For the past month I’ve been creating small paper cut designs to practise and refine my technique. This week I wanted to begin working larger but I wasn’t sure about exactly what I wanted to do, so I started playing around with ideas in my sketchbook. It seems funny to use a sketchbook for paper cutting instead of drawing but it did lead me in the right direction.

I went with smaller cuts to create a more intricate design. The image below is the one I created in my sketchbook

I took the same design and began working on a grey piece of paper that proved to be ridiculously hard on the hands to work with. It’s a thicker stock than I’ve worked with previously and it wore through numerous blades and exhausted my fingers. I’d originally intended to cut the whole piece of paper, but I’m going to leave it as it is and move on to something else.

This is the final design with seven flowers. I’m thinking about cutting away most of the rest of the paper so there is just a thin outline of grey around the main design. Hopefully my fingers can withstand it.

Next up: going even larger (but with thinner paper)…