Tower of London Education Center

For the month of February, I was locked up in the Tower of London! Fortunately I made it out with my head intact and a wonderful project to show for it. I was commissioned by the Education Center to do eight large papercuts for their teaching room. Here they are:

The Menagerie

This one is, by far, the most elaborate of the set. I researched out what animals were in the Menagerie, what years they were there and the stories about them. Then I had to figure out how they all looked and did a lot of research on the internet to find out what a hyena's hindquarters looked like. It was great fun.

King Bran and the Ravens

There is a legend that the head of King Bran is buried under the White Tower and that is the reason why so many ravens are present (Bran means raven). Apparently if the ravens never leave the confines of the Tower, the kingdom will never fall.

Colonel "I Drink Up Your Crown Jewels" Blood

The only time the Crown Jewels have successfully been stolen was back in 1671 when Blood thieved the jewels from Martin Tower where they were being kept. He was caught and pardoned and given some money and a place to live. Sort of posh treatment for someone who made off with the riches of England, eh?

The Beheading of Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn spent her last minutes thinking she was going to be pardoned. Okay, I don't really know that, but that's what the Yeoman Warders say when you take the tour at the Tower of London. They say that she was praying as her head was chopped off and when they lifted it up for all to see, her lips were still moving. She is buried in the chapel behind the execution site.

Ranulph Flambard

Flambard was one of the lucky ones to escape from the Tower. One night, he got all the guards around him drunk and used the ropes surrounding the flagons of wine to form a rope from which to escape from his high cell in the White Tower. Unfortunately the rope was too short, fortunately he landed in a giant cesspool beneath him.

Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr

In an instance where patience is a virtue, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn is the perfect example. His wife had petitioned for him to get out of the Tower and he was about to be set free. He wanted to get out sooner and fashioned a rope out of sheets to help him escape. The sheets weren't tied together tight enough and so they snapped and he fell to his death. No one could recognize who he was at first because he landed on his head and it impacted it down into his body.

Jean Gerard

Gerard was another escapist from within the confines of the Tower. He was able to shimmy his way out with the help of some friends via a rope from the Cradle Tower. His hands were so swollen from being shackled whilst therein that he fell on his way out, but managed to escape anyway.

The Peasants' Revolt

The peasants are revolting! 1381 was a tough time for Londoners. Their taxes had been raised three years in a row and the Black Death had reduced the population significantly. One day, as the young boy Richard II rode out to negotiate with the people in town, the gates were left open to the tower and the peasants stormed in. The guards did nothing to stop them and so treason was suspected.

These are the people I worked with in completing this project. They were oh so very helpful. From left to right: Dan, Alex, me, Dorothy and Canev. In order for me—who had just barely figured out that Tudor style houses are in reference to the Tudor age—to finish this job, I had to have a lot of help. They were wonderful. Also very informative was Brigit from the library and Sutherland who offered moral support 100% of the time. A big thanks to Alex who offered me the opportunity to do these papercuts and had the patience to help me see it through.

La Reine Sans Tête

A few posts down, I have another Anne Boleyn papercut that I did before I came to England. That one I encased in resin and it turned out okay. I can now see why the old masters sketched things again and again and again before they put it to the canvas. I think this depiction of Anne Boleyn at the scaffold worked out better. I know a little bit more about some of the details of her death which helped add to it. This one is pretty large, about 4 feet by 3 feet in height. This and the menagerie have been my favorite ones of the whole series.

Swollen Hands, Swollen Heart

Not quite as elaborate as the menagerie, but yet still informative, this is the story of John Gerard who was imprisoned in the Salt Tower of the Tower of London in the 1590s. He had been imprisoned and and tortured and his hands had swollen up to the size of balloons. Withstanding all of those things, he escaped from the Cradle Tower one night, shimmying down a rope across the moat to freedom.

Menagerie-a-Trois

Today I completed what I think will probably be my most ambitious papercut of the set. It's of the Tower of London menagerie that had been in existence since roughly 1201 to about 1835 when they were removed to the London Zoo. Here I do a really rough history of animals that had been in the collection throughout the ages. The size is about 4' x 1.5'.


Can you see:
1. A flutist playing for a lion
2. An artist painting the first elephant that many people had ever seen in Europe
3. A polar bear being taken for a walk by the menagerie keeper so that it can fish in the River Thames
4. People lining up to go into the menagerie, the admission price a cat or dog to feed to the lions
5. A dog that gets thrown in with a lion, but the lion befriends it and it continues to live with the lion
6. An elephant that get fed wine every day
7. A lion that is poked with a hot iron at exactly the right time during Queen Elizabeth I's coronation speech
8. A pipe smoking baboon
9. A monkey that is holding onto a boy's leg that he just tore off
10. An ostrich that ate 80 nails
11. Lions that can tell if you're a virgin or not?

All this and more is found in this papercut. Quite the history!

Ranulph Flambard

So here's the second completed papercut of I've done for the Tower. This one is of Ranulph Flambard. No one names their kid Ranulph anymore, I wonder why. Anyway, he was imprisoned in the tower. One night, his friends hid a rope in a flagon of wine and had it delivered to his chambers. He shared the wine with his guards who grew sufficiently drunk enough for him to escape without their noticing. Ranulph climbed down the tower wall, but the rope wasn't long enough and he had to jump the rest of the way and, luckily enough, landed in a cesspool to break his fall.

Happy Valentine's Day!

King Bran

The white parts near the bottom will look better when they are glued down, more continuous, but here's what I'm currently doing. This is a papercut about the legend of King Bran. Here's a bit more about it:

Another Tower raven legend chronicled in the Mabinogion states that upon the death of the giant king Bran the Blessed (bran means raven in Welsh), his head was cut off and buried at the “White Hill” in London, (usually identified as Tower Hill) “with the face turned towards France.” This burial is known in the Welsh Triads as one of the Three Happy Concealments of The Island of the Mighty. As long as Bran’s head stays buried there, Britain will be safe from invasion. It is as if these older legends, folktales, and superstitions fused to form the current Tower of London raven legend. (Fortean Times UK)

I'll post more as I do more!

Super Tuesday

Today is the last day for people to vote on my design for Threadless (preferably a $5). Vote for me and then go vote for your favorite presidential candidate!

I Am Come Hither to Die

I'm going to be in England for the month of February. I will more than likely be able to do some papercuts of stories from events that happened at the Tower of London. I have been wanting to try a new format and so I had my dad cut a large board out of oak plywood. Then I painted a light image of the Tower in the background. Then I did a layer of resin. The layer that I did was a clear resin and didn't dry very fast. I think put an image on and poured another layer on. This layer was a different brand and dried faster, but it wasn't clear and it shrunk up the sort of undry layer of resin beneath it. This didn't work so well, but it gave me a clearer idea of what I need to do in the future, which is, plan ahead and don't do anything half-ass. This is a good life philosophy. Anyway, I learned a lot about Ann Boleyn in the process of doing this. I was fully expecting to do a scherenschnitt of her on the chopping block, but instead found that she was executed French style by a swordsman while kneeling.

Here are her final words:

Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.

Bear Murders Puma Up For T-Shirt Design

Hey guys! I decided to try to put my Bear Murders Puma design on a Threadless shirt.



Could I bother you to go and vote yes for me? (Just click on the bear above)

Thanks so much!

Let Down Your Golden Hair

I always loved the part in the story of Rapunzel where she comments that she liked it better when the prince climbed up her hair because he was so much lighter than the witch. Climb on, handsome prince, climb on!

This lovely scherenschnitt is for sale on my etsy site too!

Rotkäppchen

Okay, it's for sale. I'll make prints soon though! Go here for to buy.

I thought I'd try my hand at doing a series. I got these vintage frames the other day and wanted to place something in them and I kept thinking, Red Riding Hood, Red Riding Hood. So I followed the voices in my head and did a papercut.


I looked up Red Riding Hood on Wikipedia and the story is sort of like how when you're a little kid you miss all the innuendos in Grease. Well, I missed all the innuendos in Red Riding Hood. In the original stories, she is swayed by the wolf and gets in bed with him before he eats her. There is no hunter to save her. She messes with the wolf, she dies.


I like the above picture the best. They are having such a good time smelling those flowers.


In light of the fact that my parent's dog just died and they just shot that tiger in the San Francisco zoo, I had a little bit of a hard time with this last image. That wolf was just doing what he does best.


These are small, about 3.5" x 5". I might try to sell them on Etsy. I sort of want to hoard them for myself though.

Etsy Virgin!

I put up my first stuff on Etsy this weekend! I wonder to myself, "Why didn't I do this sooner?" Visit http://cindymindypindy.etsy.com

I'm in love with this little deer papercut that I did. It's so teeny and fragile.


Here's some little elephants, not quite as teeny as the deer one, but still pretty teeny.

Leaving Las Vegas

Before my parents moved out of my childhood home in Las Vegas, I snapped a few pictures of the things I loved about the area. One of my favorite birds in the area is the Mourning Dove and luckily they were perched in abundance on a telephone pole right in our front yard. This picture of this scherenschnitt looks a lot cooler than what it actually turned out like, but it still looks pretty great in real life.

Princes in the Tower

Today is Alex' birthday and when I was over there in England, he mentioned that it would be interesting to do a silhouette book of the Princes in the Tower. Of course I needed to be educated about who exactly these princes were, but thought "Sure, that would be interesting." In my head, the silhouettes on either side, with the stairs going into their mouths of Richard III and Henry VII, would be a little more prominent. If I were to do it all again, I'd make them a little more scary. I like how the princes turned out though.

The post office told me the present wouldn't make it there until Friday, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had made it on the day of his birth. His postman put it in the bathroom window instead of the mail slot, so luckily it didn't fall in the toilet!

O Tannenbaum!

So I mentioned I was going to London for Christmas, right? Anyway, I am visiting my friend Alex and we're going to his mother's for Christmas. I thought, what am I going to get for his mom? Of course I decided to make a papercut for her. I didn't make this idea up though, it's patterned after the style of Cindy McKeen. My mom has a few of her laser cut trees and borders and I thought Alex' mom might like one. (Sorry, Cindy, for kyping your style, I just didn't have time to purchase one!)

Silhouettes on the Shade

Last month I did a few mockups for Modern Bride to possibly be featured in an upcoming magazine. One of the ones I did had a silhouette theme. I used the profiles of my friends Crystal and Edan for the invite. I had these great little frames from Ikea and thought, "Hey, I already have their profiles, I'll just make them this cute Christmas present!" So I did and I think they turned out great!

I'll make one for you, too! Just e-mail me (cindy at cindyferguson.com) and send me pictures of your profiles and I'll send you my address where you can send payment.

Price: $30 each.

Baba Yaga Calendar

So for Christmas cards/gifts this year, I made a calendar for people. I did a drawing of Baba Yaga. It sort of looks like a scherenschnitte, but it's not really. Merry Christmas!

Oh, and if you want one, email me your request (cindy at cindyferguson.com) and I'll send you my address. Price: $15 includes shipping and handling. I have them in blue too!

Rooks

I'm going to England for Christmas and wanted to make my host a papercut for a present. I don't think he looks at this site, but if he does, Merry Christmas Alex!

Hawk On The Wire

So I stumbled upon this bird blog that is run by John Dempsey in England. It is updated pretty regularly and I saw this image of a hawk sitting on a telephone post (November 17, 2007) and thought that it would make a great scherenschnitte. So I made one. There's another image of some rooks that I'm going to do that will kick hiney too.

Thank You Cards

I thought, this being the holiday season, it might be a good time to remind people that I had some great Thank You cards available for purchase. Want some?

These aren't actual papercuts, but they are papercut inspired and illustrated by me! I've got sets of 5 for $7.50 (add $1.50 s/h for each set). E-mail me at cindy@cindyferguson.com and I'll e-mail you my address and you can send me some lucre.

Size: 5.5" x 4.25" (A2 card with envelope)

Colors: Cream or robin's egg blue. All with black silhouette.

Squirrel Scherenschnitte

So last April, I went with my friend Dan out to Port Townsend for a visit. Surprisingly, there's a lot to see out there. We went to this park and I looked up and saw this squirrel climbing across small delicate branches and it silhouetted so well that I took a picture and tried to recreate it. Drawing and cutting branches like these gives me a newer and greater appreciation for nature. Even though I did a lot of little cuts, this papercut is nowhere near as intricate as the glory that is around us everywhere. It took me so long to cut out that I nearly went blind.

Tree Scherenschnitte

My friend Sarah won the free give-away of a scherenschnitte on my other blog for the 50,000th visitor. She also allowed me to stay in her house for two weeks while I looked for an apartment. I figure she really deserves one of these. When I asked her what she wanted, she said a tree and then sited this poem:

Another Sarah for Christopher Smart
by anne porter

When winter was half over
God sent three angels to the apple-tree
Who said to her
"Be glad, you little rack
Of empty sticks,
Because you have been chosen.

In May you will become
A wave of living sweetness
A nation of white petals
A dynasty of apples."

I'd like to think this is the apple tree right before it shoots out it's blossoms and is just done with being a rack of empty sticks.

Silhouette of the Artist on a Friday Night

The length is right, the height is wrong. my head should be a little bigger and my legs a little thicker to be accurately proportioned in this scherenschnitte silhouette of me last Friday night when my plans fell through and I tried using Redbox for the first time and couldn't get Transformers, but could get Evan Almighty and it was a nice movie.

How To Scherenschnitte

So my friend works at the Gallery of Contemporary Art, UCCS, and asked me to make a How-to video of papercutting. Here I talk about different types of paper, tools and techniques I use in the art of papercutting.



Here's the template used in the above video. Enjoy*! Download Free Squirrel Scherenschnitte.


*But don't enjoy it too much, please feel free to make this cutout for personal use and gifts for friends, but selling it is just bad karma. I used my brain to make this, use yours to make your own. Copywrite 2007: Cindy Ferguson

Reversibles!

I made this one from a template and didn't mess up the white, so now I have two scherenschnittes of birds!



This one is modeled after some taxidermied birds I saw last summer when I went to the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.

Worship the Nut

It's been a while, sorry! I finally moved into my apartment and got everything put away and now I can make squirrel scherenschnitte to my heart's content. This was made in anticipation of an exciting video that I will be posting within the next week. Check back soon!

Learning How To Papercut

This post is nice because it also updates my Goose Girl blog. I haven't been able to do any papercuts because of various reasons—reading Harry Potter, getting ready for the garage sale, recovering from the garage sale—I think this will help me get back into the swing of things.

A little while ago, I got a disc of patterns for Scherenschnitte from a member of my scherenschnitte yahoo group that I haven't been very active in. I used these templates to help teach my Family Home Evening group how to papercut. They all did very well.

Here's Andy's. He did the 3 Blind Mice.


Terry did a good one of a kitten getting into a fish bowl.


Kristina made some pelicans.


Joseph won the award for skinniest cut with his Tom Sawyer papercut.


Meredith took to scherenschnitte like a fish takes to water.


Oh my gosh, I did some unicorns.


Stacy made some cute kitties.


I made the beginnings of a squirrel garland.


And Sharon, the newest member of our group, took on one of the toughest patterns and did an excellent job. She's going to take the rest of the templates to her second grade class for an activity.


After all that hard work, we needed some sustenance. Andy and I went to Burgermaster and ate some tasty burgers.


Burgers are so tasty!

Flowers for Claire

A long time ago Claire commissioned me to make some flowers for her and because I'm so on top of things, I've finally gotten around to it a year later. I don't know if this is what she had in mind, but they are scherenschnitte of flowers from her sister's garden. If you don't like them, Claire, no purchase necessary. I really like how the Columbines turned out.

32

I took a picture of some birds sitting on a wire outside of the Hilltop Service Station on Capitol Hill right across from Sonic Boom. It was my 32nd birthday (way back in March) and I thought what a great scherenschnitte this would make.