An adventure in papercutting.

A year or two ago, I stumbled across the idea of papercutting because of this gorgeous Alice in Wonderland template. It was so beautiful that I bookmarked it.

Paper cuts amaze me. I love the way they look (probably because I love silhouettes). Even the simplest ones are pretty, but have you ever seen the extreme 3D ones like this or this? Wow.

I came across the Scherenschnitte blog again a few days ago. There's so much lovely inspiration there! And Cindy has Template Tuesdays, when she posts a free papercutting template. Since I already had the few necessary supplies (paper, a cutting mat, and a craft knife), I decided to give it a try.

Here's my first attempt, from the Woodsy template.

Isn't the design adorable? I love the whole woodland animal thing that's popular right now, so I think the deer, squirrel, and owl are too cute. I also love green and purple together, so I glued the papercutting onto a purple background. The purple is much darker in real life, so it's more subtle and less Tim Burton-ish. :)

The girl is supposed to have three or four other little dots cut out near the flower in her hair, but they were too tiny for me to attempt with the craft knife. That dark spot next to the flower was my abandoned attempt to use my hole punch instead.

Papercutting is supposedly relaxing, but I can't say that it was for me. :) It was a very interesting process, but my craft knife was too dull and the blade kept falling out (I finally hot glued it in there), so I was a little stressed. That, combined with the fact that this is my first time, left me with rough edges on a lot of the details. You can't tell until you get really close, though.

The poor little squirrel got the worst of it. He also almost lost his tail during a particularly sloppy cut.

I've not yet seen any close-ups of real papercutters' work, so I'm not sure how smooth you can actually get the edges and curves. But I'm assuming they look much better than mine. :)

I bought a new X-acto knife with a fine point blade yesterday, so we'll see if that makes a difference. I might try using thinner paper, too, instead of cardstock.

I found the perfect shade of green paint at Hobby Lobby and put two coats over a black 8x10 frame. I'm really excited about having another quirky piece of art to put in my room. {My room is like a small, crowded museum of oddities and collections of things I love.}

P.S. The bookbinding tutorial is in progress! The journal is made and the photographs have been taken, so now I'm just in the process of writing everything out, trying to decipher my sloppy notes. It should be up sometime in the next week. :)

Until next time,