How Flaky Are You?

So...when's the last time you really sat down and cranked out a few snowflakes? Well, gather your family around and get snipping! 

Before you pull out the scissors, you'll want get a little practice in at the Make a Flake website. This genius online application will allow you to practice without all the mess. You can watch as a piece of paper is folded into the proper pre-snowflake triangle, and then you can snip bits of paper away just by clicking your mouse. When you click Preview Flake, you'll see exactly the kind of flake you'd get from that specific series of cuts. It's a great way to envision how a real paper flake would turn out! (Warning: you may become addicted to the online app and never want to touch a pair of scissors again.)

Step one: Make the first cut.

Step two: make lots more cuts.

Step three: admire your handiwork!

Step 4: register your flake in the gallery. My latest creation is number 20.7 million. It's pretty fun to browse the gallery and imagine how much time some people must spend creating a single virtual snowflake. They get pretty intricate.

Now for the Real Thing
Now that you're all warmed up, pull out some plain copy paper and scissors. Cut out your snowflakes, following the tricks you learned online. Using a foam brush, brush each flake (both sides) with Acrylic Gesso and sprinkle them with glitter. Allow them to dry (the Gesso is a stiffening agent), then hang the wherever you like! We Lucases have quite a collection that we hang on the Christmas tree every year:

 
Fun, right?

Many thanks to Travis and Jeremy, who indulged my whims and spent several hours cutting, painting, and glitter-izing snowflakes with me. To see another craft I tricked them into participating in, check out our Sock Snowmen at the Write. Click. Scrapbook. blog today.

And the randomly drawn winner from my last post is:
Commenter #26, SusanB! Winner, I'll be emailing you a coupon code for Ella Publishing Co.'s newest eBook, A Year in the Life, directly!

* Credit for these ideas goes to Don Lambson (co-founder of Creating Keepsakes magazine who's now with the scrapbook manufacturer Imaginisce). Don demonstrated the website and the Gesso trick to the Simple Scrapbooks team at the old office a couple of years ago. Ah, memories.