More Scherenscnitte

I promised to post a few more of my paper cuttings, so here they are. I'll tell you a little bit about each of them, and please forgive the quality of my photographs - some of them were done with a webcam, some with a camera phone and some with my little pocket Canon, all with complete disregard for things like 'lighting' and 'angle.' And they are all really, really old. Until this week, I hadn't cut anything in at least two years, so I was really searching through my old photographs to find these.

It goes without saying, but I have to say it anyway: Please, please, please do not copy my work. These are all original designs drawn by me, and I put a lot of myself into them; my time, my thoughts, my everything. I went through some really bad, hard times, and these paper cuttings were a form of therapy for me. Some of them I have never shared. If you can't draw, please feel free to browse the web elsewhere for free printable paper cutting templates provided by many craft sites and artists. Mine are not for personal use, not for sale, and especially not for you to sell. If you're interested in one of my pieces, please contact me and I would be happy to make a reproduction cutting for you or design an original work with you for a small fee. Thank you so much.

I wanted to share the template I drew for this cutting because not only is the picture mirrored, it's canted backwards and of really poor quality.  Here, you can see the ship sailing on the waves, about to be crushed by the tentacles of the sea monster. There's a hand reaching out in love to another, a girl trying to touch the stars, a spider spinning a web and capturing a heart, music, a growing vine and the word 'incessant' rising up and out of the girl's mouth. This piece took me several hours to draw, but I had a picture in my head of exactly what it would look like when it was done, and I'm really pleased with it. I have only cut this piece once, and it is hanging on my wall at home. When people ask how I felt during the bad times, I show them this.

 And here's the really bad webcam photo of the finished cutting. One of the things I love about scherenschnitte is the use of negative space to tell a story. Of all the pieces I've done, this one is probably my favorite.

 I cut this piece out of one sheet of paper quartered. It's a one-off - I drew it directly onto the paper and then cut it without making a copy. There will never be another just like this one. I drew and cut this for a friend who was visiting another friend in Germany. I also took her to Paris, which was an awesome trip that I'll tell you about some other time. She was really into skulls and Dia de los Muertos and piercings and tattoos - we got along quite nicely.

Now, I may just be patting myself on the back here, but I thought this was quite clever. What you're looking at here is one piece of paper, total. I used the negative paper that I cut away to create a second piece. If you put the pink Cinderella on top of the blue Cinderella, you'd have one solid piece of black paper. Cool, right? I thought so. I used Perrault's version of Cinderella for this cutting - though you might know it as the version Disney used. The pumpkin, mice, brooms, magic wands, key and glass slippers all come from the story. Notice that, due to a quirk in the way I cut the piece, blue Cinderella is wearing two glass slippers, while pink Cinderella has one slipper and one bare foot.
These pieces were designed and cut for J's little girlfriend back in Germany. He was in L-O-V-E love and had to give her something special, so this is what we did. I really like giving home made gifts whenever I can. It makes me feel like a super-mom.
I cut the Little Mermaid in the same way that I cut Cinderella - if you put them together, you'd have one piece of black paper. It's hard to see in these pictures, but pink Little Mermaid has scales cut into her tail at the hip and...knee, I guess? They show up better on blue Little Mermaid. Also, I hand painted the watercolor backgrounds for all four of these pieces myself. I really love working with watercolors, but the only thing I can do with them is create pretty color washes - all of my attempts at actual images have been huge flops. Oh well, you can't be good at everything, right?

This Air Force piece was made for my friend Beth's husband, Bill. He kind of got shafted when he left his unit in Germany, and I felt like he should have something special to remember his time in the service. I painted the blue paper and cut the Air Force symbol out of the top, backing it with metallic silver paper. I also cut a window out of the middle and backed it with the Airman's Creed. I added the AF seal and silver lettering last and framed the whole thing up. I don't know if it actually counts as a paper cutting, but I made it and I like it, so it gets to be on my blog. If you don't like it, get your own blog. It's free.

 And this is the piece I made for Beth - one of the Tree of Life cuttings I love to give to my dear friends. I decided to do it in reverse - it's opposite of my usual cuttings from this template, and I really like it this way. Again, the green is a watercolor wash and the frame is one that I found at the BX, fell in love with and bought like, ten of on impulse.

I know these pieces are really hard to see, but they are among my favorites. I made these for my mom's guest room a few years ago, and while that room has since been repurposed,  I'm hoping that they get to be hung on the wall again some day.

If you can't tell, these are hand drawn silhouettes from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. My mom has three daughters and nine nieces and nephews. When each child was small, my mom

gave each a copy of Where the Wild Things Are and read it to them. It is a tradition that she carried on to her grandchildren - both of my kids have a copy and a memory of their Mimi reading a very special story to them.

So when I wanted to make a special piece for my mom, it just had to be Max. See Max in his wolf costume chasing his dog with a fork?  And roaring his terrible roar and gnashing his terrible teeth after he's crowned king of the Wild Things?

And finally, there's Max swinging from the trees during the wild rumpus. You can't really tell, but the background paper is this really pretty shimmery green and the Max silhouettes are black. I had so much fun drawing these templates - picking out my favorite Max poses and trying to tell the story with pictures.

I've got big plans to do another series like this from other children's books that I loved. Maybe I'll get around to that some day. Psh, yeah right. My crafting to-do list is about a thousand miles long, it'll take me years to get around to that.

Anyway, there you have it. These aren't all the pieces I've ever done, but I have a terrible habit of giving away my creations without taking pictures or documenting them in any way. I should really work on that. I'm hoping that's what this blog will do - keep a record of my projects and ideas so that I can share them with others and teach them the things I've taught myself. What is the point of spending all of my time and energy working these projects out if I'm the only one who ever benefits from it?