This is from an ongoing papercutting project that I’ve been doing (trying to work my way through all of the designs in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books.) For want of a better name I’ve called it “Egyptian with Snake”.
Closer up:
This is a bit of a strange design, to my eyes. Why is the person coming out of a bowl? Is the snake meant to look like it’s a sock puppet?
Er, I’m not sure what I might use the design for in future, but at least it was a very quick one to cut.
Does the snake look like a sock puppet on a third hand to you as well? You can chip in via the comments page, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.
This is from an ongoing papercutting project that I’ve been doing. (Basically I’m trying to work my way through all of the designs in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books.) The book only has numbers next to the designs and doesn’t have names or titles for them, so I usually call them whatever they look like. Hence “Tall Fruit Basket”…
Closer up:
Although I think a tall fruit basket would actually be rather impractical in real life (What are those fruits? How the heck do you reach the fruit at the bottom? How do you clean it if a kiwi fruit goes all mushy? If it’s not hollow all the way down to the bottom, then why does it need to be such a tall plinth to just hold fruit? If you did stretch your hand down to the bottom and grab a big grapefruit, is the middle section too narrow to let you pull the grapefruit back up? etc…), I like the overall lines of the design.
But I’m guessing I won’t be using the design again in a hurry.
Woman Reading…is me, at the moment! She looks very scholarly, and that reflects my current PhD-student status.
This is the latest design in the ongoing papercutting project that I’ve been doing. (Basically I’m trying to work my way through all of the designs in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books.) Today’s design is number #531 in the book. (They don’t have names – just numbers – so I have to come up with titles for the designs.)
Closer up:
I originally thought that she was a bit of a funny shape, but now that I look at the design again, I realise that she is sitting down and the giant book is resting on her knees.
Her face was the trickiest thing to adapt for papercutting, because I needed a way to attach the eyes and mouth to the side of the face without the links looking too obvious. I think if I cut this design again then I’d tweak the design of the hands. They look a bit claw-like and grabby.
That reminds me – I’ve just rejoined GAP (the Guild of American Papercutters (not that I’m American, but I don’t think there’s a UK version (?GUKP?!))) and there’s still time to enter their “Ex Libris” call for artwork. I’ve got at least another four months to go until the deadline, so I might come up with my own design for a bookplate.
Today’s design is number #505 in the book. As I’ve mentioned before in this project, the designs in the book don’t have names, so I’ve had to come up with my own descriptions. No prizes for guessing why this one is called “Branch Silhouette”.
Closer up:
I quite like this one, and I’m not even sure why, because the flowers and leaves aren’t that pretty. Maybe it’s just the branch itself that I actually like.
And I also managed to cut it out fairly accurately. There were lots of very thin lines that needed to be cut out, and they turned out OK.
If I ever do come up with a series of fairytale-based papercuts, I think this design will be a candidate for including within the design.
I was still listening to The Grand Sophy audiobook when I did this papercutting. I must read more (or listen to more) of Georgette Heyer’s books.
Day 14 of my accelerated papercutting project, where I’m trying to adapt and cut 100 designs in 100 days. Today’s cute ‘mini flower’ papercut design is number 517 in the 922 Decorative Vector Ornaments book.
Closer up:
As opposed to yesterday’s design, I like this one. It’s a tiny little flower and I really like the design, and I also managed to cut it out fairly well.
I should definitely be able to use this design in some other project. In fact I look forward to it!
While I cut it I was listening to the Audible book version of Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy. I LOVED it.
Do you like the mini flower papercut? Are you a Georgette Heyer fan too? You can chip in via the comments page, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.
My ongoing papercutting project continues, where I’m trying to adapt all 922 images from the book “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments“, to make them into papercutting designs, and then cut them out by hand, using scissors and scalpel. This one is design #522 in the book, and I’m running out of ideas so I’ve called it “Tiny Papercut Design Element”.
It is so small that it wouldn’t surprise me if this turned out to be another one of the designs in the book that comes from one of the larger designs. Oh well, in the meantime it was a nice quick one to cut:
Closer up:
This design might be tiny, but the shapes in it were very pleasing to cut. Looking at the closeup version I guess I could have worked on making the curves a little bit more curvy and flowing. But it’s such a small piece that to the naked eye the ‘lumpy’ curves aren’t as obvious.
I don’t even mind that it’s not-quite-symmetrical. That just makes it another case that shows it’s hand-cut and not laser-cut.
While I was cutting it I was listening to Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. What a disappointment! She seems to have blatantly plagiarised herself by doing an olden-days version of copying & pasting loads of dialogue from Pride and Prejudice into this one. Plus the plot is like one of those awful semi-scripted TV shows, where all the people in it never fancy the person they’re going out with because they’ve got their eye on someone else. And then [sorry for the spoiler, but the book has been out for a couple of hundred years, so you’ve had time to read it by now] the main character ends up with her cousin. Eew.
Any better suggestions about what I should call this design? You can chip in via the comments page, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.
A couple of years ago I set myself a papercutting project, where I adapted 100 papercutting designs (from the book “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments“), and then cut them out with a scalpel and scissors over 100 days. Since then I’ve carried on with the project, cutting about one design per week, but since we’re currently in the “2020 Covid-19 Lockdown”, I need a bit of occupational therapy to keep me calm, so I’m starting another 100-day project. Today’s design #534 from the book, and I’ve called it “tangly rose”.
Closer up:
This design seems like a bit of a strange mixture, to me. Those definitely aren’t rose leaves that the rose is sitting in. They remind me of seaweed or snakes…
But it was definitely a good exercise in terms of adapting and cutting the design. The rose was fairly straightforward to cut, but the tangly leaf/snake things were really tricky. The lines are very very fine. But my accidentally-bent scissors did a good job of helping me with a lot of the difficult bits.
Any comments about the design or the cutting? You can chip in via the comments page, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.
This ‘leafy corner sprig’ papercut is part of my ongoing papercutting project, where I’m adapting lots of designs for papercutting from the book “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments“, and am then cutting them with a scalpel. This one is design #686 from the book.
(Some of the links in this article might be ‘affiliate links’. If you’d like to know more, please check out the small print page…)
Closer up:
Are they leaves, or are they flowers? I’m not sure. But I like the overall effect of the swirly vine-y pattern. I think it would look really nice as a repeated decoration in the four corners of a larger design:
Now that I’m a couple of years into this project, I can definitely see that my cutting skills have improved. The cuts seem to look a lot cleaner and more accurate than they used to.
However, I must admit that the reason is due to a bit of a cheat, really. I cut each piece out … but then leave it aside for a few days or weeks. Then when I come back to it again I ‘edit’ it by snipping at it a bit more and smoothing and neatening lines. Each piece usually only needs a few tweaks, but those little tweaks really do make a big difference, overall.
Before, I used to just keep cutting until I either ran out of leisure time, or my eyes got tired, or I got frustrated with all of the mistakes that I was making. But now I’ve realised that if I’m making mistakes and ripping the designs then it’s either because I’m tired, or because the scalpel blade is getting dull. Both of those causes are easy to fix – I either need to stop and have a rest, or to change the blade.
I can’t remember exactly where I bought my replacement scalpel blades the last time, but it must have been either Ebay or Amazon. I bought a pack of 100 and I’m still using them, over two years later. These are the sort of blades that I searched for when I was looking at buying the replacements.
Any comments about the design or the cutting? You can chip in via the comments page, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.
Where can I buy replacement scalpel (x-acto) blades in the UK?
(Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you’d like to know more, please check out the small print page…)
My ongoing papercutting project continues, where I’m trying to adapt all 922 images from the book “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments“, to make them into papercutting designs, and then cut them out by hand. (Oh alright – for accuracy’s sake, I’m cutting them out with a scalpel, not my hand.) But in order to do that I need a constant supply of fresh, sharp scalpel blades. And if I’m going to cut 922 designs, then I will need 100+ replacement scalpel blades.
I haven’t found anywhere to buy them locally, so I need to buy them online. And it looks like the only way to buy blades economically is to order them in bulk. So I normally do a search on Amazon or Ebay.
But Amazon and Ebay sellers come and go all the time, and so do their products. Therefore I’ll try to keep updating this page whenever I find a supplier of 100+ replacement X-Acto / scalpel blades.
In the meantime, here are the latest links I’ve found:
As I mentioned above, suppliers keep changing, and so I don’t think these are the exact same replacement blades that I am currently using. But when I do run out of my current supply, this is the kind of search that I will be running, and these are the kind of blades that I will be buying.
Are you a supplier of replacement blades, or do you know of a good source? If so, please give me a shout! You can let me know via the comments section or Contact page, or Facebook, Twitteror Instagram.
My ongoing papercutting project continues (where I’m trying to adapt 922 images from the book “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments“, to make them into papercutting designs, and then cut them out by hand). This one is design #525 in the book, and it looks like a convolvulus flower, so that’s what I’ve called it.
(Some of the links in this article might be ‘affiliate links’. If you’d like to know more, please check out the small print page…)
Closer up:
This design reminds me of 1960s Chinese papercuts. (Wikipedia calls the style “chuāng huā (窗花), window flowers or window paper-cuts“, because the finished papercuts were often displayed in windows.)
It appeals to me because it’s sort-of-symmetrical-but-also-not-symmetrical.
The design was a fairly ‘forgiving’ piece to cut, because the cuts are mostly angular and jagged. And the lines that are curved tend to make nice sweeping lines rather than fiddly little shapes. So yes, overall it was very satisfying to cut, and even close-up I’m pretty happy with it.
While I was cutting it I was listening to “Blood’s Pride”, by Evie Manieri:
Any comments about the design or the cutting? You can chip in via the comments page, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.
