Perfect Snowflakes Every Time

A Snowflake Tutorial

I love making snowflakes and being the perfectionist that I am, I like them to be as perfect as possible. The other day another teacher in the building asked me how I get mine to look so good, so I let her in on my little secret - it's all in the tools...

First, gather your supplies: square sheets of paper (I just use regular printer paper that I square using the paper cutter at school,) a pencil, scissors and a protractor. Take it from me, protractors are handy little tools to have laying around. Go ahead and get everything. I'll wait...

Next, fold the paper in half so you have a long rectangle - sorry, no photo for this step. (At school we call this "folding the hot dog way.") Crease this fold well.

Then line up the side edges like you were going to fold it again - only this time into two squares (this is "folding the hamburger way," if you're curious) but don't really fold it. Just crease it - down on the edge that you already folded.

Lay the paper flat on the table and it should look like this:

Now, get out your trusty-dusty protractor and line it up on the little crease you just made. (If you haven't used one since high school, you can refresh your memory here.) Align the protractor so that the center mark is over the crease and the 0 and 180 degree lines line up with the folded edge of the paper - which should be along the bottom.

Find the 60 degree mark. Use your pencil to make a small dot at 60 degrees.

When you move the protractor, you should be looking at this:

Next you are going to fold the bottom edge of the paper so it touches that little mark you made. I use my finger nail to help me get the bottom to fold exactly where I want it to.

then fold so you have this, (See how the edge lines up with the dot?)

and then crease well. (Like my owl jammies? I often live in my jammies on weekends, but I digress...)

Unfold the paper and you should have a line that looks like this:

Now, fold the bottom edge from the other side over until it touches that fold you just made. Again, use your nail to keep that bottom point nice and crisp.

When you unfold, you should have a V in the center of the paper.

Fold the paper back up along the folds you made. My students call this step "making a heart" because they think the folded piece looks a little like a heart.

Take that heart shape and fold it in half. Again, use your nail to help keep the bottom point looking good.

The top edges of the paper will not be even so you need to trim them. Use your scissors to trim away the uneven edges. The dotted line in the photo below is where I cut.

This is what you should be looking at:

Now comes the fun part. Use your scissors to cut away parts of the triangle to create your snowflake. Be careful not to cut away an entire edge. If you do, you'll get several pieces of paper instead of one flake.

Keep cutting until you are happy.

I like to experiment with straight lines as well as curves. When you are all done unfold your snowflake and bask in its beauty and almost perfect 60 degree rotational symmetry. Now go back and fold about 10 more because they're addictive...

If anything isn't clear to you, please let me know. Since I am a math teacher there may be directions here that make perfect sense to me but are unintelligible to you. If that's the case, email me or leave a comment and I'll edit the tutorial to make it more clear. Now, go make a flake!