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Over the years I have created many affordable Christmas ornaments. There really is no need to spend a lot of money on Christmas decor if you are willing to make them yourself. Today I want to show you how to make a toilet paper roll Christmas craft. Don’t throw out your toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls! Collect them and turn them into toilet paper roll snowflakes. I think they look so cute hanging on our tree or used as a Christmas present topper.
Toilet paper roll crafts are not a new idea and have been done by many others, however, I found that some of them can look a bit too crafty if that makes sense. I just want to show that they can look quite elegant and more as if you purchased them somewhere.
How to make toilet paper roll snowflakes
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I absolutely love making different kinds of DIY snowflakes. You should also check out my paper bag snowflakes, snowflake canvas artwork, and posterboard snowflake ornaments if you don’t feel like collecting a lot of toilet paper tubes.
Materials needed
- empty toilet paper rolls (or you can use paper towel rolls or other cardboard tubes but I found them harder to work with when I tried because they tend to be thicker)
- hot glue gun with a thin tip and glue sticks (I use this glue gun and love it)
- scissors
- ribbon or hooks for hanging
- (paint, glitter, glitter glue, or rhinestones are optional for additional decoration if you want to let your creativity go wild)
Toilet paper roll snowflake video tutorial
If for some reason the video doesn’t load for you here on my blog then you can watch it on my YouTube channel instead.
Step-by-step instructions
- Flatten a toilet paper roll with your hand or the edge of scissors like I did.
- You can use a pencil and ruler to mark even sections on the flattened toilet paper roll. I didn’t take it that seriously and just eyeballed the measurements while cutting somewhat even sections.
- As you can see they turned out great that way and I got about 12 pieces of cut toilet rolls that way.
- Take 6 pieces of the flattened and cut toilet paper rolls to start. Take one of those pieces and add a small dab of hot glue to the tip of one side.
- Now glue another strip to that dab as pictured.
- Keep gluing the strips together that way until all 6 pieces are glued together.
- The shape should now look like a flower. Make sure that the flower shape still lies flat on your surface while gluing them all together. This is the starting point for different types of snowflakes.
- Time to form the first smaller snowflake shape! Take a cut strip and fold it in half.
- The shape should look like bunny ears and you will need 12 of those smaller pieces.
- Take a bunny earpiece and add a dab of glue to the tip.
- Insert that piece into the center of the flower shape that you glued together earlier as pictured.
- Glue 6 folded pieces that way into the center of the flower shape to create a new more intricate flower shape.
- Take the remaining 6 bunny ear shapes and glue them between the flower petal shapes all the way around.
- When done, you have simple small snowflake shapes. Here you can see what they look like when you use brown versus gray toilet paper rolls.
- Time to form a second larger snowflake shape! Once again you will start with a flower shape the same way I described in steps 1 through 7.
- Take a cut strip and this time fold the one side where it was flattened inwards with your finger.
- Add a small dab of hot glue to the center where you just folded the piece inward.
- Use your fingers to squeeze the piece together while the glue cools off but be careful not to burn your fingers with the hot glue. This will create a heart shape.
- Squeeze another small dab of hot glue to the inside bottom part of the heart shape.
- Push the center of the heart shape towards the bottom where you just added the hot glue. Hold the shape in place while the glue cools off.
- Make 6 of these odd heart-shaped pieces.
- Dab a bit of hot glue to the outside tip of the heart-shaped piece.
- Insert that piece into one of the flower petals of the starter shape. This time the inside tips and not the center.
- Repeat that with all 6 heart-shaped pieces which will create the shape pictured in this step.
- Take another flattened and cut strip and add a bit of hot glue to the tip on one side.
- Slide that piece in between two flower petals.
- Repeat that with 5 more flattened pieces which will create a snowflake shape. You could stop here or keep going the way I did in the next steps.
- Form 12 folded bunny ear pieces the same way I described earlier. Add dabs of hot glue to the tips.
- Insert those bunny ear pieces all the way around the perimeter of the snowflake shape the way that is pictured in this step.
- And voila, you have a beautiful larger snowflake.
My tips for making toilet paper roll snowflakes
- One roll gives you about 12 pieces the way I cut them. For the smaller snowflake designs, I used 18 pieces to give you an idea of how many rolls of toilet paper you need. For the larger snowflakes, I used 30 pieces each.
- It helps to lay out your snowflake pattern first before gluing it all together. Be creative and try out different patterns!
- Ensuring that the snowflake still lays flat on the counter helps the shape look nice and not too messy.
- For different looks, you can paint them by brushing on acrylic paint, spraying them with spray glue and dipping them into glitter, or dipping them into craft glue or Mod Podge and then dipping them into glitter. I, however, love them as is with the paper since they go with the rest of my decor.
- Use a hot glue gun with a small tip that gives you good control over how much glue comes out. They get less messy and nicer looking if you only use small dabs of hot glue.
- You can do this Christmas craft with children but make sure to switch out the hot glue with craft glue. I burned my fingers several times while making them.
Photos of finished toilet paper roll snowflakes
These two different easy snowflakes were incredibly hard to photograph because you can see through them. I like them without any added embellishments. If having them plain isn’t your thing then you can certainly paint them with craft paint or spray paint. Or you can dip them in glue and glitter or glitter glue.
I didn’t want to poke small holes into my snowflakes to hang them and instead just looped ribbon through one of the flattened pieces as you can see below.
I love that these little snowflakes look like you sketched them with a pencil. Don’t you think so?
Below I just wanted to show you how much more intricate these toilet paper roll snowflakes look compared to my larger paper bag snowflakes that I mentioned earlier.
I made these little snowflakes last year for our Christmas tree after this photo was taken.
All the other handmade ornaments are listed below, except the dried orange slices that I simply dried in my food dehydrator. No tutorial is needed since they are that easy to make. Simply slice them up, place them inside the dehydrator and dry them on a fruit setting. That’s it.
More of my affordable Christmas ornaments and decor projects
Tschüß and I hope you enjoyed today’s little snowflake craft and holiday season.
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