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I know you’re thinking of the dorky paper snow flakes you made in second grade and thinking I’ve flown my coop. But have you tried these crafties again as an adult? Like reading and arithmetic, you might find you’ve come a long way, baby. Give it a fair try before you laugh in my face, I think they’re quite elegant, artsy, wintery, and even fun!
In case you’ve forgotten how, here’s the basic idea:
Take a sheet of blank white paper, fold one corner down, crease on the diagonal and cut to make a square. Now fold corner to corner in half again, and one more time. This means you’ve folded it into eight sections, but all you’ll see is one skinny triangle.
Now with good scissors (old crappy scissors like you had in second grade will only make you want to rip your hair out) start making cuts—your triangle has two sides with folds, which will be the inside of your snowflake, and one side with no folds, which will be the outside edge of your flake. This is one of those things that’s much harder to explain than to do. Just start cutting and see what happens. It’ll take a few practice flakes, but you’ll get the hang of it. My one tip is that the more paper you remove the better, those chunky ones from second grade are cute, but sleeker looks more…refined.
Once you’ve got your game on, try folding one into sixths instead of eighths, it’s a little trickier, but if you’re scientifically minded it’s doubtlessly bugging you to make “snowflakes” with eight sides. Also just in half can be cool, and looks sort of pinecone-ish, appropriate for a Christmas tree.
We had a snowflake making party a few years ago– our first year in our own home, with our own tree, having of course no ornaments. It was awesome. I always make my flakes more or less the same and it was really fun to see what other folks with less protocol did. Like the two sided one, I would just never have thought outside that box…
Don’t forget the classic and humble popcorn strand! I can’t bear to put cranberries on ours when I could make cranberry orange shortbread cookies instead, but it looks nice with just the popcorn. 
