How to Make 6-Pointed Paper Snowflakes

Step 11: Replicating a Real Snowflake

From time to time I try and copy a real snowflake that I see in a book or online. It's impossible to copy an actual snow crystal exactly because they're simply too intricate, they're 3-D, and some parts of the snowflake are attached with a layer of ice so thin that it looks invisible.....if you tried to copy one exactly, it would fall apart. However, you can still try to mimic the form of a real snowflake.

Real snowflakes often have large areas of "blank space" that don't look very good when rendered in paper. A flip through a snowflake photography book shows that quite a few snowflakes form as just a simple hexagon with few details. If the snowflake you're copying has a lot of blank space, embellish it anyway. Since it can't be an exact replica, it might as well be pretty!

Basically, just use the technique from step 10. Imagine the how a real snowflake would look if it were a slice of a pie. Think of the clock hands at 1 o'clock.

Above are two examples of snowflakes that I've tried to replicate. I've added a second view of each with the "slice" highlighted.