Snowflakes for Sandy Hook

I think that all of us have been affected by the events in Sandy Hook.  And I think that we have all wished that there was something, anything, that we could do.

Thank you to SewCalGal for posting something small and concrete that we can do.

There is a call for Snowflakes, by the PTA for the school in Sandy Hook.  Snowflakes are wanted to decorate the school, for when the kids return in January.  These can be paper, fabric, machine embroidery, mixed-media arts, etc.  

For those with a fabric die cutter snowflake this is a great time to make some snowflakes. 

EmbLibrary is also giving a free machine embroidery snowflake design away to encourage those with ME machines to help make snowflakes.

Sarah Vedeler has made one of her snowflake embroidery designs available for a short period of time.

Please make and send snowflakes by January 12, 2013 to the Connecticut PTSA address

Connecticut PTSA
60 Connolly Parkway
Building 12, Suite 103
Hamden, CT 06514 USA

I wanted to do this activity with my two boys so that we could talk about what happened together.  So, I came up with something simple that we could easily do.

Since I have two Go! dies with snowflakes on them I decided to use those to make snowflakes to hang in the school.

We placed paper over the are of the die that we wanted to cut and placed a cutting mat on top and ran it through the cutter.

 

Nope that's not my hand!  Here is my oldest running the Go!

 My youngest was manning the Studio cutter with the adapter pad to get pretty snowflakes.  You can embellish these anyway that you would like.

As an aside - the paper that comes on the Studio dies, between the label and the die, is perfect for this!  It is good sturdy, slightly shinny, card stock.

 

Next we punched a hole in the top of each snowflake and placed a Christmas tree ornament hanger in each.  You could also use fishing line and tie a loop or how ever else you would like to hang them.

 

And now we have a pile of snowflakes that I will mail out today!  This gave us a great opportunity to talk about the events and my kids feel good that they were able to do something small but tangible to help the children in the school feel better.

Some of you might be wondering why I didn't do machine embroidery or something harder.  Well, my two boys made all of these will my help only on the first couple - the rest was completely them.  That is why I didn't do something harder.  I wanted this to come from their hands.

I encourage you all to cut a few snowflakes.  I know that many of you have at least one snowflake die, or machine embroidery design and I am sure that you could make at least one snowflake to help welcome a sad child back to school.