Star Wars Paper Snowflakes

My son turned 7 last week, so the next few posts are going to be about his Star Wars Birthday party.  When my son told me he wanted to have a Star Wars birthday, I  got a little nervous.  I hadn't watched the movies in so long, and wasn't into them that much when I did watch them.  A few google searches later and I found some AWESOME stuff.  These paper snowflakes were among my favorite.

Picture it: me, an exacto knife, a snowflake template, and a cup of salted caramel mocha at 5 AM.  There was something peaceful about sitting there folding and cutting these little guys out in the wee dark hours of the morning (did I mention quiet morning because the kids were still sleeping?)

I had picked up a couple of kirigami books while living in Japan, but was too intimidated to open them yet (kirigami is Japanese for folding and cutting paper).  After successfully making these, I am hooked!  Be prepared for a lot more kirigami this year!

This is my favorite:

You can attach them to a string and hang them from the ceiling or tape them to the wall, either way, they are sure to stun your visitors.

I ended up only finishing three before the party, but I have found ten templates online.  I found them here at matters of grey.

You can see some photos below that I took and edited to show how to fold the paper once you print the template.  It was the only mildly confusing part.

First, print the template.

Fold on line labelled 1, keep the side with the shadow of the character on the top:

Next, fold back on the line marked back 1, it will look like this (the shadow of the image you will be cutting, is facing back for now):

Then fold back in on the line marked "in 2"(the shadow of the image you are cutting is facing you again).:

Continue folding back and in until you finish back 3, at this point, you will have a wedge shaped accordian like piece of paper.  Using your exacto knife, cut out along the outside of the grey areas.  Unfold and:

I am saving these in a special folder, I think we will hang them up every Christmas and each year, I will try to add one more to the collection!

Now, the real question, were these for my son or for me ;)