Paper snowflake templates

Pick the size of your square and how fiddly the cutting should be, then print. Each template is drawn at true size for that square, so print at 100% or actual size. The 5 cm bar at the bottom of the page lets you check.

Fold the paper into a narrow wedge, as the last page shows. Lay a template on it with its point on the centre point and draw round it. Shade the grey parts if it helps. Then cut the grey away through all the layers and open the paper out slowly.

Every snowflake here is new. The cuts are placed at random from the sheet number, and each one is checked before it goes on the page. A cut that would leave a strip too thin to hold, or drop a piece off, is thrown out. Press New snowflakes for another set, or type a sheet number to get one back.

Start with a square. Fold it corner to corner into a triangle. The middle of the long folded edge becomes the centre of the snowflake, so mark it.

Now fold in thirds. Bring one side over from the centre so it covers a third of the triangle, then fold the other side over the top. Line the edges up as well as you can. This is the fold pysanky.info walks through with photographs. Finally fold the narrow wedge in half once more.

Keep the centre point at the bottom. As Dummies warns, that point is the middle of the snowflake, so never cut it away. A small snip off the very tip, where a template shows one, just makes a hole in the middle. Trim the ragged top along the curved line and the extra layers go with it.

Real snowflakes have six arms. SnowCrystals.com explains that the six-fold shape comes from the way water molecules stack in ice. Folding in half and then in thirds gives six sections, and the last fold doubles that to twelve mirrored copies of your cut. That is why one small wedge opens into a whole snowflake.

The more common school fold, in quarters, gives eight points. It looks pretty. It just isn't how snow grows.