This is papercut 086 of my epic papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book). I’m adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.
Woo, the cuts on this one are quite crisp…
…even when you look at them up close. And I still had a blunt blade and was basically just hacking away at the paper. I’m quite pleased with this 🙂
This is papercut 085 (only 15 more to go!) of my papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book. I am adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.)
Because of the many repetitive elements in this design I think it might be one of the designs that would look better if cut by laser.
However, I’m not too disappointed by the hand-cut version. The ‘sun ray’ bits are quite crisp, actually.
As well as the central sun/flower design, I can also see things in this design that remind me of fish. (Or sharks. Or maybe birds.) When I move onto my next epic papercutting project (of creating all of my own designs from scratch) then I might remember this one, and try to hide some fish or animals in an abstract-looking design.
This is papercut 084 of my papercutting quest (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book, in preparation for incorporating them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.)
I really like this design, and it didn’t seem to take very long to cut. That reminds me – I must start timing how long the cuts actually take, because I really have no idea how long each design takes to cut. I enjoy the process so much and find it so ‘therapeutic’ that sometimes I can be cutting a really big project and it feels like the time is just flying by. And then other times, of course, I could be fighting with a fiddly design, in fading daylight, and using a blunt blade that I can’t be bothered to change – and in those cases the cuts seem to take forever.
I’m also getting better at tidying up the cuts before I take close-up photos of them!
Papercut 082 : Oh dear! I’m in the process of changing over my website host, and have been a week without being able to access my blog.
I’ve moved the old pages and blog posts across to the new host, but there are still a lot of tweaks that I need to make in order to get the site fully working again.
In the meantime, I continued to do my papercuttings every day, so now (belatedly) I am finally able to update the website with my latest papercuttings:
It might not look it, but this was quite a tricky design to cut. The design involved having to leave just tiny links of paper in order to hold the actual physical piece of paper together. So the overall piece got very lacy and delicate towards the end.
I’d cut similar designs to this one earlier on in this project (i.e. even before starting this ‘100 days’ project), but I didn’t really like the results, before. However, now that I’m getting more proficient at cutting by hand (and also at adapting designs so that they can be cut out but still look fairly attractive), the end result is quite close to what I had imagined in the first place:
Plus, it’s another art nouveau-style design, so that quite appeals to me, and it also makes any mistakes less obvious because the curves and swirls in the design make it harder to spot.
This one taught me that the ones that look the easiest (with their straight lines and repeating shapes)…
…are the ones where I still struggle to see the good bits once I’ve finished. It is only the bad bits that leap out at me and show me that I still need to build my papercutting skills:
59 days through my continuing papercutting project (cutting a design a day for 100 days, from the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book, in preparation for incorporating them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.)
58% through my continuing papercutting project (cutting a design a day for 100 days, from the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book, in preparation for incorporating them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.)
…and this is one of my favourites so far:
A few bits went wrong on it and it was a bit nervewracking and frustrating to cut loads and loads of those jagged ‘shaded’ bits, but for once I don’t even care. I just enjoy looking at it 🙂
I’m going to really enjoy using this one as a lasercutting file in several future projects, I think…
Day 57 of the ongoing papercutting project (cutting a design a day for 100 days, from the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book, in preparation for incorporating them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.)
