Round Tree (work in progress)

Here you can see how I reproduce my papercuttings. The original papercutting sold on Etsy and I relisted it (and it sold again). So I printed a pale grey version on layout paper to the exact size that I needed and stuck it to my black paper with a tiny bit of rubber cement. I can then cut through both layers of paper to get an exact replica of my original cutting. The rubber cement rubs off very easily afterwards.

Beaded keyring tassles

OK, so I know these aren't papercuttings, but I think they're worth showing anyway. Benji and I spent several lovely hours together making these pretty beaded keyring tassles to sell at his school summer fair next weekend. We were looking for something relatively quick and simple to make and I found this idea in the Better Homes and Gardens book, "Crafts to Make and Sell". Of course, being the crafting hoarder that I am, I just happened to have a great stash of perle cotton and seed beads in the shed! We still need to make a whole load more, but hope they're going to be popular.

New England landscape (reverse) - work in progress

This is the reverse side of the papercutting so far. This is about a quarter of the final composition. This cut portion measures approximately 23cm (w) x 20cm (h). I'm pretty happy with the sense of depth that I'm getting and the whole thing is quite stable and not flopping about when I lift it up. So far, so good then! Fingers crossed for the rest of it.

New England Landscape (work in progress)

This is first section that I've cut on the new picture. As you can see, it's the reverse of the sketch below, with a few more bits added. It's too early to tell whether the thin connecting lines are going to give the impression of hills or whether it's just going to make it look too busy and fussy. Also, I'm a little concerned that my haystacks look a bit like mad, duck-faced trolls (!), but I should be able to fix that later on.

I've started sketching out the design for my next papercutting (sorry about the poor photo quality). This is just the top corner so far. My aim here is to try and get some sense of depth into the picture, which I haven't done before. I thought it would be useful to post up pictures at different stages of development so you can see how I go about tackling it. Let's hope it works out!

Kite flying by Li Sui

I just wanted to bring your attention to another papercutter. Li is just brilliant. Her work is like fine lace and delicate beyond belief ... and she's so prolific! I just don't know how she manages to produce so much work. She's amazing. Not only is she a brilliant papercutter, but she makes all sorts of other beautiful things as well and has an etsy store. Check her out on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/suili/) or click on her blog link in my favourite blog list.

Folk Art Tree with Singing Birds Papercutting 7" x 5"

I was looking at my flickr stats this morning and was surprised to see that, of all my papercuttings, this one is by far the most viewed - and it was one of the first ones I did and only took me about an hour or so. I just found that interesting. It measures 7" x 5".

This is my tree on the Oxfam poster that's being used for an event about climate change. Cool!

Framing makes such a huge difference - even in a simple IKEA frame. Here it is standing on my handmade pennyrug.

Folk Art Tree with Nesting Birds

This one was a birthday present for my sister. I thought it would make a change to mount it on a subtle colour - and it also matches her house!

These two papercuttings were specially commissioned by a client in Boston. Each papercutting measured 15" x 11". There was a third piece as well, but I can't seem to find the photo of that one for some reason! Silly me.

This is Harry Illustration's (on flickr and at http://www.harryillustration.co.uk/) painted version of the same original image. I really like the way she's adapted the design to create a unique Christmas picture.

This is the original image that I used as my inspiration. It can be found in "Folk Art Designs" by Jane Greenwood, published by Search Press.

I had a bit of free time today as Tim took the kids out for a little while. Although I usually like to design my papercuttings from scratch, I wanted to find a project that I could complete in a couple of hours, so I adapted this papercutting from an existing folk art design. Adapting designs for papercuttings can be a bit tricky as you have to make sure all your elements are joined together, but this comes with practice.

This piece was cut from green origami paper and measures 23cm x 23cm. You can see that I've extended some of the design elements, such as ribbons and flowers so that they touch the border. This is to add a little strength to the papercutting.

I finished this papercutting last week. I was inspired by the beautiful papercuttings of Susanne Schlapfer-Geiser. Check out her book "Traditional Papercutting - The Art of Scherenschnitte", published by Lark Books. It will soon be winging it's way to Washington State USA, to its lovely new owner, and fabulous mosaic artist Crystal Thomas (http://crystalthomasmosaics.com/). Thanks Crystal!

Oxfam are going to be using my Round Tree papercutting for a poster about the environment. Watch this space for a copy of the poster.

This was my very first papercutting. I used black origami paper for this piece and it measures 6" x 6". I used an ordinary scalpel for this papercutting as I hadn't yet discovered the Xcelite knife and so the cutting is a little crude.

This is my first large papercutting (approximately 50cm x 35cm). The original is hanging in my parents' apartment and actual size prints are available in my etsy store. The paper I've used here is matt black scherenschnitte paper (white on the reverse). I ordered it years ago from the Panduro mail order catalogue and unfortunately they don't sell it any more. If anyone knows where you can still get it, can you let me know! I use an Xcelite craft knife with replaceable blades.

Hi there!

Hi and welcome to my new blog!

Some of you may have come across me on Flickr or Etsy, where I'm known as Vegaslammy.

I hope you enjoy browsing around and find my things interesting enough to come back another time!

Sooz

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