012

3-D paperbag snowflakes

3-D Paper Bag Snowflakes
Since there's been very little snow this winter might as well make some

I originally shared this tutorial as a guest post over at Dear Creatives and have been meaning to share it again in case you missed it! (click here to see the original post over at DC)


Spend a cold winter day with your kids making these beautiful 3-D snowflakes that are super easy.   These snowflakes have a very dramatic effect, especially if you make a collection and hang them together. My friend and I got the idea when we were at Whole Foods and they had big snowflakes like this made from various kinds of paper bags hanging from the ceiling in the front of the store.  You could use any kind of paper bags you have on hand, we used white lunch paper bags.  This is a great craft you can do with the little ones too, which is what we did. 

What You’ll Need
  • 10 paper lunch bags (for 1 snowflake)
  • scissors, edge punch, etc
  • stapler
  • ribbon or string
  • hole punch

Cut the top edges of all the paper bags to make pretty snowflake edges.
Take two bags and line them up.  Open the tops and staple one side of the bag to one side of the other bag.
Repeat until you have five bags stapled together. Staple the five bags together at the bottom and then open it up creating a fan…half your snowflake.
Take the other five bags and repeat, attaching them all together and making another fan shape.
Take the two half snowflakes (fan shapes) and staple them together through the openings at the top of the bag.  Staple the tops of the bags together, but also the bottom edges as you can see in the picture above.
Use your hole punch and make punch a hole for stringing a ribbon or yarn through so you can hang your 3-D paper bag snowflake.
Adjust all the bags so all the creases are straight.
After putting it together I decided to go around all the edges with the hole punch to add more detail.
We had 4 year olds cut the edges of the snow flakes, but you could make more dramatic or designed edges changing the look of this paper bag snowflake, so it has more shape and is less of a giant circle when looking straight on.  These also look great when made with brown paper bags.  You could even get more creative and spray the finished snowflake with spray adhesive and sprinkled with glitter to give it some bling, glue on some jewels or sequins…or just enjoy as is.  My daughter wanted me to hang hers above her bed, she loves it.

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy making some of these fun 3-D paper bag snowflakes. 




1 comment:

Lisa Fliehman said...

Your daughter is adorable! She is really concentrating on her task! The tongue is a dead giveaway!