beauty

12 days of HoliDIY: Modern geometric snowflake ornaments

Create beautiful snowflake ornaments that you’ll use to decorate your tree year after year. If you’re feeling extra festive, swap clear plastic for gold, silver, red or green. You can even use the same method to create other shapes too -- reindeer, Santa Claus, stars and more.

What you'll need:

Clear shrink film or Printable white shrink film (for an easier version)
Ornament template
Bakers twine
Tape
Sheet of cardboard
Sheet of vellum or parchment paper
X-acto knife with new blade
Metal ruler
Cutting mat
Glitter spray (optional)

Step 1:

If using clear shrink film, print out PDF template of geometric shapes. Tape a template to cutting mat, then tape clear shrink film sheet on top.

Easier method: Print template onto printable, white shrink film sheets.

Step 2:

Preheat oven to 180°. If your oven runs hot, you may want to try a few test pieces at 120°.

Following lines on the template, cut out using a metal ruler as a guide for your blade. Two shallow cuts helped me be more precise instead of doing one deep cut. Note: The clear shrink film tends to make my blade slip on the sheet, so some of my cuts went past the design (photo 'Step 2.2'). These are less noticeable once the design has shrunk down. Also, you can always hit the ornaments with a spray of glitter to cover up any imperfections but still maintain the ornament's transparency.

Step 3:

Place cut-out onto a sheet of cardboard. Optional, but you may want to also lay a piece of vellum paper or parchment on top of the design to keep it from curling. Place in pre-heated oven and set timer for 3 minutes.

Step 4:

After about two minutes, the shrink film will curl considerably, which is where the parchment helps in keeping the design from curling and sticking to itself. But close to around 3 minutes, the design will flatten out again.

Step 5:

Pull sheet out of oven. Make sure to use a potholder or oven mitts, because the cardboard will be hot! While the ornament is still warm, you can reshape any edges that warped during the shrink process.

Step 6:

Once the ornaments are cool and hardened, loop baker's twine at the top for hanging.

You're Done!