It's the Time of Year for Nueles

I have been thinking about nueles again. I decided that I wanted some more to hang in my front room this year. They are so fun to design, and I like the way they look while suspended in the air.
I have cut four different ones so far. This one of Mary and the baby Jesus is one of my favorites. I'm thinking that cutting neules will become one of my new Christmas traditions. If you don't know what a neule is, my explanation from last year is here.

Beautiful Black

Here are the ATCs for this month. The theme was "beautiful black". I decided to do animals that are defined by their black markings. Of course, I had to start with a zebra. The hardest thing about cutting a zebra is keeping track of what is a black stripe and what is a white one.


My next animal was the skunk. This was a challenge because I cut a white piece of paper and then glued it onto a black background. It is not easy to think backwards.


This panda was my easiest cut this time. I tried to keep this one simple.


Alright, dalmatian puppies are not really black, but they do have black spots. This is another one where I cut white paper and put it on black. It was fun to keep the ATCs in monochromatic colors this time.

Dorothy Comes Home

I just finished reading The Wizard of Oz for the first time. That was a fun quick read, and it inspired a new papercut. I loved how Kansas was described as gray, and I wanted to take advantage of that. This cut shows Dorothy and Toto excitedly returning home to the farm after their adventure. For this I cut two different layers and placed a sheet of tracing paper between to give the farm a gray look.

Halloween Isn't Too Far Away

This is something I whipped up yesterday when I had a free hour. This is what a ghostrider would look like if it went trick-or-treating. If I can find the right frame, I'll hang it up somewhere for the next week.

Something Besides ATCs

I am so glad to say that this is not an ATC. I finally got around to doing a bigger cut. This was inspired by the story of Anne Shirley walking the ridge pole in the story Anne of Green Gables. The border took awhile to cut, and my fingers were sore by the time I was done. I guess I need to cut more often and build up those calluses once more.

County Fair

This month's ATC theme is the county fair. This first cut is of the dreaded judges who decide whether your work is worthy of that coveted blue ribbon.

Here is the winning jar of canned peaches. I love to look at the displays at the county fair, but it is hard to be excited about looking at jars of fruits and vegetables.

What is a fair without animals? Other than the rides, the animals are always the kids favorite thing to see. I personally don't care much about pigs, but they make interesting papercuts.

The last cut represents those big trailers that show up that claim to have the world's biggest something inside that will only cost you $5 to see. I wonder what is really in those mysterious boxes, but the ticket price always keeps me ignorance. Here is the world's biggest horse.

September ATCs

It felt really good to sit down and do some cutting the other day. It has been too long. ATCs are a good way to get back into it. I decided not to go along with this month's trade theme. Sometimes it is fun to just cut whatever I want.

I based this cut on a child's back-to-school fashion spread in an old 50s magazine I had sitting around the house.

I thought this one worked out really well as a straight silhouette. Fingers are hard to cut that small.

I had lots of fun with this one. I had to search for a picture of a painting that would be small enough to fit on that little canvas.

How many times have you seen a child and a dog stare each other down while the child eats something sweet and sticky? Why does that sticky sweet almost always end up in the dog's mouth?