Paper cutting day two

Dream House #1,  8″ x 11″

I think I have found a new obsession. And while you might not believe this, it *isn’t* low-light photography. (Curse these gloomy afternoons!)

Working a papercut is a delightful combination of two of my favourite things; illustration and craft. For me, the excuse to get away from the computer, on which I do most of my illustration work, and slowly carve out an image with my hands is amazingly exciting. 

Luckily the girls played happily together yesterday (mostly) so I got a good chunk of time to slice away at this with my new knife (beautiful sharp blades! I only used one for this but I probably should have switched it out for another as it was starting to drag towards the end), my little snippity-snip scissors and my new fine paper.

I loved working out the design. I drew it completely in my sketchbook first rather than leaving anything to chance as I just don’t have the skills or confidence (or talent!) to go it freestyle as Elsita does.  I decided I wanted some parts to be completely symmetrical like the traditional German papercuts (thanks to Amy for putting me on to that) which I cut first and some parts I wanted to be asymmetrical which I went back and cut after I had flattened out the paper again. 

Wanna do some? I found these helpful: Martha Stewart cutting a symmetrical paper valentine. The Skinny laMinx tutorial is good too. Of course, there are bazillions of links in Elsita’s sidebars so do check those out too. I love the shadow work of Andrea Dezsö.

Speaking of folded paper and symmetry – Wow!