Toilet Paper Roll Snowflake Ornaments

Every year, Alex and I make an ornament for the tree. This little toilet paper roll snowflake was the one for this year (last year we did a Nativity ornament, and the year before we did some delightfully aromatic cinnamon-scented ornaments). This guy was super simple, and really fun.

It was also Alex’s first time working with glitter, and guys, if you want to see what joy looks like, just let a 3 year old use glitter. I’ve avoided it thus far because I was scared of the mess, and we are still finding glitter two weeks later, but I’ve had this realization recently that I limit my kids a lot because of my own scaredy-catness. For instance, one of my kids would not go down the slide for the longest time. It took me forever to realize that anytime they got near a slide, I freaked out – “Turn around! Go down backwards! Wait! I’ll catch you!” I must have communicated that a slide was some sort of vicious child-murdering thing, because they were terrified. When I finally put it together and backed off, they tried sliding and now I can’t get them off the dang things.

Anyway, tl;dr, I’m trying to get over some of my uptightness and fears with my kids. So when I was coming up ideas with this year’s ornament, I decided that I owned a broom and a vacuum cleaner, and we were doing this. It was a good choice. He loved it, and I get the memory of his gigantic smile and enthusiastic glittering. That’s worth a little mess, I guess.

Materials

toilet paper tube

ruler

pencil

scissors

clothespins

glue

paint

glitter

ribbon

Snowflake Ornaments, Step-by-Step

Start by marking 1/4″ segments on your toilet paper tube. These don’t have to be perfectly exact, but do try to get them roughly the same size.

Then, cut the pieces out and slightly flatten them so they take on an oval shape.

For each snowflake, you’ll need 6 segments. Glue them together at their base and use clothespins to hold them together for 15-20 minutes while the glue dries.

Once the glue is dry, remove the clothespins and paint! We used a flat white color for one of the snowflakes, and a metallic silver enamel for the other. I highly, highly recommend the enamel. It added a gorgeous sheen to the finished product.

Before the paint dries, sprinkle glitter all over the snowflake, then lay it down to dry. If you miss your window, and the paint dries, just paint a small amount of glue over your snowflake, then glitter it.