I’ve really been doing a lot of paper cut art lately. It seems to be well liked by most people, since it is pretty different. It works well to make cards, art, scrapbooking backgrounds, and so on. I thought I would write out a few tips on how to do these, along with a lot of “don’ts” that I have discovered!
For starters, you will need a very sharp pen knife. Anything too dull can rip or wrinkle the paper. I also use a cutting block surface to work on. To design the artwork, here are a few tips:
1. Make sure that every object in the picture is touching something else. Obviously you can’t have a circle in the middle standing by itself, because once you cut the area around it, it would be a separate piece of paper. For example, see how the submarine in this picture is touching the border in a number of places. The more places that it connects to, the sturdier it will be!
2. When you are designing your paper cut piece, it is best to draw it first, rather than cutting right away. These pictures take a lot of planning so you have to be sure that it will work before you start. I draw on the back of the paper (that way you don’t have any lines showing on the front). You have to make sure that you write any text backwards! Also, once you have drawn overlapping areas (for example, where a starfish overlaps a piece of coral) it helps to erase the lines where the two pieces join. That way, if you are cutting on the lines, you won’t accidentally cut the starfish completely off of the coral. I also use a Adobe Illustrator to do the patterns for these, so I combine all of the shapes using the pathfinder tools. That way I will print only the lines that need to be cut. Here is a picture of a pattern that I print out to begin cutting:
3. Another text tip…if you are cutting the text out of the paper, make sure the inside of any letters like a, o, e, etc. are connected to the surrounding paper, or else they will be completely cut out. The text at the bottom of this picture is a good example of that:
You can see how the inside of the A,o, e, and d is connected to the rest of the black paper.
As for gluing the pictures down onto the background paper, I think it is easiest to use adhesive spray on the back of the cutout, then just press it down onto the backing. I’ve tried using other glues and there have been times when I’ve accidentally ripped delicate parts when putting the glue on. At least with a spray you don’t have to worry about something like that happening, but it can be very messy! That’s why I’m glad I own an adhesive eraser, because it would be horrible to spend an hour cutting something out just to ruin it when gluing it down at the end! If anyone else does this kind of work and can think of any tips I left out here, feel free to comment!
Lisa
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thanks for the tips