Let it Snow!

Whether you live in a snow belt state or enjoy a warmer winter, you’re certain to equate snowflake imagery with colder months. Who can resist being mesmerized by their beautiful detail and perfect symmetry? Plus, snowflakes make for a fascinating and fun DIY paper craft too!
 
Did you know that most real snowflakes are formed with six points? Here are a few other “cool” snowflake facts that took us by surprise:

• Over a typical year, an average of about a million billion snowflakes fall each second! That’s roughly enough snow to make one snowman for every person on earth every 10 minutes.
• “Diamond dust crystals” are the formal name of the smallest snowflakes — as small in diameter as a human hair.
• The texture of snow depends largely on the temperature. When it’s extremely cold, snow is very fine, powdery and more difficult to see as it falls. But as the temperature rises, snowflakes naturally become larger, more complex in design, and often seem to fall lazily out of the sky.
• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest snowflake was recorded in January of 1887 — 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick!
• The earliest recorded paper snowflakes were made by a woman from Maine named Frances Chickering in 1864. After carefully examining snow crystals falling on her windowsill, Chickering quickly cut out paper replicas and later transferred them to the pages of an album. Her album was later published as a book called Cloud Crystals: A Snow-Flake Album.

Speaking of paper snowflakes, want to make a few with your kids this year? Here are a few fun DIY links to get you started:

• How to make 6-pointed paper snowflakes
• Dubbed the “easy way” to make paper snowflakes
• Want to class it up? Try Martha Stewart’s tutorial
• Video tutorial for 3D paper snowflakes
• Another video tutorial that promises snowflakes in 5 minutes (set to some lovely guitar music)
• A step-by-step instructable with links to printable patterns too