I enjoy cutting out snowflakes with my kids for the holiday season, but these flat paper flakes tend to curl when I tape them to the windows, and tear when I take them down, so I moved on to quilling more sturdy quilled paper snowflakes.

They are stunningly simple to make if you have a bit of patience.  I staple six sheets of white paper together and use a paper cutter to cut six long narrow strips of paper at a time.  A few minutes at the cutter gets me a nice pile of shredded paper to work with.  If you prefer, you can purchase precut quilling paper.

For the snowflakes, I need shapes in sets of six, or sometimes 12, so I line up the papers and mark them lightly before I curl them so each circle ends up the same size.

Then I use a dab of glue on a pin (or you could use a toothpick or any little pointy thing) to barely wet the end of the paper and stick it so it just covers the little line.

I should probably be using acid free glue and paper, but at this time I'm using my kids leftover school glue (I seem to buy them each a new bottle each year, but it never gets used up and it does collect over time) and ultra bright white printer paper since it's what I had available.  Having the materials and a paper cutter on hand made this craft free, and that works really well for me!  I'll let you know in a few years how badly my paper filigree quilled snowflakes yellow, and if the yellowing gives them that special antique look.

After gluing the quilled circle, a simple pinch turns it into a teardrop shape.  You can pinch with smallest curled end in the center, or pull it to the top, bottom, or side for interesting variety in your work.  When you get practiced at that, try multiple pinches for interesting effects.

There are lots of shapes you can roll from a strip of paper including those shown here.  The only limit is your imagination.  I usually make a bunch of shapes in sets of 6 or 12 and then make the snowflakes when I have more time.

Center of PDF:

I started making the snowflakes by just gluing the pieces and eyeballing them, but quickly discovered that a few moments with a pencil, paper, ruler and protractor making six evenly spaced spokes to line the flakes up on made for a nicer finished product.  Before long I added a bit of thin foam underneath so I could keep the pieces in place easily while the glue set so things didn't wiggle as I added each piece.  I tired of redrawing the template each time, so I made it on the pc and can simply print more as mine get too worn, glue speckled and full of pin holes.

Here's a pdf file of the image so you can use it to make your paper filigree snowflakes too.  Happy quilling!     First Snowflake Gallery         View my Most Recent Snowflakes