My ATC trade this month is based on the papercuts of Hans Christian Andersen.
He often gave his cuts away. You can tell that he really liked dancers. I placed a cut rocking chair in each of these cards/envelopes for an extra bonus.
The last bird is a snowy egret. This is based on the bigger papercut that I did in January. I still haven't cut that beak right. Maybe, I'll try again sometime.
This month's ATC trade theme was "whimsy". I decided that that was very broad once I started looking into it. I decided to base my cards on the idea of flying frogs. That is just what popped into my head first. How many ways could I come up with to make a frog fly? The hot air balloon was the first that I did.
This is how the frog would fly if he fell out of the balloon.
A frog flying with a hang glider could reach those tasty butterflies more easily.
However, here is a frog that bit off more than he could chew and is flying in a way that wouldn't be so much fun.
This has been my project the last couple of weeks. Wednesday night was the annual Achievement Days daddy-daughter dinner/date at our church. This is for the 8 to 11 year old girls and their dads. It was a western hoe-down theme. I created wanted posters with a silhouette for each of the girls to hang on the wall as decoration. They also made a fun game as the girls tried to guess who was who.
I made 17 of these. I was getting pretty good at cutting that cowboy hat by the end. The girls had fun guessing, and when the night was over, they all had a souvenir to take home with them. It was well worth my time and effort.
Last summer, I saw an artist at the Salt Lake Art Festival use linocut block prints and watercolors to create some beautiful small botanical art. I decided to try a similar thing but with paper cuts. Here are some samples of what I came up with. I first cut the paper cut then I painted the watercolor underneath. The cut is glued just at the top so when it is hanging, the paper is slightly raised above the watercolor. That gives it a three dimensional look. These are some of my husband's favorite cuts.
I hung these two up at an art show over Memorial Day weekend and sold them both. I guess that means that other people like them too. The last two weeks, I have been working on a couple more of cuts like these. I will post them soon.
What better way to start a new month then with another fairytale papercut? I cut this one just yesterday. This time I did not try to take a new look at the fairytale but went straight to one the most illustrated scenes of the story. It was still a bundle of fun to do, even so. I have to admit that I would have left out the shoe if I thought I could get away with it. I don't like doing shoes.
Here is Cinderella's fairy godmother. I cut her last year. I tried to be a little more creative with this one.
Spring is in the air! It makes one think of flowers and gardens, and what goes better with a garden than those ever present garden gnomes? They pop up everywhere once the snow melts. Here are a couple that have popped up in my papercutting lately.
I used watercolors for the color on these. I think the soft tones of the watercolors go well with the bold black lines of the papercut.
This month's theme for ATCs is 'four-footed friends'. Since my four-footed friends have always been cats, that's what I put on them. The first one is based on my cat, Zoinks. She contorts herself into the most uncomfortable positions and still looks relaxed. How does she do that?
My second cut is based on a bigger cut that I did last year where I placed several cats on a stone wall. In this one I felt like I needed to give that cat something to look at. It looks like trouble.
This last one was inspired by another incident perpetrated by Zoinks. One day she came to the back door wanting to be let in. Just as I opened the door, I noticed that she had a mouse wriggling in her mouth. It was too late to keep her out. She promptly took that mouse down into the basement and dumped it into her food dish as if to tell that rodent exactly what she thought of it.
I made two different groups of ATCs this month. The first was a series of paper ornaments. The above is a picture of one of them. I was thinking of those wonderful glass ornaments that they made 50 or 60 years ago that were round but indented on one side. I have always liked those ornaments. The inside color was made by melting crayon shavings between two pieces of waxed paper. This gives it the look of stained glass.
The other ATCs took me a little longer to make. We had to make Christmas books with papercuts. I decided to use the first verse of the carol Good King Wenceslas. The book needed more than just the cut to make it work, so I added watercolor to it. The following are all the pages in the book.
I liked the way it turned out, but I think I could spend some time on my handwriting.
This is what I have been busy doing the last week. I have been placed in charge of table decorations for our Relief Society's Enrichment night the first week in December. I wanted to do some papercuts, but they need to be three-dimensional in order to be used for center pieces. These are what I came up with. Fortunately, our Relief Society isn't real big so I only have to cut seven or so. I have decided if I will have anything else with them or not. Is the nativity enough? I'm still working on that. I wanted to get these done early so that I could have time to work on all the other Christmas projects I have been putting on my list to complete before December 25th.
I just knew that everyone wanted to see another great tree from Bryce Canyon. This great snag was in the fork of two trails along the canyon rim.
I just finished this cut. It is of my husband and our daughter, Eliza, hiking in Zion. Three years ago I did a papercut of the two of them in Arches National Park. I thought that it would be nice to do an update of the two of them together.
I am sure that John was glad that he didn't have to carry her on his shoulders this time.
This is the second papercut that I have ever sold. I patterned it after an old snapshot of two girls in a park. I loved that they were both holding their toys over their shoulders.
This is me in front of the St. George Art Museum just before we went in to see the show. If you are in St. George before the end of January, you should stop by and be edified by the art. You'll be glad that you did.
It is hard to see it, but my name is on this sign in the art museum. It was a thrill to see my name on it.
