More snowflakes

Two years ago, I remembered how much I love making paper snowflakes and ended up with a window full of taped-up snowflakes.

This year, I wondered if I might try to recreate that snowflake window, but I hadn't decided for sure. Then, earlier this week, I walked by a boutique with a window display featuring snowflakes strung into garland with white ribbon. (It caught me by surprise and I might have yelped "OH HOW BEAUTIFUL!")

My inspiration was set.

My goal: make a bunch of snowflakes out of scrap paper we had around the house and then string them on ribbon to decorate the window between our living room and dining area.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the snowflakes had to be made. The construction scene one morning last weekend:

I remember this process being messy two years ago, but I think it was a hundred times messier this year. When I last made snowflakes, Wish wasn't part of our family, and this time around, he made his presence known by 1) sitting in the snowflake scraps 2) tracking them all over the home and 3) trying to eat the remnants.

I didn't clean up as I went, but I did put the snowflakes into old textbooks to press them overnight.

Later, I took a few out and strung up one strand of snowflakes, just to see how it looked:

I liked where it was going, so I kept going: threading the ribbon through sturdy cutouts on the snowflakes, then using little pieces of tape to hold each snowflake approximately in place on the ribbon.

The final result:

I didn't actually count how many snowflakes I would need - just merrily cut out snowflakes to my heart's content - and I had a bunch left over. I looked at our mantel and decided that it, too, would benefit from some snowflake decor. I made little loops with ribbon and tape and hung eight snowflakes on a long piece of ribbon, then attached that with more tape to the mantel.

It was appropriate timing: lots of winter weather around the country made for some snowy football games. Snow on the TV + snow on the mantel!

My window display in 2011 stayed up long into 2012. I can only predict the same for these little snowflakes.