Once again, the icy edge of winter approaches, and with it come the urge from kindergartners to custom crafter to cut some more geeky snowflakes designs.
Over the past two Christmases at the Tate residence, since I first ran “Snow Geeky” in GeekMom, the storm of geeky snowflakes has continued to grow, with designs covering the walls from the TARDIS to House of Stark.
This year, I did some scouring of the web and came across a few more nifty places for geeky snowflake templates.
There is never a shortage of new Star Wars templates, and two of the best sources are Anthony Herrera Designs and Matters of Grey.
Matters of Grey has been creating Star Wars patterns since 2010 and are up to more than 30 patterns from the original trilogy to The Force Awakens. Their ship-centric designs are especially clever, including two choices for Millennium Falcon templates.
This year, Herrera’s added some Rogue One patterns to go with his growing collection, with templates for Jyn Erso, K-2S0, Captain Andor, U-Wings, and more. Herrera’s The Force Awakens and Guardians of the Galaxy designs were featured last year.
Some of the other places for Star Wars templates include WikiHow and an awesome R2-D2 snowflake from GeekDad Randy Slavey.
Slavey has a fun template for Pokémon Rowlet as well.
My gamer girl teen wanted some gaming designs, and there are patterns for Zelda, Mario, and Fallout’s Vault Boy. We ran across a couple of these designs on DeviantArt, which is good place to find both templates, geeky and traditional, as well as just some incredible examples or paper cutting craftsmanship.
For a “variety pack” of geeky templates, Delphic Digital, has released a couple of collections in past years that include some pretty unique source material such as Book of Life, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Divergent, True Detective, The Big Bang Theory , and several others. There’s even one for the Ice Bucket Challenge.
There is a nice assortment of ten pop-culture snowflakes from Fun.com, with a Hunger Games Mockingjay, Jurassic Park, Olaf from Frozen, a classic Harley Quinn, and more gaming choices like Minecraft and Mario.
Other random patterns we found this year include My Little Pony‘s Pinkie Pie, Cerebus from Shadows of Oblivion, Gravity Falls, and a nice generic zombie. We found several Supernatural designs, though we couldn’t pinpoint any good printable templates to go with them. We also found several sources for Harry Potter designs (Suzy Homeschool has a good starter set that can be done on coffee filters), but we are still searching for Fantastic Beasts.
Now that you’ve found some fun patterns to work with, here are a few tips I’ve picked up from people who actually know what they’re doing as well as ideas I’ve concocted on my own:
1. Start out using plain typing paper for many designs, as it is both thin enough to manipulate easily but not too fragile. My daughter likes to use construction paper for colored snowflakes, but stick to simpler patterns for these. We also enjoy the coffee filter designs and tissue paper.
2. If you are making intricate designs, get a good pair of cutting scissors. Smaller, sharp shears work well, and even good nail scissors can work for some angles.
3. There will be times when a sharp utility knife like an X-Acto is needed for some details. Keep extra blades on hand, because when the edge gets dull, the paper will tear. If you’re working with kids, avoid patterns that require these, but when you’re making your own, and I can’t stress this enough, sharp, sharp blades work best.
4. Most sites that offer several snowflake patterns will also show a guide to folding the paper for both four-pointed and six-pointed patterns. The method is, for the most part, the same no matter the design or site. Once you’ve figured out the fold, you can use it for nearly all patterns.
5. For beginner and young crafters, stick to four-pointed designs for a while. The folded paper isn’t as thick and is much easier to cut through.
6. Never underestimate the beauty of the plain white snowflake. I’ve added color to many designs to show off what can be done with these designs, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make plenty of traditional, easy snowflakes. This is especially important for kids, as they can use their own imagination and not get frustrated trying to follow a pattern.
In the race to outdo each other in creativity, don’t forget how fun it was to cut a simple design entirely of your own conjuring.
If you want to see the power of simple paper snowflakes, enjoy this Wes Anderson-directed commercial starring Adrien Brody for the clothing store H&M, and get ready for a cozy winter and festive Christmas and holiday season.
