It’s the last day of school before winter break and now we’re looking at two weeks of kids lounging around the house in desperate need of fun activities. Naturally, the first thing that came to mind was Game of Thrones. After all, what says Christmas more than political intrigue, dismemberment, incest, zombies, and pillaging hordes?
Actually my wife, Merran, is a big fan of the books and when I learned that designer Krystal Higgins had developed a series of Game of Thrones paper snowflake patterns based on the sigils of the major houses in the story I thought it would be fun to try the House Stark snowflake. The Starks are Merran’s favorite house from the books and as they say, winter is coming.
It seems to be a popular year for science fiction and fantasy snowflakes. Designer Anthony Herrera has been doing Star Wars snowflakes for a while and recently released a collection for this year. However, if you’re looking for activities with the kids I can’t recommend his designs, they are impressive, some are beautiful, and all of them are ridiculously difficult. On the other hand the Game of Thrones designs were developed with the idea that the average person could do them with a regular pair of scissors.
It’s true. I’ve been doing them with a full size adult pair of scissors mostly because they’re the sharpest pair in the house. Although I have found myself at times wishing for a small, precise, but still very sharp pair for some of the detail work. Even though I’ve managed to do most of the designs at this point I have sworn not to even try the Baratheon, those antlers are just crazy.
Once you start and you see the results it becomes addictive. Watching me, the kids became inspired and started cutting out their own snowflakes. They didn’t start with the Game of Thrones snowflakes but as they went through a few of their own ideas they started getting the hang of the best ways to cut the paper. Soon they were doing very elaborate designs of their own. I also found that working on the complex patterns gave me ideas on how to approach coming up with designs of my own.
The windows of the house are beginning to fill with snowflakes and a new family holiday activity, and perhaps a tradition, has begun. All thanks to an epic fantasy that is definitely not family friendly or appropriate for children in any way.