For Day 22, I was inspired by the work of Molly McGrath on the cover of The Papercraft Ideas Book, and created a composition of cutouts and collage.

I would love to do a variation of this in a more intricate way, and larger scale.

I decided to revisit paper embroidery again for the series, and went with bullion knots in blue thread for Day 21. I did not plan out what I was going to do beforehand so the design I came up with is a bit of an improvised mess, but I like it. 

Embroidering paper is unforgiving. Once you punch a hole through the surface to make a stitch, you’re committed, even if you misjudge the position of a stitch.

I had intended to use even more coloured paper in this composition for Day 20, but then making it started to feel too time consuming. I decided to leave sections of the white card stock, which is the base paper, showing through.

I try to limit the time I spend on these to an hour or under. Cutting, shaping, and positioning these pieces turned out to be surprisingly complex.

Day 19 is a drawing with coloured markers using pink and blue. This one of my classic ways of doodling that I love doing in gel pen on black paper, but it works so well in bright colours too.

I decided to tackle another paper weaving for Day 18, and work with the entire surface area this time. I also did a looser weave instead of having the intersecting pieces of paper tightly packed together. I left the ends hanging around the edges of the heart for now.

For Day 17 I wanted to try another paper cut + patterned paper mixed piece, but this one does not work as well as the one I created for Day 13. The two elements do not flow as well as the ones in the earlier version. I don’t like this heart as all, but I decided to leave it as it is rather than redoing it. Not everything can be a success.

But then, a few hours later, I changed my mind. I made a second paper cut + patterned paper combination for the 17th. I like this one so much better.

Day 16 started out as a collage but once I applied this art deco paper, I decided to leave it as is. I was going to combine three different papers but I love the flowing elements of this pattern and didn’t not want to cover any of it up with something else. 

Is a collage still a collage if there is only one paper element?!?

I used an incising and lifting technique for Day 15. The whole design is off-centre because I wasn’t quite sure of what I was going to do as I started laying this out on the back. My measurements were off but overall it works. 

I felt a lot of pressure to make the heart for Day 14 something spectacular because it’s Valentine’s Day. I thought about making a 3D heart, or maybe using paper folding. In the end I went with making the piece from spectacular metallic copper foil paper. The design is drawn with a mechanical pencil and I like that this creates an embossed surface on the other side.

I love this piece for Day 13. I left the heart partially uncut and then carried the cut pattern over into that side as a gel pen drawing. The drawing looked so meh and uninteresting, and I decided to try something else. I sorted through my collage scraps, and went with covering it up with 70s  patterned paper.

I love how this came together out of a mistake.