I've switched over to using acid free paper and glue to make my paper filigree snowflake ornaments now.   I figure there's no sense in putting this much work into something that might fall apart in a few years, and with practice, they're starting to get pretty enough that I'm planning to make quite a few of them.

In my search for paper that will  hold up over time, I was looking for archival quality paper, but there wasn't much available that wasn't too thick, or too yellow.

I visited all sorts of art, craft, scrapbook, and office supply stores in my paper quest, but the pickings were pretty slim for archival paper in shades of silver and white, so I went with mostly acid free paper and will see how it holds up.  The pictures don't show it very clearly, but the snowflake above on the right has both white and off white, and it adds an interesting antique look, or at least I thought so until my kids mentioned the old joke about not eating the yellow snow.  That led me to experiment more with the metallic silver papers I found, but most of those were a bit darker than I wanted, and when I mix it with the white paper the contrast is too much.

There are a limited number of shapes you can make by pinching a curled sliver of paper, but I've found that looping the paper adds bunches of additional possibilities.

I can't wait to find the time to experiment with more of them!  Notice the longest center pieces in the snowflake at the top of the page - there are looped bits inside the pointed pinched shapes.  Thinner paper loops better than thicker paper does, but thicker paper holds the overall snowflake shape better, so I find myself using both now.

For the longest slender spokes, I used cardstock paper in the center with a strip of thinner paper on either side of it.  That way I can make the loop and adjust it on the cardstock center until it's just right, attach it with a pinpoint drop of glue, and work my way down the spoke making different shapes.

Well, that's it for now.  Check out my basic paper quilling intro and the first batch of paper filigree snowflakes I made.