Borax crystal snowflakes

I have seen these beautiful crystalized snowflakes on other people's blogs in the past, and finally this year, we got around to making our own.

I found directions here, and they were very simple. We already had everything on the supply list:

Borax-(we had this from making Elmer's glue Gak)

pipe cleaners

string

boiling water

large mouth jars

pencils

Cut a pipe cleaner into three pieces and twist it into a snowflake shape. Tie one end of the string to one point of the star and the other end of the string to a pencil. (This suspends the snowflake in the blorax suspension.)
Mark and Grace formed beautiful snowflake shapes, Luke's is more artistically free of boundaries. He refused the one that I made into a flake for him.
Boil water, and into this add borax powder. Kept stirring and dissolving the borax into the water until you see some borax no longer being dissolved and falling to the bottom of the jar. The solution is now super saturated.
Add a few drops of blue food coloring if desired.
Place the snowflake into the water.
Put the jars in a place where they will not be disturbed for overnight. This was the biggest challenge that we had with this project. But with proper signage-we succeeded with this step.

TA-DA!!!

The next morning we had gorgeous borax crystal snowflakes. I was very pleasantly surprised with the results. They sparkle, don't seem to break easily and were so easy.

They are much stronger and harder than they look. I wasn't sure if we would be able to use them on the tree, but we have had no problem with them breaking, even with the kids taking them on and off the tree to show whomever comes into the house.

This will definitely be something that we do every year to add beauty (and science) to the Christmas tree.