Well, I’m not currently cutting one design per day, but I’ve decided to carry on with my papercutting project. This is papercut 101 of the (now-extended) papercutting project.
(Using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book for inspiration, I was adapting the images for papercutting, then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days.)
This one is a bit of a mix between Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. It’s got swirly plant-based design elements in it, but it’s also got straight geometric designs as well:
Closer up:
I cut this one while listening to Mark Dawson’s “Self Publishing Formula” podcast. (Very informative and inspiring, as always.)
(Using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book for inspiration, I was adapting the images for papercutting, then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days.)
I saved a great big complicated design for the 100th papercut.
And I think this might also be my favourite so far. The design needed quite a few tweaks to make sure that all of the black pieces were linked and didn’t just fall out when I’d just them. And of course, it’s an Art Nouveau-type design, which I particularly like:
Closer up:
When I compare the roses at the top to some of the designs I cut earlier in the project, I can tell that my cutting skills have really improved. All those teeny tiny lines, and none of them got accidentally snipped off:
Maybe I did lose a little bit of concentration and patience when I got to the bottom. There are a few straggly fibres of paper sticking out here and there that I should have tidied up. It’s still nice though:
I was watching “Couples’ Retreat” and then “The Boat That Rocked” on Amazon Prime while I did the cutting, so I guess it took about four hours to finish (although obviously I was watching films at the same time, so it would have taken less time if I hadn’t been watching them).
So…now the project is finished! What shall I do now??? I’ve kind of got used to spending an hour or so each evening working on an art/craft project. Plus the book didn’t just have 100 designs in it – it had 922…
Er, no. I don’t think I’ll carry on cutting one per day. That will take me over TWO YEARS. I’ll have to come up with another project instead. And this time it should actually involve the laser cutter, and not just designs suitable for lasercutting.
Penultimate piece from the 100-day papercutting adventure!
This one does something really strange to my eyes/brain. When I first look at it, all I can see is a three-headed white heron (or seagull or something) hiding its beaks behind its necks. Or just some blobby three-armed white shape in the middle of a background of triangular-ish dots.
Closer up:
…but then a bit later I suddenly realise (especially when the design is this way up instead of the way it was oriented in the above photo) that it’s a design of three birds (?cranes?) with black bodies on a white background:
It makes me really want to try to play with the design, so that I can try to make the white bird’s beak look more beak-y. Then it really will turn into one of those mess-with-your-head optical illusions.
This one seemed to take a very long time. It was a mixture of straight and curved lines, and that always seems to take me longer to cut accurately, for some reason. I listened to about 2.5 episodes of The Bestseller Experiment while I was doing the cutting, so it probably took me a couple of hours.
Oh! I’ve just realised that I still need to cut out some of the feathers in the left wing of one of the birds! How did I miss that?? I will go back and finish it once I’ve finished the final papercutting. Apart from that I was pretty pleased with this one. I tidied up the cuts so that they were cleaner and more crisp-looking, so even close-up I really like this one.
Two days left of the 100-day challenge, and I’m still not bored of cutting designs into pieces of paper! I don’t think I’ll carry on with another 100 days (because I’ve got looooooads of other things that I’d like to get on with in the near future), but I think I’ll still carry on with the overall project. Maybe I’ll do a papercutting per week, instead? I must admit that I’d like to adapt and cut all 922 designs from the book, but even if I cut one a day that would still take me years to finish. Still, seeing as I’ve already started…!
In the meantime, I like the individual elements of today’s design, but I can’t tell which way up it is supposed to go. Whichever way you turn it, at least one of the flowers seems to be at a strange angle.
Closer up:
As far as the actual papercutting skills go, though, I think I’ve done OK on this one. There aren’t many bits that really leap out at me and upset me.
Have you done any paper cutting recently? Let us know! What kind of paper do you use, and which tools do you use to do the cutting?
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 🙂
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.
