Change of Address

Hello there!

This blog's content has been transfered and consolidated with The Arting Archive.

If you want to see the new snowflakes I'll be making this season, you can find the updates under the Paper Snowflakes tab on the site. 

Gift Snowflake

My sister asked for a snowflake to hang up in her office at work, so here is what I came up with:

This is the still folded version (In case you wish to duplicate the pattern)

Giant Snowflakes 12

Lots of fun with circles this time around. Didn't turn out quite how I was thinking it would, but still enjoyable.

Here is the pre-unfolding pattern.

Medium Snowflake

I was going for a spiky snowflake, but it didn't quite work. I was tempted to cut off the little spikes, since I don't think they fit, but decided to leave them on.

Giant Snowflakes 11

Giant Snowflakes 10

Another giant snowflake to decorate the front windows of our house.

Xacto Knife Snowflake 8

This one is from 2011 again.

2010 Snowflakes 07

This is the snowflake the most recent giant snowflake I posted was based on. If you compare then closely, the centers are nearly the same.

2010 Snowflakes 06

2010 Snowflakes 05

2010 Snowflakes 04

2010 Snowflakes 03

2010 Snowflakes 02

2010 Snowflakes 01

One of the recovered snowflakes from last winter that's been lying around the house, but wasn't photographed.

Giant Snowflakes 9

Home for Christmas break and free from exams, I saw all the pretty snowflakes I made last year and wanted to imitate one of their styles. So, I made another detailed giant snowflake. Took me a little under an hour to finish sketching the design and cutting out the stencil (from which I would then trace the design onto the paper to be cut as I went to minimize smudging of the lead)

In progress photos with time stamp. Giant complex snowflakes take... awhile. But the end result is so beautiful!

I choose you Charimander! And Charmeleon! And Charizard!

In progress image. Note: this snowflake took well over two hours...

The snowflake all cut out but not yet unfolded.

And the final product:




As soon as I decided to make a giant pokemon snowflake I wanted to make this one. Charizard is easy to identify in silhouette so I wouldn't have to go in with that painful detail line work that I had to for Venomoth. Also, I really really really wanted to have an evolving pokemon growing outward from a pokeball center. So, yeah, I made this one and now it's just up in our dorm's stairwell.

Giant Snowflakes 8 - Service Auction Snowflake 2

Another item up for bid at the service auction was one giant snowflake in which I'd incorporate the pokemon of the buyer's choice. This one is of Venomoth.

Details:



I stencil first for more complex snowflakes. This is the final version of Venomoth that I came up with. I tried my best to make sure he wouldn't be mistaken for Butterfree.

Giant Snowflakes 7 - Service Auction Snowflake

As part of the dorm service auction (auction selling off various services such as do laundry, a date, make a home-cooked meal etc, all to raise money for a charity) I opted to sell some of my snowflake making. One item for bid was a giant snowflake, like those in the stairwell, for the buyer's own.
However, as I had now gotten my xacto knife back from home AND had restocked on giant paper... I decided to take the skills I'd learned making that little snowflake and apply it to the large scale. For an idea of size, this is hung up on a mini fridge in this photo.

Xacto Knife Snowflake, detailed

I decided to try smaller lines because I was working with a smaller piece of paper-part of a text for one of my classes. Turned out pretty cool in the end.

Dragonair Snowflake

December is Pokemon profile picture month on facebook. For some reason, staring at the curvy lines I was sketching for a snowflake, I realized it it was awfully similar to the curves of the Dragonair pokemon that was currently my profile picture. I'd made image snowflakes once or twice before (I made one with a swan, that I seem to have lost) so I set about sketching the little guy out and this is the result. And the beginning of so much more...

Scissors Snowflake 4

Xacto Knife Snowflake 7

Xacto Knife Snowflake 6

Scissors Snowflake 3

Though curved like most of my xacto snowflakes, this one was done with a scissors. (You can tell because if you divide it up into a single slice, all missing pieces run along an edge.)

Xacto Knife Snowflake 5

Xacto Knife Snowflake 4

Scissors Snowflake 2

Xacto Knife Snowflake 2

Scissors Snowflake 1

Xacto Knife Snowflake 1

Starting to figure out interwoven patterns again.

Giant Snowflakes 4 (5 and 6)

I kind of got yelled at for putting these up... people on my own floor were not so thrilled that I was decorating the windows of other floors when I hadn't yet finished filling in all those on our level.

Giant Snowflakes 3

Giant Snowflakes 2

Giant Snowflakes Begin

Sadly these pictures rather suck... But that's what happens when ones camera breaks and all you have is the one in your laptop. Anyway, having been given a supply of large butcher paper, I was able to start creating large snowflakes which I put up in the dorm stairwell windows.
I'd left my xacto knife at home that past weekend, so I tried out using a cardboard cutter knife. Turned out to be a lot easier to control than I thought and cut through the paper like butter.

Relearning continued

Unless specific else wise, assume all snowflakes from here on (Or going up, if you are reading these posts from newest to oldest) are cut with a knife.

Relearning

This is just a simple one made with an xacto knife. I'm still remembering how to design the more complex ones I had done the winter before.

2011 Snowflakes

And now that the backlog has been posted, I begin all those snowflakes I began making just after thanksgiving this year. I've still got quiet a few decorative paper snowflakes my mom kept from last year that I need to photograph and post, so those will show up here eventually. I'll do my best to establish from when a snowflake came (more for my own interest in my development than anything else).

The Gap

As far as my searching of computer files shows, I don't seem to have documented any of the snowflakes I made in the winter of 2010. If I recall correctly, this is because most the ones I created I gave away still folded. I never opened them to see the final result. (Like I said back in the introduction, it's the process I love most.)
However, I do still wonder how those many gift flakes turned out. So, if any of you readers were those who received gift snowflakes, please send me a photo and I'll add it to the blog. Thanks!

First video I made of myself making a snowflake-sped up.

Snowflakes From High School 36

This time around I wasn't just cutting out a snowflake because..well, that's what I do. As part of our Latin class we cut out decorations to liven up the room.

Snowflakes From High School 36

Although cutting out a snowflake from paper with an image sounds like a good idea, I've found it rarely works that well considering how complex mine usually are. The two patterns conflict. If you stick to basic colors, you're better off. A few of the ones I sent out for gifts last year were painted with water colors. But again, I suggest sticking to pretty basic color schemes.

Snowflakes From High School 35