Category: Paper

Paper Cut Work: The Universe is Intricate

One of the presents I received for my birthday earlier this year was a lovely white tea cup given to me by Anne. It came in a small wooden box with a hinged lid, and I was attracted to this as much as to the gift it held inside. I knew right away I wanted to use it somehow in my art.

My initial idea was to create a small abstract universe from cut paper inside this box, but as I began working it out I couldn’t manage to achieve what I’d been envisioning in my head. And so it evolved into what you see pictured here.

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Front and top view.

The Universe is Intricate
Interior view.

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Back and side view.

The box is decorated with some of the cut paper pieces I’d originally created to intertwine inside the box but instead became striking details for the outside. There are two 4.25″ square paper cuts layered a few inches apart in the interior, with the sides painted white to help them stand out. I gave the exterior of the box a light wood stain because I felt the whole thing should have minimal colour.

I shared a work-in-progress photo of this on my Facebook page last week and was intrigued by the various ways people chose to interpret it. Rather than explain my ideas behind this (because it’s intended to fit a certain theme), I’d love to hear your thoughts about the work. I find it fascinating to learn what other people see.

Commissioned Work: Creating a Blog Header for KimWerker.com

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I am very happy to finally get the chance to reveal this beautiful paper cut design I was commissioned to create at the end of the summer.

As you can clearly read in the hand cut letters within the composition, this was a custom piece created for Kim Werker. She was in the process of redesigning her website and wanted something unique and handmade to use as the new header. I also helped her with a few other visual parts of her re-design, and moved her over to InMotion Hosting to speed up her website overall. Kim is a writer, editor, creative thinker, and crafter and felt a paper cut piece would be the perfect thing to incorporate into the new site design.

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We discussed a few ideas but Kim’s only requirements were for something with minimal colour, and for book pages to somehow be the background of the piece.

My first step was to choose a font to work with, one that wasn’t too intricate or delicate to cut out by hand, and would read well within the busy design. We both agreed on Hoefler, so I created the text in photoshop and printed it out to use as a template to guide my cutting. I do this by placing the printed text on top of the black card stock and carefully cutting through both.

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With the text completed I moved onto the rest of the design, all of which I created through freehand cutting. I did a bit of practice work both in my sketchbook and on a separate piece of black card stock before I worked on the final piece. I wanted to work with different shapes rather than a single repeating shape as usual, and needed to get a feel for it first. I cut for hours and came away with a very delicate intricate finished design.

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For the background paper I cut down scraps of book pages left over from an altered book project and collaged these together. I wanted the text to flow in all directions and become a detail rather than a feature. The final step was to bring the paper cut and the collage together, and remove the extra card stock.

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I am very pleased with how beautifully this paper cut design came together, and it looks absolutely stunning as the header on Kim’s new website.

KimWerker.com

New Work At Bird On A Wire Creations

If you love the paper cut collages I’ve been making recently, you can now find four of them at Bird on a Wire Creations on Main Street.

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Paper Cut Designs | 8″x 8″ on wood panel

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Paper Cut Designs | 6″x 6″ on wood panel

Go check them out. The work is even more dazzling in person.

Bird on a Wire Creations
2535 Main Street @ East Broadway

Work-In-Progress: Working in White

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At this time of year I typically start planning for the Eastside Culture Crawl because I like giving visitors to my studio something new to look at. For the previous two years I chose to create a series of altered books to present at the Crawl, but this year it’s going to be paper cut work.

I decided to work with white paper for this series because I wanted minimal colour for what’s turning out to be very intricate designs. I’m building on the way I was working when I created this paper cut piece earlier this year but cutting closer together. It’s amazing what can happen with the repetition of a single simple shape.

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Pictured here are work in progress photos of two of the five pieces I’ve created so far for this series. Each is based upon using the same crescent shape but the overall form and movement within evolves slightly differently.

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I haven’t yet decided whether these will be backed with white or black paper once they’re framed, but I think they’ll be striking either way.

On Display as an Artist in the Window

This Saturday I’ll be working away at a new series of paper cut designs as the featured artist-in-the-window at Bird on a Wire Creations on Main Street. You can find me in the front window of the store from 11am to 4pm. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit this lovely little shop, now’s your chance.

Work-in-progress: paper cut design

Artist in the Window – Bird on a Wire Creations
Date:Saturday, September 8th, 2012
Time: 11am to 4pm
Location: 2535 Main Street, between Broadway & 10th
Vancouver BC

Work-in-Progress Paper Cut Collage

I haven’t yet finished working on the latest paper cut collage design but I thought I’d share a few work-in-progress photos. I’ve been continuing with the intertwining shapes inspired by a recent commission, but this time I created a more flowing overall form.

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I collaged this with a combination of origami paper and security envelope paper and then glued a second piece of card stock on the back before cutting away all but an outline of black paper.

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The final step will be to paint the cradle panel black and then mount the paper cut to the surface of the frame.

Cut Paper Evolution

One of the recent commissions I’ve been working on turned out to be a great opportunity to try something new in cutting paper. I was asked to create a paper cut header for a client’s web site, and decided to switch things up from my usual way of working with a single repeating shape.

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I worked through the idea in my sketchbook first, in order to get a feel for combining these varied shapes. I then moved onto a piece of black card stock to warm myself up for creating the final design as I was feeling a bit rusty. I chose three basic shapes, a crescent, a leaf, and something that could be a leaf or flower, and cut the whole thing free-hand while moving organically across the paper.

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The final design for the client, which you can see a tiny portion of here, is an intricately cut piece of paper combined with a collage of book pages. The letter e is part of the text that is at the centre of all those shapes, and reveals my client’s name.

Paper cut detail

I’ll share more about the finished work once it goes live on her website.

Paper Cutting in a New Dimension

I have stumbled upon yet another variation of cutting and working with paper. I sat down to play in my sketchbook last week and came up with this lovely technique I hadn’t thought about before of making a cut and then folding the paper. Suddenly my paper cuts have become three dimensional and I love it.

This top image is the idea I worked on in my sketchbook. I used the compass cutter for this one before moving outside the sketchbook and on to a larger piece of paper. For the larger piece below I used an xacto knife and cut the curves freehand.

Paper cut and folding in my Sketchbook

I chose to work with this chart of geological survey information as my paper more because it was something I could grab quickly and not worry about experimenting with. It’s a happy accident that the lines of the chart combine in an interesting way with the curved shapes of the paper cuts.

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It’s no wonder I am so addicted to the process of paper cutting because there is always something new to learn.

Mapping Circles to Triangles

I thought I’d share some quick snaps of the overall piece made from maps I shared a detail of last week. The individual pieces are connected together in long strips but the strips aren’t yet attached to each other. I still want to play around with composing the overall form and figure out how many paper cuts it makes sense to include. I feel there is an infinite number of ways these triangle pieces could be arranged and composed.

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The picture below is what remains of the maps after I’ve cut all the circles. I’ve set these aside to use in some future collage. I love how they all look layered together.

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I’ve been working on a few other projects and haven’t been able get any further with this. Hopefully I can get some focused time in the studio later this week and will share more.