Valentine Heart and Fairytale Papercuts

It’s been such a wonderfully busy week in the lead up to Valentine’s Day, but I’ve finally found time to finish off some papercuts and upload them to this blog and to my etsy shop. The first follows along the Valentines theme, with a decorated heart and the delicately cut words ‘You Make My Heart Sing’. I am very fond of the two little birds in this, and the ornate decoration took such a long time to perfect! When designing papercuts, it’s really important to make sure the lines are all connected so that it doesn’t ‘fall apart’ once you begin cutting. I quickly found a good way to work this out is to draw the image in pencil, then go over it in pen, checking all the joins. It sometimes takes a little while for your eyes to adjust to which bit is being cut out, so I usually scribble a pencil shading on the cut out bits if I keep getting confused! The image is then scanned into my computer and printed out on thin printer paper, and attached to a piece of card so that printer paper acts as a guideline for where to cut the card. It’s really useful to masking tape it to a self healing cutting mat to stop them sliding around as you cut!

The second is inspired by all the fairytales I’ve been reading lately, and features a fairytale scene with an elegantly written ‘Believe’ across the page. I spent such a long time picking out coloured card for backing, and eventually decided on a lovely light blue shade which always reminds me of the painted illustrations in old fairy story books.

I really love the imperfections that come from hand cutting paper, but I wanted to be able to sell multiples of these at a reasonable price in my etsy shop. I decided to compromise, by hand cutting both of the designs and cutting electronically cut duplicates for my shop. I am hoping to have many more papercuts availible soon, as I enjoy the process of designing and making them so much!

Girl on a Swing Papercut

I’ve been playing around with papercuts a lot these days. This latest one reminds me of Victorian children’s stories and the power of the imagination. It features a beautiful illustration of a young girl on a swing, which is pulled forwards from the children’s story text in the background, creating a 3D effect as if she is swinging out of the book. Since she swings from the tops of the ropes, the piece is quite delicate, but the glass in the frame protects her from harm.

The cut itself is a continuous line, nowhere near as complicated as the paper cuts I was making last week, but the 3D aspect adds extra depth and the design means I’m able to make a few to sell in my etsy shop, without the price raising because of the time it takes to make. The paper cut is made from aged off-white card which reveals natural brown card underneath, and framed in a charmingly distressed shadow box frame, which creates a lovely old style which features in some of my other paper cuts. The Colours of Love papercut below is larger and uses the same colour scheme, and has recycled paint charts showing through the cut card. Both of these are now for sale in my etsy shop.

Paper Cut Escapades

A few months ago I spent time drawing several designs for paper cuts (here, here and here), which never ended up being cut because of my lack of craft knife skills when it came to the details I wanted. But it’s a new year, and with that, comes new challenges, and new ways to overcome problems. So since I was having trouble with the details being so small, I figured, why not try cutting a larger version, so that the small details would also be bigger and easier to cut?

I took the design I posted a while back, based on the memories of travelling as a child, and started work on a larger version. It’s becoming so cold here that my fingertips felt frozen whilst I was trying to cut the paper! Although it’s not finished yet, I am very pleased with the results so far!

I’ve also got a few framed simpler papercuts availble in my etsy shop:

And Another Travelling Papercut

Another Travelling Papercut

Continuing on from last week, I have made another papercut design based on childhood travelling memories. I definitely prefer the brown paper to the block colour now, and I am particularly fond of the delicate washing line and oil lamp, as well as the weaving on the bender tent. There is one more image on the way that should be completed with celerity.

Elsa Mora: Paper Cuts and Sculptures

Following my adventures into paper cutting, I have been looking at the work of multimedia artist, Elsa Mora. Her website hosts a collection of art forms, varying from porcelain sculpture, assembled found objects, paintings, drawings, and both two and three dimensional paper cuts. I lost myself for many hours whilst browsing her portfolio and blog. Her work is beautifully detailed, such as the paper ring pictured above with a miniscule fox sitting outside a house, and the elegant intertwining elements of her paper cuts.

Traveller Paper Cutting

Paper cutting has been on my mind a lot over the last few years, but I am not entirely certain I have the technical skill to create the works of art I envision in my mind. After many messy attempts I have concluded that although I am a competent craft knife user, when it comes to the detailed lines and delicate card cutting of the designs, I can’t seem to master the technique. But I do love paper cuts and I love drawing plans for them even if I am not able to complete them myself.

The image above is the first in a series of paper cuts based on my memories of travelling as a child. Although, of course, it is not actually a paper cut, but a line drawing coloured in Photoshop so I could get an idea of what it would look like when I eventually perfected my cutting skills, or more likely, gave in and sent it to be laser cut, avoiding those pesky human errors that tend to add charm and character. I think it may work well in block colour as print too, but I do prefer it with the brown card backing.