Flights Of Imagination: Papercut picture snowflakes

Every year now I make lots of paper snowflakes to decorate our house with at Christmas. I love how cheap they are to make, and of course how magical it is to open them up and discover what you've created. This year I wanted to be a bit more ambitious, so I decided to combine cutting a symmetrical shape with papercutting into the image. I was inspired by some of the beautiful examples I have seen of kirigami, the Japanese term for artwork that is made by cutting into paper often combined with folding. One artist I've discovered who creates wonderful kirigami pictures is Cynthia Emerlye, whose work I thoroughly recommend looking at.

I began by folding my paper to make a 6 pointed snowflake, (if you don't know how to do this, this tutorial is really helpful). I then drew my design out. I'm not that into Christmas imagery, so I decided to use birds for a lot of my Christmas decorations.

I then cut the shape out with a scalpel. Its much easier to do this and get it to look neat if you cut in layers, unfolding the snowflake as you go.

Please note: scalpels are very sharp. They should only be used by adults and you should always use a cutting mat!

Its always so exciting to open it up and see what your snowflake looks like!

I then neatened everything up, and began to cut a pattern in the centre.

I really like how they look with the folds still obvious, but I wanted to be able to use these as decorations for a few more years so I decided to glue them to some coloured paper. I've found the cheapest way to do this is to brush tiny dots of PVA glue or Pritt liquid glue on with a small paintbrush BUT you have to apply the glue very thinly or your paper can get soggy and your beautiful artwork will disintegrate!