About This Site
|
I Do Not Have Time To Build A Website
I absolutely do not have the time to build a website about paper snowflakes. I'm a public-school teacher, father of two, husband, photographer, and printmaker. Find the "free time" in my week. Go ahead. Yeah, that's what I thought. You can't find any.
And yet this site exists.
I think it's fair to say that, while I am not obsessed with making paper snowflakes, I do love making the things.
If you like to create things, cutting snowflakes is a form of near-instant gratification. I find cutting snowflakes helps me relax during a stressful stretch of the school year and, in the right hands, they make for excellent decorations. I've been telling myself for years I needed some record of the hundreds of flakes I cut each year (at least of the better ones) as an archive and teaching tool. This year, I resolved to start the site and document the snowflakes of 2021 before the year was up--even if it killed me. I'll catch up on my sleep starting New Year's Day.
And yet this site exists.
I think it's fair to say that, while I am not obsessed with making paper snowflakes, I do love making the things.
If you like to create things, cutting snowflakes is a form of near-instant gratification. I find cutting snowflakes helps me relax during a stressful stretch of the school year and, in the right hands, they make for excellent decorations. I've been telling myself for years I needed some record of the hundreds of flakes I cut each year (at least of the better ones) as an archive and teaching tool. This year, I resolved to start the site and document the snowflakes of 2021 before the year was up--even if it killed me. I'll catch up on my sleep starting New Year's Day.
The Pictures
Except for the three photos at the top of the "LEGIT" SNOWFLAKES page (which I shamelessly ripped off using Google Image), every single image of a snowflake on this site is a cell phone photograph taken of a snowflake I cut by hand, using only scissors (and, when I'm in a hurry to make dozens of snowflakes with people's names in the pattern, two hole punchers). Most of the ones in the Gallery were photographed on my desk on a piece of blue cardstock, held flat by a piece of plexiglass. Many in the PARTY TRICKS pages were photographed after being mounted to a piece of cardstock (with no plexiglass). I make no apologies for the quality of the photos. My process isn't fancy, my editing was quick and crude, and I was in a hurry. (Maybe you've heard: I don't have time to build a website.)
|
Cutting Corners
- The little diagrams that teach you how to cut legit snowflakes were all made in MS PowerPoint and they're pretty crude. I made them back when that was the only "graphics software" I really knew to use. I hope to remake them in Adobe Illustrator at some point in the future.
- The snowflakes in the GALLERY pages were, for me, enjoyable exercises in rapid-fire design and creation, often done in stolen moments during the school day. They're a little rough around the edges and haven't been carefully trimmed or touched-up.
- I set myself the task of making more than 50 snowflakes personalized with people's names this year. The snowflakes in PARTY TRICKS pages are more carefully trimmed and touched-up, but I make no claims to perfection. I also used a pair of hole punchers to speed up the process of cutting some of the letters that have openings.