Brahms' Lullaby Papercut

I made this for a new friend's baby shower. She's a classical cellist and music teacher, having her first baby, so I had the idea to use Brahms' Lullaby and design a papercut around it. I don't think I've ever done anything with this many thin lines. It was a little tricky!



I spent about a day messing around with the design--deciding what I wanted to use and how to fit everything together. This is an early thumbnail sketch (about 2" wide in real life!).  I usually end up doing this sort of thing at my computer desk, so I can look things up easily, but then of course I keep bouncing back and forth between my project and other distractions. That's why it took all day.  (Ah, the internet... such a fabulous help and such a deep sucking pit of hindrance!)



This is nearly how I want it but still pretty loose. I scanned this and put a straighter frame on it in Photoshop, then printed it out again (lowering the opacity to make it light gray) and then went back over everything more more precisely, finalizing things like the spacing of the notes.  Then I printed that backwards (flipped horizontally) and did a graphite transfer to trace it onto white cardstock. 

I started cutting Friday night (after we got back from the fair) and had about three hours to finish it up this morning. I finished ten minutes before the shower started.  Whew! (My fingers are still feeling it!)

I'm going to re-create this one in Illustrator and make a cutting file.  That will be some good Illustrator practice!

Teacher Papercuts

Spring Squares

Quick papercut this morning.

Baby Card

A quick card for Ida, who likes orange.

I don't think I've tried papercutting with watercolor paper before--it's pretty thick but it works!

Back to the Ol' Cutting Board.

One of the ladies that I visit teach just had a birthday, and I was feeling the creative bug, and it had been a while since I'd done some papercutting... so this happened.  I didn't intend for it to be quite this elaborate, but it was a fun project.



The cutting part took maybe about three hours.. I find it relaxing. (Kind of zen--get in the cutting zone.) I moved Doug's little work lamp over to my computer desk and sat and listened to NPR podcasts while I worked. I was able to get a lot done while Andy was at preschool, and then finished it up after he got back and we had lunch.



The finished product! I don't think I've combined paper cutting with torn edges before--it just came to me in a flash of inspiration, and I love how it turned out.  (I tore the edges before tracing my design onto the back.) 

After this I recreated the whole thing in Adobe Illustrator.  I've been trying, off and on, to familiarize myself with the program enough to be able to create cool vector graphics like I used to do in Corel Draw.  I think I'm finally getting the hang of it.  Yay!

On Papercutting

For a Relief Society (church) activity we had an "Unfinished Object" night over at my friend Jeanette's house. I obviously couldn't lug my enormous painting over there, and I was feeling conflicted about some crochet projects, so I decided to do some papercutting.  I made this as a gift for one of my Visiting Teachees, whose birthday is this week.  (Could be a bookmark or whatever--it's about six inches high.)   I combined some elements from this piece  (by Sara Burgess) with a "double happiness" character in the middle.  She served a mission in Taiwan, so I just thought that would be a fun touch.



I've done a lot of knife work, off and on.  (Lots of cut-out titles for scrapbook pages.)  I find it oddly relaxing, and it's always fun to see the bits of paper coming away and revealing the design. 

I usually do a graphite transfer to trace the image onto the paper (backwards, so the pencil marks are on the wrong side).

I like to cut on glass.  (The granite worked okay too, but I was happy to find my glass again.)  I know people who prefer to use self-healing mats, but I find that my knife blade kind of catches down in the mat and won't glide around those corners quite so easily. I also get a nicer edge on glass. (When I use a self-healing mat, the "lip" of the cut ends up bending the wrong way.)

I pull the knife towards me in little smooth surges, and sort of "walk" the paper around with the fingers of my left hand. One tip I've given people before is "Pretend you're a sewing machine." The cutting comes from the knife but all the turning comes from the paper.

Since I'm right handed, I like to have some light coming in from the left side so my hand doesn't cast a shadow right where I'm cutting.   I find that curves go much better if I cut them clockwise rather than counter-clockwise (maybe this would be reversed for lefties). If you watch me cut, I'm always turning the paper around different ways. It also helps to keep the paper big enough so that you've got something to hold onto while you're cutting, but not so big that it bumps into your arm when you turn it. 

A sharp blade makes a big difference.  I went through three blades on this.  (These snap-off style knives have a cap on the end that you can pull off and slip over the blade to snap it safely.)  I keep meaning to get an X-acto knife but I just haven't done it yet.  I like my metal craft knife just fine, but I might like an X-acto even better.