Template Tuesday - Four-leaf Clover

It's still Tuesday! I'm going for consistency here. I can barely even keep my dishes clean, but I'm going to try to be faithful to this thing.

This is the best month in the world. It is my birthday month, the first day of spring month, now it's daylight savings time month. It also holds the best holiday in the world. The holiday where you are forced to wear green or you are leaving yourself wide open for pinching. I hate the people who say things like, "My eyes are green," or "My underwear is green," and try to pinch you back.

Anyway, here's a papercut that's more of a pattern. I had no idea what to do. I spent way too much money at the makeup store tonight so I didn't have time to concept as much as I would like to.

Here's the template if you feel so inclined. It's kind of easy. Just have the template be placed in the corner of a twice folded piece of paper. Cut out the gray parts first, then the outlines (but not the dotted line) and then unfold. Easy, breezy, beautiful, four-leafed clover image.

* Ooo! Look, my friend Sarah cut out her image and posted it on her blog. Good job, Sarah!

Watership Down

A few years back, I went to the Into the Woods design conference just outside of Seattle. One of the presenters was an artist named Rama Hughes. He and his wife, Christine, are both so very talented. I kept in contact with them and was recently asked to help Rama out with a project. He teaches a group of kids art and has asked different people to be artistic penpals with his students. This papercut is for a girl who I've heard enjoys drawing pictures of rabbits. I hope she likes it.

Template Tuesday - Llama Love

If you're like me, you love llamas. They're kind of like a deer mixed with a camel. I had a little time before a meeting today and I sat in my car and sketched out this papercut. It's a mirror image cut, so if you try the template, you would print it out and place the dotted line part along the fold of your paper. Don't cut along the dotted line. Remember to cut out the shaded gray areas first. The trickiest part about this cut is the thinness of the spit/stem. In cutting out thin lines like this, remember to go left to right (unless you're left handed) so that you can see how much you are cutting and can tell if you're going to cut through the line. Here's what the template will look like:


Click here for Llama Love template.

I feel like all I've been doing is templates. I've been doing other stuff, I promise. This week will hopefully have more papercuts!

Template Tuesday - Lotus Frog

Sometimes the templates on Template Tuesday will be a little easier than others. This one's pretty easy. I had no idea what to draw for today's papercut, so I asked my friend Kim what she would like to see. She said she would like to see a frog. Here's a little froggy for you, Kim!


Click here to download the template.

Big Fiddle

My friend Andi's husband, Mark, has a daughter, Liz, who is extremely talented and getting her degree out on the East Coast somewhere fancy schmancy. She is putting together her first solo album and asked if I would papercut a cover for the album. I was excited to. She sent me her blog that has all the songs from her album (visit Big Fiddle) with the idea that the insert can unfold to reveal a whole poster. She wanted it to tell a story and since there were so many visual images from the names of the songs, I thought I'd represent them in the vines. Liz and her husband Andrew were a delight to work with and I think it turned out lovely. Can you tell what songs each image represents?

Winner!

Does this description fit you? If so, you're the winner of your very own custom papercut!

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50,000

If you go down to the bottom of the screen, you'll see that this Scherenschnitte blog is fast approaching it's 50,000th visitor.

If you are the 50,000th visitor, I will make you your very own custom papercut.

To find out if you're the 50,000th visitor, go down to the bottom of the page and click on the number. When it takes you to that site, click on the Details link on the left. Then, click on the number next to it. It'll tell you where the visitor came from, what kind of computer they were using, how many children they have (not really) and at the very bottom, what number visitor they are.

Start thinking about what you want!

Template Tuesday - Queen of Hearts

A lot of people come to this site looking for templates. While a lot of the papercuts on here are easily made into templates, most of them are too small to actually use properly (I don't mind if you try to recreate them for yourself or as gifts). I'm going to try to - every Tuesday (I realize I'm posting this late on a Wednesday night, but Template Wednesday doesn't quite have the same ring that Template Tuesday does), create a scherenschnitt that will have an accompanying template that you can download. Here's the first one! It's the Queen of Hearts!

The following is not actually the template, it's just what the template looks like. To actually download the template click here: Queen of Hearts Template.

Oops! I just realized while looking at this that I didn't create this properly. If you print it out, you need to print out the reverse, so that the Q looks backwards to you but right in the mirror.


In order to make this papercut, first you'll cut out the gray areas. This one is pretty much all gray area. Once those are all cut out, cut out the edge of the card.

Anyway, enjoy! I haven't been able to stop singing the Juice Newton song, Queen of Hearts, since I started creating this. Good thing I really like that song.

Sometimes Love Is Mythical...

...like the unicorn. I keep seeing all these design blogs with all their happiness about Valentine's Day and I wonder where all the bitter girls like me are. Here's a nice papercut with some of my favorite mythical creatures, the unicorns.

Some More Alice Scherenschnitt

And you thought it was over! I cooked up one more thing for the Alice in Wonderland Tea Party papercut, this cute little placemat. Now, your tea party will be complete.

Nie Nie Auction

I don't know how many of you have heard of the many sites out there dedicated to Stephanie Nielsen's recovery. You might see a Nie Nie recovery button on your favorite craft blog every now and then. I'm a little late jumping on the band wagon, but when my friend Carina invited me to contribute to the auction occuring in Provo this Monday, I happily agreed to donate. Click on this link to find out more about the auction. Or this link.


This is what I chose to donate. My papercut piece that was inspired by my trip to London. It's of the Samuel Beckett quote, "No matter, try again. Fail again, fail better." It kind of hurts to let it go, but it's for a good cause and I hope the person who wins it will enjoy it's message.


Maybe I'll see you on Monday!

CHA

If any of you are at the Craft and Hobby Association convention, come visit me in the Making Memories booth! I'll always be there. I think I'll be demoing the whole time. Come say hi! Come tell me you stalk my blog! I love it!

Elephant on Eggshells

My first papercut of the year! My friend Kim brought over a book called Easter Eggs for Everyone. I'm not allowed to keep it, even though I really want to. Maybe I'll hide it! Anyway, they had a little article on egg dioramas and I thought that that would be the perfect frame for a papercut. What to put in it was the next question. I thought I'd put the biggest thing in the littlest container. A tiny papercut of a woman riding an elephant with a monkey on it's head. I'm not the best photographer, but I did what I could. It looks a whole lot better in real life, I promise!

Happy New Year!

It's the end of the year and you guys are obviously thinking, "Boy, Cindy, you haven't done very many squirrel papercuts." And I am hearing you.



This one is a little squirrel card that you would put in a little forest envelope. Of course, the squirrel is actually a giant squirrel with a giant nut. If he was a squirrel of proper proportions to the trees, there wouldn't be much space to write on anything!



Happy New Year everyone! May you be happy and successful with all you do!

Tea Party Place Cards

So, maybe when you throw your Alice in Wonderland Tea Party, you want to make sure that everyone sits in a certain spot (only to change seats periodically throughout the meal). You'll want to have place cards that match, right? Right. These are a little more simple to create than the actual centerpiece, but these little papercut place cards will add the right touch to your party. Plus, since you didn't spend as much time on then, you won't care if people spill stuff all over them!

Tea Party Table Decoration

So, say you're having a tea party for some friends and you want to have a fun theme. Wouldn't a nice Alice in Wonderland theme go well for that party? Here's a papercut I did that will hopefully go in a book on how to papercut that will come out sometime in the fall. On one side we have the Hatter pouring Alice some tea. On the other, the rabbit and his clock and the snoozing dormouse. They stand neatly in the middle of your table. I might consider laminating them.

Deer Me

More experimenting with 3d papercuts. I've had these shadow boxes from IKEA for years and never have used them. I finally got around to it and painted the inside blue and the outside gold and made a deer papercut for Jake for Christmas. I think he liked it.

House of Fergusons

This was my friend Andi's idea. Do you look at this blog, Andi? You should, it's my better blog. If you don't, that's good too because then you don't know that I'm stealing your idea. I suppose this counts as cutting paper too since I'm gluing printed family photos to cardstock, cutting them out, putting divots in them and making a house of cards.



More regular paper cutting to be seen after this!

And Again...

So I made another one. I really like Martha Stewart's glitter. It's really pretty.

Glitter Obsession

So I've kind of been obsessed with glitter ever since I did those little glitter ornaments. It's so pretty. One of my co-workers, Audre, did a trend trip to New York and picked up this really cute little hanging dangly thing:



I thought, "Heck! I can do that," and so I tried it and I think it turned out rather nice. Technically it's not a papercut since I didn't use my own skills to cut anything. I used Making Memories' new die-cutting machine, the Slice, to cut out the stars, their grommet hole punch to cut out a big hole and a smaller hole punch to cut out the letters.


I think I'd like to make more with other cheesy words like dream or believe and hang a ton or them from the ceiling in my bathroom. These would be so pretty for a wedding, too.