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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 42: Knotwork Railing

papercut 706 knotwork railing - horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Knotwork Railing #706

This “Knotwork Railing” design is from the ongoing papercutting challenge 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 706 in the book. What the heck would you call that style of design? In the end I decided that it reminded me of a cross between Celtic knotwork and lovely iron gates and railings. So that’s how I ended up with the title “Knotwork Railing”:

papercut 706 knotwork railing - vertical pinterest - LaserSister - KayVincent

Closer up:

papercut 706 knotwork railing - horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

I’m really pleased with the way this one turned out. For a start I love the design anyway, but I also managed to cut it so that the lines were quite thin and even, and so that it was pretty symmetrical. And yet (to me, anyway) it still looks hand-cut and not like a machine has just cranked it out.

It’s another design that would probably look really good in a fancy wedding invitation or congratulations card. And the bonus is that it doesn’t take a very long time to cut. Yet another reason to love this design.

The reason I love this design is that it combines three of my favourite things. Celtic knotwork, and fancy ironwork. Years ago I got a book out of the library on how to draw Celtic knotwork, and I loved it so much that I then went and bought it.

And whenever I’m out anywhere my attention is always caught by swirly ironwork designs wherever I am. In the case below, I was in Copenhagen:

copenhagen ironwork

…and the third of my favourite things is papercutting. So that’s why I liked this particular design so much.

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 41: Curly Leaf

papercut 702 curly leaf - horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Curly Leaf #702

This “Curly Leaf” papercut is yet another design from 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.)

This week’s design is number 702 in the book. I’m seriously running out of titles I can give these 922 designs! Yet another leaf design, and so how do I differentiate it from all of the other leaf designs? Welllll, it’s got a lot of curlicues in the vines, plus the leaf elements are rather curly. So “Curly Leaf” it is:

papercut 702 curly leaf - vertical pinterest - LaserSister - KayVincent

Closer up:

papercut 702 curly leaf - square - LaserSister - KayVincent

This is one of my favourites so far. A small, delicate design that presented a real challenge to cut accurately, and very satisfying to look at once it was finished.

I’m already trying to find ways to incorporate this one into a future design. Maybe a fancy wedding invitation card.

I’m still marvelling at how much better my cutting is, now that I’m a few hundred designs into this papercutting challenge. In fact, I’ve just realised that I’ve picked up so many little tips along the way that I’ve compiled a “Top 10 list of papercutting tips“.

In the meantime, while putting together this blog post I’ve been ignoring the ‘real world’ as usual, and have instead been listening to my favourite podcast, “No Such Thing As A Fish“.

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 40: Flower Posy

papercut 701 flower posy - horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Flower Posy #701

This “Flower Posy” papercut is from an ongoing project where I’ve been trying to work adapt and cut all of the designs in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books.

Today’s design is number 701 in the book.

papercut 701 flower posy - vertical pinterest pin - LaserSister - KayVincent

As usual I’ve got no idea what kind of flowers are depicted (although some of them remind me of a stylised version of freesias), so to come up with a title I’ve had to describe them in another way. In this case it’s a mini bunch of flowers, so I’m going “flower posy”.

Closer up:

papercut 701 flower posy - square - LaserSister - KayVincent

I particularly enjoy the swirling long leaves in this design, but also the flowing simplicity of the whole thing. Very Art Nouveau. I will almost definitely use this scene again in a papercutting one day. It might make a very nice part of a birthday card design.

(Ha – since I noticed a string of consecutive consonants in a word the other day, I am seeing loads more words with four consonants. Like “biRTHDay”.)

While scheduling this post today I have been watching a programme about the Savoy hotel on catch-up TV.

In the meantime in ‘real life’ the world is going down the toilet, so I’ll continue to hide myself away and hope everyone gets sane again, soon.

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 39: Spear Flower

papercut 699 spear flower - horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Spear Flower #699

“Spear Flower” 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.)

Today’s design is number 699 in the book. As usual I’ve had some difficulty coming up with a descriptive-but-unique name for the design. Again, I couldn’t just call it “Flower” because there are a lot of flower designs in the book that I’m working from. And I don’t recognise the flower itself. So I’ve named it after the things that look like spears that are shooting out from it.

papercut 699 spear flower - vertical - LaserSister - KayVincent

Closer up:

papercut 699 spear flower - square - LaserSister - KayVincent

I enjoyed cutting this particular design. It might look simple but it was really tricky to keep very thin lines of the ‘spears’, and to cut the curved shapes of the petals. I doubt I’ll be using this design in any further projects, but as always I will keep it in my sketchbook as a record of my papercutting progress.

While updating this post I’ve been listening to The Bestseller Experiment podcast. Wow – they have achieved a LOT in four years. I wonder if I’ll have finished my papercutting project in four years from now?!

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 38: Leaf Papercut

papercut 698 leaf - horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Leaf Papercut #698

This leaf papercut 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.)

Today’s design is number 698 in the book. You would think this would be a very easy design to choose a name for, but there are so many variations of leaves in the book and I can’t call them all “Leaf” because that would get confusing! But as far as I know I haven’t actually called any of them “Leaf Papercut” yet. So this one wins.

papercut 698 leaf - vertical - LaserSister - KayVincent

And a very nice leaf it is, too. I enjoyed cutting this one. It was quite straightforward and yet provided some challenges in terms of cutting the fine veins.

Closer up:

papercut 698 leaf - square - LaserSister - KayVincent

Therefore this design falls into the 5-ish percent of designs in the book that I can immediately see myself using again in future projects.

Normally I would note here what audiobook or podcast I’ve been listening to today, but today’s background soundtrack has been Rob preparing a meal that may or may not turn out to be fatal when eaten. So this might be my epitaph. Good luck, future me!

He bought four reduced-price red mullet fish a couple of weeks ago on a whim, and put them straight in the freezer (they had already reached their sell-by date). And today he’s defrosted them only to discover that red mullet are usually sold whole, so they still had their guts inside them (I’ve been doing a bit of research here and here, just to double-check whether I’m likely to die of fish poisoning. Just in case you’re wondering, the very clear advice is that whole fish should NOT be frozen without gutting and cleaning them first.)

*** UPDATE ***

I’m not dead. The fish was OK, in the end. But it still doesn’t get past my long-held theory that “fish equals faff” (what with all of the gutting and de-scaling and then picking bones out while eating it). It was accompanied by shallots and bacon-that-Rob-had-accidentally-dropped-on-the-floor-while-it-was-raw, and he washed the meal down with a bottle of wine that we’ve had for at least eight years and neither of us knew where it came from. It was officially “white” wine but was actually browny-yellow. Yuuuum. Still, it made the perfect accompaniment to the equally dodgy food.

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 37: Asymmetric Flower

papercut 696 asymmetric flower horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Asymmetric Flower #696

I’m continuing the 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.) “Asymmetric Flower” is number 696 in the book.

Having noted that yesterday’s design was unusual because it contained four consonants in a row, this one does as well! It definitely wasn’t deliberate, either. I could have called it “Wonky Flower”, but that would suggest that it was asymmetrical by accident, when actually it’s part of the design.

papercut 696 asymmetric flower vertical - LaserSister - KayVincent

Closer up:

papercut 696 asymmetric flower square - LaserSister - KayVincent

Initially it looks like I’ve accidentally cut off the outer petal things and have then tried to just style it out. But if you look at the two inner petal things, the left one is small and the right one is large (etc). So trust me – this is how the design was meant to look!

It’s so asymmetrical that it makes me uncomfortable to look at for too long, for some reason. I feel a fairly strong compulsion to create a mirror image version of it. That way I can (1) regain the feeling of balance, and (2) prove that it’s not me making mistakes in the cutting – it really is designed like that.

In terms of cutting it was actually a fairly quick one, and felt like a satisfying mixture of curvy lines with fiddly inner shapes. So I could actually see myself using this design again, and not just for the OCD-type ‘closure’ compulsion that I would gain from it 🙂

Today I’m still listening to the Writing Excuses podcast. Love it.

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 36: Wildflower Meadow

papercut 697 wildflower meadow horizontal - watermarked - LaserSister - KayVincent

Wildflower Meadow Papercut #697

This “Wildflower Meadow” papercut is from an ongoing papercutting project that I’ve been doing (where I’m working my way through designs in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books.)

This week’s design is number 697 in the book. As I’ve mentioned before, the designs are just given numbers in the book and not names, so I’ve had to come up with my own names for them. I had no idea what to call this one. It’s got a sort of central stylised flower which isn’t immediately recognisable to me. I did try to get some clues from the other plants in the design, but they weren’t obvious either. Maybe they’re corn stalks? (Corn as in wheat, not as in sweetcorn. The definition of “corn” depends on whether you use UK/US English.)

So all I could think of was calling it “Wildflower Meadow”. As soon as I thought of that name, I noticed what a funny word “wildflower” is. It’s got four consonants in a row (LDFL). Surely there can’t be many words in English that have four consonants all mashed together? (I’m not counting words with “Y” in them, by the way (e.g. “hymn”, or “gypsy”)) Now I’m trying to think of other examples…

papercut 697 wildflower meadow vertical with scalpel - watermarked - LaserSister - KayVincent

“Hatchback”. “Pitchfork”. Oh – maybe there are more than I thought!

Closer up:

papercut 697 wildflower meadow square - watermarked - LaserSister - KayVincent

Either I’m getting better at papercutting, or I’m getting better at forgiving myself for the little mistakes that I make – or maybe a bit of both. But for whatever reason, I find this design quite pleasing.

Having said that, I’m not sure I would use it as part of a ‘real life’ composition. All the same, I’m glad to have added it to my sketchbook full of papercuts. I’ve got a growing collection of these ‘samplers’ now, and I’m actually starting to see some improvement and progression overall. Which is a good thing, because that was the whole purpose of this “Cutting all 922 designs from the book” exercise in the first place.

I used to comment here about what I’d been watching or listening to in the background while I made the actual papercut. But because there’s been a big gap between cutting them and documenting them, I’ve forgotten what I was listening to when I cut most of them. Maybe I’ll carry on noting what I’m listening to, but from today instead of the date that I cut the design.

…In which case, today I’ve been listening to the “Writing Excuses” podcast. I deliberately didn’t listen to it for a few months this year, just so I could binge-listen to it later. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing today. Series 14 has had some really useful writing advice in it.

Apart from that, I’ve been giving myself a bit of a day off. I’ve been so busy with paperwork and admin and life for the last few months that I’ve run out of steam. Catching up with my papercutting adventure has been very therapeutic.

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 35: Leaf Border

papercut 693 horizontal with scalpel - watermarked - LaserSister - KayVincent

Leaf Border #693

Wow. A lot has happened since I last updated this blog thing. 2020 just keeps on giving. I managed to carry on the papercutting project through Lockdown and beyond – it was the only thing keeping me sane(ish)! But unfortunately a lot of life stuff then started happening at the same time. So updating the blog dropped a looooong way down my to-do list.

Some of the exciting events included:

  • Husband put on furlough from (travel-related) job
  • Husband losing his (travel-related) job of 18 years
  • Husband’s 87-year-old mother having major health problems but not being able to get help for her because the problems weren’t Covid-related. (Apparently it’s OK for people in the UK to die of cancer or infections or neglect or anything else, just as long as they don’t get Covid.)
  • Husband getting a new job
  • Having to move and sell our house
  • Having to find and buy a new house
  • Needing to find somewhere safer for mother-in-law to live
  • Needing to sell mother-in-law’s flat
  • Death of my lovely PhD supervisor
  • Replacement lovely PhD supervisor going on maternity leave
  • Me failing a crucial module of the PhD, so having to switch to part-time and start the whole module again
Five months later…

… and the world is still looking completely insane. But at least my own little corner of it is starting to calm down a tiny bit, this week. So in between filling in the paperwork for buying and selling houses and doing 500-mile round trips to visit the M-I-L, I’m going to try to carry on recording the results of the ongoing papercutting project. (I’m trying to work my way through all of the designs in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books. I love papercutting and it has provided me with much-needed occupational therapy this year, and has helped my mental health.)

But now because of the 5-month break since my last post I’m not sure if I should be on “Day 35” or if I should start again or even dump the whole numbering system. Maybe I’ll just carry on with the day-numbering system (because I was still cutting the pieces during those days, even though I wasn’t putting them on social media). And I’ll definitely carry on with the actual design numbers as they are mentioned in the book…

So. Today’s design is number 693 in the Decorative Vector Ornaments book.

papercut 693 vertical with scalpel - watermarked - LaserSister - KayVincent

Closer up:

papercut 693 square - watermarked - LaserSister - KayVincent

Design

For the majority of these designs I think, “I enjoyed cutting this design, but I’m not sure I’d ever use it in another artwork”. But this one is different. I like the simple leafy design, and because it uses repeating elements it can be made as long or as short as necessary, just by adding or removing leaves from the design.

And again for most of the designs, I think “Aargh – the mistakes are jumping right out at me and taking my attention.” But I’m actually quite pleased with this one.

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 34: Flower and Leaf Border

papercut 684 flower and leaf border horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Flower and Leaf Border

“Flower and Leaf Border” is from the papercutting project that I’ve been doing for the last few years (trying to work my way through all of the designs in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books.) But for the period of Covid19 Lockdown, I’ve put the project into overdrive and have decided to adapt and cut 100 designs in 100 days.

Today’s design is number #684 in the book.

papercut 684 flower and leaf border vertical - LaserSister - KayVincent

It’s another ‘inverted’ design, where I’ve cut holes out of white paper, instead of cutting a silhouette shape out of black paper. So here the black parts of the design are just parts of a black notebook cover that are showing through the holes in the white paper. If I’d put the white paper on top of my hand, then the flowers and leaves would be showing through as hand-coloured.

Closer up:

Here is a close-up of the top section of the design…

papercut 684 flower and leaf border top - LaserSister - KayVincent

…and here is a close-up of the bottom section:

papercut 684 flower and leaf border bottom - LaserSister - KayVincent

I’m never really as keen on these negative papercuts as I am on the positive ones. Maybe I should work harder on adapting the designs so that they can be created in a positive silhouette form. However, I’m not sure how I could do that effectively with the flower parts of this design. The little circles would have to be much bigger, I think, and would definitely all need to be linked together somehow.

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Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 33: Tiny Flower

papercut 682 mini flower horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Tiny Flower Papercut

This “Tiny Flower” papercut is from an ongoing papercutting project that I’ve been doing (trying to adapt and cut 100 designs in 100 days, inspired by the images in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books.)

Day 33 – a third of the way through my 100-day project! Wow – those 33 days went quickly. This design is number #682 in the book. (The images don’t have titles in the book, so I have to come up with names for them myself.)

papercut 682 mini flower vertical - LaserSister - KayVincent

Closer up:

papercut 682 mini flower - square close up - LaserSister - KayVincent

Only after I’d cut this one did I realise that it actually appears somewhere else in the book as part of a bigger design. So I’d already cut it at least once before, and therefore this was a waste of time!

Having a duplicate design was already annoying from another point of view, as well, because it means that there aren’t 922 designs in the book “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” after all. I feel a bit cheated! When I looked carefully through the designs in the book I also spotted this exact same flower in about FOUR of the images.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the ‘922’ designs are more like 900 designs. I’ll try to work it out properly one day…

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