This is the most recent wedding papercut that I’ve created.
I did originally create a design that just used the initial letters of the two people, but the trouble with couples who have the initials of “N” and “O” is that it looks like the artwork is spelling out “NO”. Which isn’t a very auspicious message for a wedding gift. So I decided to spell out their names in full, after all.
First I tried cutting the piece with my lasercutter, but the result wasn’t as good as I’d hoped for. The laser-cut edges of the designs were just a bit too brown and toasted. So I cut the design by hand instead, to ensure that the edges of the paper stayed their original colour. Then I framed the piece in a “shadow box” frame. (It’s taken me years of experimenting and searching, to finally find the right type of frame for this type of papercut. Would you like a tutorial article on how to frame papercuts like this? If so, please let me know via the comments section or the Contact page. )
Creating the design
The leafy/berry-y elements of the wedding papercut design came from an SVG file that I bought from Vectorstock.com. I’ve mentioned Vectorstock here before, but basically the idea is that to save time, you don’t want always to draw a completely new design from scratch – especially if someone else has already created a lovely design to begin with. Buying an expanded licence allows other artists to buy the SVG file and then sell their own artworks, based on that design. With this system the original artist gets a payment from other artists who want to use their design, the customer-artist gets to save time when creating their own artworks, and the customer-artist’s own customer gets an artwork that is totally unique but is usually a lower price than if the papercutting artist designed every single element of the design from scratch . Win/win/win!
