Hot Glue Snowflakes

We almost never get snow here in the south of France; it’s more like a coldish winter than a white Christmas, so I admit I tend to go a little crazy with the decorations to get us in the Christmas spirit. And some of the decorations that do that the best are window clings!

These little glue snowflakes are very cheap and easy to make, ideal for craft time with kids and perfect as Christmas decorations for rentals, since they don’t stain the windows. Plus, they can be made into any kind of shape you can imagine, so what more can you ask for?

You’ll need:

• Hot glue gun
• Glue sticks
• Parchment paper (Don’t get wax paper or they’ll stick, it’s very important! Thanks to my lovely readers for pointing that out). 🙂
• Snowflake templates (optional)
• Glitter and craft glue (optional)

Instructions:

1. Print your snowflakes template (I downloaded one from Google images, which you can download here in pdf) or draw them by hand on a piece of paper using a dark marker.

2. Lay the wax paper over the template. Since it’s slightly transparent, you should be able to see the pattern through the parchment paper quite easily.

Tip: Securing the corners of the parchment sheet to the template with some tape will make sure that they won’t move while making the shapes and will make everything easier!

3. Start tracing the snowflakes with the hot glue. Make sure to make the glue lines thick and fat, since the shape won’t hold well if they’re too thin.

If you’re better at using hot glue than I am, you’ll get perfect shapes from the beginning. As it turns out, I don’t know how to finish the glue lines properly, so I got a lot of thin strings of glue everywhere – but that’s ok, since you can simply trim them out with scissors and the snowflakes will be as perfect as if you’d make them like that on the first try (and who has to know?!)

You can see the little strings everywhere… but they came off with a simple cut!

4. Let them dry for a few minutes until the glue is cold, and then you can peel them off the parchment paper. They should come right off without any residues at all, so you will be able to reuse the parchment sheet as many times as you like. Handy, right?

5. If you want to add glitter, now it’s the time. Cover them in normal craft glue, then in glitter in the colour of your choice, let them dry, and shake them a little to get rid of the excess glitter. Ta-da!

First, not-so-perfect batch. Though, actually, you cannot see the imperfections when they’re on the window. From far away, anyway…

6. Finally, you can glue them to the window with a couple of dots of hot glue on the extremes, or glue them to transparent nylon thread and hang them, as I did. Or you could even glue a little ribbon on top of the snowflakes and hang them on your Christmas tree. The sky is the limit!

I don’t have pictures at night because they don’t photograph great, but they look wonderful against the dark background, almost like real snowflakes. Magical!

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