Beaded Snowflake Ornament

These were some of the original ornaments I made nearly ten years ago for our first Christmas tree. Like most of my best ideas, they needed to be cheap, easy to make in quantity and make a big impact on the tree. These snowflakes use what I always happen to have around, and they have a fairly big wingspan so they take up a lot of room on the tree without looking super bulky.

Start with four pieces of 24 gauge wire cut to around seven inches long or so. Twist these wires around in the center. Until the last step this will be fairly wobbly, but in this step you want to make it as secure as you can manage, so I usually give all of them together a twist in the center, and then I separate out a couple wires and twist those together, a couple other wires and twist those together, you get the idea.

This doesn’t have to be stable, you’ll fix that at the end, but you also don’t want things falling on the floor either, so just randomly twist things around for awhile. This will get covered up, so pretty doesn’t really matter. Spread the arms out to create a little snowflake skeleton.

Thread the beads you want on to one of the eight arms you’ve created, leaving around 1/2″ of wire exposed. Use a little pair of round nose pliers and make a loop to keep all those beads in place.

When you’ve got the beads onto all your arms and all your loops closed up, lay your snowflake down on a flat surface and arrange the legs until you’re satisfied with how they’re all laying. Put a big fat glob of hot glue right in the center.

Plop a flat backed marble right in the center of that hot glue pile. Depending on how stable the snowflake is when it dries, you may want to put some hot glue on the back of the center too.

Add a little hanger through one of those loops you made on the end of each arm, and you’ve got another simple, cheap, ornament.