h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey,

I've been looking into various Christmas traditions a bit more fervently than normal this year, and one tradition that I've always seen done on old movies and TV shows is that thing where people will fold a sheet of paper in some fashion, cut it in certain ways, and produce a lengthy string of paper angels, snowmen, snowflakes, or sometimes just plain old paper dolls all connected in a line.

The trouble is, researching for this on Google and Wikipedia is problematic as I don't know the technical name for the process, and researching descriptions of it just winds up giving me downloadable PDFs for paper dolls I could print and cut out along with various accessories that they can wear and carry.

So I ask you, my fellow h2g2 researchers, to please help me figure out how to do this thingy and how to do some more research on my own. Thanks.

It came through as Paper Doll Chain:


http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIC_en-GBGB221GB241&q=paper+doll+chain


Merry Christmas


lil xx

For individual snowflakes (not a chain of them):

Using a mug/small saucepan, draw circles in paper and cut them out.

Fold each in half, then fold both ends in to the middle, overlapping each other, so you end up with a segment/slice of paper, six layers thick.

Using sharp scissors, snip out holes and geometric shapes - the more intricate the better - experiment with this.

When you unfold, you have a hexagonally-symmetric snowflake.

Icy

http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com/ should allow you to make snowflakes with virtual paper and scissors to practise this.

There are some pretty good links there, so this post may be redundant, but:

Snowflake chains: Fold a long strip of paper over and back on its self several times, as with paper dolls. Draw a rough circle or an octagon on one side of the 'concertina', making sure that the circle touches both of the folded sides. Cut out the parts of the circle that don't touch the folded edges. Fold the circle in half and half again. Cut out shapes to create the snowflake effect, still careful not to cut off the folded edges. unfold.

There tend to be a lot of these sort of things in children's craft books, as well as craft websites. Happy researching.

Thanks, everyone.

Paper Doll Chain I think.

Raxa xxx

P.S www.clubpenguin.com is soo awsome!