Three snowballs, a top hat and two arms, drawn as one closed line. The hat joins the head, the arms join the middle ball and the balls overlap, so cutting round the outside gives you a whole snowman rather than five pieces to line up and glue. Two to a sheet at about 86 by 122mm as the page opens.
Why it lifts off in one piece
The joins are the whole problem with a snowman outline. Where the head meets the middle ball the two curves cross at about sixty degrees, and where the middle meets the bottom at about a hundred. Both are turns a pair of scissors can make without having to stop and back out.
A shallower overlap leaves a crease no blade can follow. A deeper one loses the waist altogether, and a snowman without waists is a pear.
The arms are stubs, not twigs
A drawn snowman usually gets twig arms. At six to a sheet a twig is about two millimetres of paper and it tears off while the child is still cutting it, so each arm here is a tapered wedge with a rounded end, nine units across at its narrowest.
The root matters as much as the width. Each arm is grafted onto the middle ball across a broad chord rather than meeting it at a point, so there is no sharp inside corner for a cut to run into and split.
A top hat rather than a bobble hat
The hat is a top hat because a bobble hat on a silhouette this size gets read as the hat and not as the snowman. There is a separate bobble hat template here for when the hat is the thing you actually want.
The brim is part of the same path, and its underside lands low enough down the head that the wedge between brim and cheek opens to about fifty degrees. Drawn higher up it closes to thirty, and scissors stall in it.
Three sizes and what each is for
Medium is where the page opens: two snowmen at about 86 by 122mm, which is the size to hold down on felt and draw round. Large gives one at roughly 151 by 216mm for a window or a display board. Small gives six at about 57 by 82mm, a set of tags or a class of children from one sheet.
Print on 160gsm if the shape itself is going to be handled or hung. Ordinary paper is fine when you are only drawing round it and keeping the pattern for next year.
Questions
- Does the snowman template cut out in one piece?
- Yes. The hat, the arms and the three snowballs are a single closed line, so cutting round the outside leaves a whole snowman with nothing to glue back together.
- What sizes does it print at?
- Three. One snowman at about 151 by 216mm, two at roughly 86 by 122mm, or six at about 57 by 82mm. The page opens on two to a sheet.
- Why is there no face on the template?
- A template is a cutting line, and anything printed inside it gets in the way of the scissors. Coal eyes, a carrot nose and a scarf belong on the snowman colouring sheets instead.
- Will the arms survive a child cutting them out?
- They are tapered wedges with rounded ends rather than twigs, nine units wide at the narrowest point, which still works out at roughly four millimetres even at the smallest print size.