  | Christmas Snowflake | |||
     | ||||
You will need: Paper (not too thick because you are going to have to cut through a lot of layers!)
Once you have something you are happy with you need to fold the
If you want to get really fancy I have read a suggestion of dipping the finished stars in melted wax then covering them with glitter... | ||||
Making
these 12-pointed paper snowflakes is fantastic fun - it is very
easy to get carried away... Quite a lot of strength & dexterity
is needed for cutting them out so this is probably one for older kids,
if you want to get them involved. 
Take a square
piece of paper & fold it in half into a triangle. Then fold
in the 2 corners, 1 across the other, starting your fold from the centre point of the longest edge of the
triangle. The fold lines can be seen in the photo on the left. Things can
get a bit messy if you don't have your edges all lined up, so
take your
time over this & don't crease the fold until you are sure you have
it right. You should end up with a shape something like the picture in the second photo.
paper
again down the middle
& trim off the excess paper at the wide end - as indicated by the
dotted line on the third photo. You should now have a fairly neat
isosceles triangle. Again it really pays to have everything as neatly
lined up as you can manage.
Now
draw a shape (or if you are feeling really confident you can just get
straight in there with your scissors) keeping in mind that the
star points are on the open side
of your folded paper. The fourth & fifth photos should give you a 
good
indication of the kind of thing you need to create. When you are happy
with your pattern, start cutting! Take care not to cut through
your snowflake (it's a bit too easy to do if you aren't careful). Then
unfold
and have a look. You can always fold it up again & do a bit more
cutting if necessary.