Turn your house into a Winter Wonderland with our Super-sized Snowflakes.
Each flake is made from a full-size poster board sheet and painted with glitter. Just watch them sparkle as they dance from the roof.
Skill Level: Beginner
Needed:
* White Poster Board (or Foam Core, see below)
* Spray Adhesive or Clear Spray Paint
* Glitter
* Fishing Twine
1. Print off a picture of a snowflake from an online image search (or draw one!). The tricky part is getting it large enough to fit on a posterboard. I actually blew mine up with an overhead projector. ANOTHER OPTION: you can print up 1/6 of the snowflake (one spear of the snowflake) onto an 8×10 paper and then continue to trace that portion over and over till you have a complete snowflake.
It would be really cool to make these out of Foam Core (the stuff used for Science Project displays or art projects) and make them 3 dimensional, with an intersecting snowflake. But it was too pricey for my budget. So, I used a pack of 10 posterboards from Office Depot for $5. Perfect.
Trace your snowflakes, one per posterboard, and cut each one out with scissors. Be careful as you cut the inside portions of your flakes, that you don’t tear anything:
2. Spray your Snowflakes, using whatever supplies you have to attach the glitter. Ideally you would use a Craft spray glue. I love Spray Mount, which is an artist’s glue, made by 3M (guess that’s what happens when you grow up with an artist father. You know all the great art supplies and have to figure out the JoAnn’s options on your own). Well, I was out of Spray Mount and didn’t want to spend $10 (I’m sharing all my cheap-o secrets here). So, I had some Clear Wood Finish spray paint in the garage. I used it. First, spray the clear finish onto your flake:
3. Shake on your glitter (be liberal):
I used this stuff from Walmart. I didn’t want anything too bright, just something that sparkles when it catches the light:
4. After sprinkling your glitter on top, spray your clear finish again ON TOP of the snowflake to seal it in. Shake your flake around a bit just to even the glitter out but don’t shake all of it off. It will stick on as the spray dries. It was hard to capture the glitter in my pictures but they look beautiful in-person:
5. Then, using Fishing Twine, cut a very small hole in top of your flake, tie on the fishing twine, and tape the other end to your ceiling. Fishing twine comes in different weight resistances. I went with 12 pounds. That’s more than enough to hold a flake! It’s great for this project because it’s virtually transparent. It will look like your flakes are floating.
6. Finally, I chose to also string my flakes to each other, to keep them all forward-facing:
and there you go.
Enjoy your snowfall!
