I collect fridge magnets, but the places I’ve visited most recently don’t sell any! I might have to offer my services…
Rob and I are on holiday in the UK at the moment, and I’m recharging my ‘creative batteries’ by going to lots of museums and lovely English towns and castles.
The other day we went to the town of Nantwich, and none of the shops or museums that we visited seemed to sell fridge magnets. There is surely a gap in the market for them, because I actually know quite a few people who collect fridge magnets.
Here are a couple of examples below of buildings that I think would look nice as fridge magnets:
Heck, you could even make your own mix-and-match village of cute little black and white buildings on your fridge or freezer if only you had a few of these buildings cut out as fridge magnets.
I am now on a mission to create some magnets for myself, to see if they come out as well as I imagine they will…
Still pecking away at my papercutting adventure, trying to cut all designs from one book. Papercut k113: art nouveau rose papercut
Art Nouveau Rose Papercut K113 from Decorative Vector Ornaments Book
Technically I guess this is papercut 102 of the (now-extended) papercutting project, but I’m starting a new numbering convention because I’d cut other pieces from this book in the past and so actually there are already lots more than 102 in total. So now I’m starting to refer to them by their numbers in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book. (It’s not enough to just call the designs things like “Art Nouveau Rose Papercut”, because there are a lot of Art Nouveau-style designs in the book!)
This one is really cute:
Closer up:
I was really concentrating hard on this one, and also using a new blade, and I think it really shows. Most of the lines are really really crisp and clean, and there are some quite fine lines in there as well.
The design is one of my favourites, actually. I might incorporate it into the next card that I develop.
There are still hundreds of designs left in the book that I haven’t adapted or cut, yet! And even if I do one papercut per week then that means that if I’ve got 500 designs left to adapt/cut, then I’ll be doing this for another 10 years. Wow. I hope my eyesight stays good enough to manage it! For the first time this year I have had to start wearing reading glasses for close-up work.
Oh well, I’m still enjoying myself. And I really do like today’s design.
So far this year I’ve been experimenting more with making automata and mechanical toys. Here is a seagull automaton kit from Rob Ives’ website.
I’ve been learning how to make automata and mechanical toys so far this year, and so this week I downloaded a seagull automaton kit from Rob Ives’ website.
Here we go again! Extension of my papercutting adventure, trying to cut all designs from one book. Papercut 101…
Decorative Vector Ornaments: Papercut 101
Well, I’m not currently cutting one design per day, but I’ve decided to carry on with my papercutting project. This is papercut 101 of the (now-extended) papercutting project.
(Using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book for inspiration, I was adapting the images for papercutting, then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days.)
This one is a bit of a mix between Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. It’s got swirly plant-based design elements in it, but it’s also got straight geometric designs as well:
Closer up:
I cut this one while listening to Mark Dawson’s “Self Publishing Formula” podcast. (Very informative and inspiring, as always.)
(Using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book for inspiration, I was adapting the images for papercutting, then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days.)
I saved a great big complicated design for the 100th papercut.
And I think this might also be my favourite so far. The design needed quite a few tweaks to make sure that all of the black pieces were linked and didn’t just fall out when I’d just them. And of course, it’s an Art Nouveau-type design, which I particularly like:
Closer up:
When I compare the roses at the top to some of the designs I cut earlier in the project, I can tell that my cutting skills have really improved. All those teeny tiny lines, and none of them got accidentally snipped off:
Maybe I did lose a little bit of concentration and patience when I got to the bottom. There are a few straggly fibres of paper sticking out here and there that I should have tidied up. It’s still nice though:
I was watching “Couples’ Retreat” and then “The Boat That Rocked” on Amazon Prime while I did the cutting, so I guess it took about four hours to finish (although obviously I was watching films at the same time, so it would have taken less time if I hadn’t been watching them).
So…now the project is finished! What shall I do now??? I’ve kind of got used to spending an hour or so each evening working on an art/craft project. Plus the book didn’t just have 100 designs in it – it had 922…
Er, no. I don’t think I’ll carry on cutting one per day. That will take me over TWO YEARS. I’ll have to come up with another project instead. And this time it should actually involve the laser cutter, and not just designs suitable for lasercutting.
Penultimate piece from the 100-day papercutting adventure!
This one does something really strange to my eyes/brain. When I first look at it, all I can see is a three-headed white heron (or seagull or something) hiding its beaks behind its necks. Or just some blobby three-armed white shape in the middle of a background of triangular-ish dots.
Closer up:
…but then a bit later I suddenly realise (especially when the design is this way up instead of the way it was oriented in the above photo) that it’s a design of three birds (?cranes?) with black bodies on a white background:
It makes me really want to try to play with the design, so that I can try to make the white bird’s beak look more beak-y. Then it really will turn into one of those mess-with-your-head optical illusions.
This one seemed to take a very long time. It was a mixture of straight and curved lines, and that always seems to take me longer to cut accurately, for some reason. I listened to about 2.5 episodes of The Bestseller Experiment while I was doing the cutting, so it probably took me a couple of hours.
Oh! I’ve just realised that I still need to cut out some of the feathers in the left wing of one of the birds! How did I miss that?? I will go back and finish it once I’ve finished the final papercutting. Apart from that I was pretty pleased with this one. I tidied up the cuts so that they were cleaner and more crisp-looking, so even close-up I really like this one.
Two days left of the 100-day challenge, and I’m still not bored of cutting designs into pieces of paper! I don’t think I’ll carry on with another 100 days (because I’ve got looooooads of other things that I’d like to get on with in the near future), but I think I’ll still carry on with the overall project. Maybe I’ll do a papercutting per week, instead? I must admit that I’d like to adapt and cut all 922 designs from the book, but even if I cut one a day that would still take me years to finish. Still, seeing as I’ve already started…!
In the meantime, I like the individual elements of today’s design, but I can’t tell which way up it is supposed to go. Whichever way you turn it, at least one of the flowers seems to be at a strange angle.
Closer up:
As far as the actual papercutting skills go, though, I think I’ve done OK on this one. There aren’t many bits that really leap out at me and upset me.
Have you done any paper cutting recently? Let us know! What kind of paper do you use, and which tools do you use to do the cutting?
Er, I don’t actually know what this is. It looks like a cross between a lion and a plant. With a ruff around its neck. (Does that make it a dandelion?)
Closer up:
…and is it doing a little poo, as well? If I’d noticed that part of the design while I was cutting it, I would have tried to incorporate it into the leg, I think, so it looked less like something coming out of the lion/plant’s bottom.
And then to add insult to injury (or the other way round, perhaps) my cat dribbled on the paper and got it wet.
Wow, really close-up it looks really raggy. But as I’m getting to the end of my 100-day project, I really am thinking that I’m not that bothered. It looks nice at with normal vision, so I really shouldn’t worry about the flaws that become more obvious when it has been magnified.
And even with the magnification, there are still some parts that I think are really nice and can’t be improved.
So the 100 days of this project have hopefully started to teach me something after all!
