Category: Papercutting

An oeuf is enoeuf

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Crafting, Illustrator, Papercutting, Uncategorized

Easter’s been and gone now. Only had the one egg but, as they say, an oeuf is enoeuf… .

A Ferraro Rocher. Seven euros, I think.. or was it eight? But… Urfff it wasn’t nice. Between us, we ate half and chucked the rest away. And it was an empty shell. No sweeties inside. Bleh. So, with a face like a dropped pie, tried to appreciate the pretty foil packaging. It IS pretty.

Husband got his absolute favourite. A kilo bag of mini eggs. Sounds like gluttony and death by chocolate but they’ll actually last us him weeks.

Anyway, had a passion to fulfil. A project that jumped into my head a couple of weeks ago.

Since starting art classes, have been looking for a nice folder to carry artwork in. Keep paintings separate from other art supplies in bag. Nothing on Amazon or proper shops (do leave the house occasionally) had anything to inspire me. Those black polyvinyl carry cases look nasty.  

Lessons learned and all that. Took measurements and documented the process. All good. Still very functional but lacking finesse.

Second go. Got out the operating table for the tools and equipment.

It has fold over flaps in the back, decorative metal corner protectors and cotton-twill ties (for when it goes to dinner or attends interviews, etc, ha ha).

 Designed the labels in Illustrator. It accommodates A3 so large enough for my art work.

I made the flaps wider than those in the original (above) so they overlapped better.

The metal corners are bigger than the original as well. Secured with a spot of glue and a crimp.

Still a few tweaks to make but not in a hurry to make another just yet because I love it.

Talking of leaving the house, the sun is bloody shining today so can wear new DMs – Clarissa leopardskin sandals – and show off newly-painted Plum Pudding purple toenails. High gloss. Brill.

Into January Like I Mean It

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Papercutting

First things first. It’s cold. Last week was all crunchy grass and frosty leaves but Oh So Pretty.

Yesterday, it snowed, settled, got sprinkled with rain then froze overnight. It’s slips, trips and falls hazard-central so my Christmas fat arse and sofa are best friends and likely to stay that way all of today.

Christmas was lovely. Chris Rea was still driving home for Christmas. It always takes him a devil of a time. I noted he’s from Middlesborough in the UK and checked the AA Traffic News: said he had clear roads ahead so hope it was an easy drive. I really think it’s about time his family visited him for a change.

Watched a YT video and laughed at a Nativity play where one of the sheep nicked baby Jesus to give him a big squeeze just as a little drummer boy turned up to bang his drum to honour the birth. Poor Mary.

Trundled about on a donkey for hours, laboured and delivered on some sheepy-fellows dungy straw then, while not looking her Instagram best, visited by kings and shepherds… only to have some little bo**ocks with a drum turn up and bang away when I bet all she wanted was a cup of tea and a lie down. Magic of Christmas, eh?!

My ‘best’ present was a bag of organic seaweed, hand-harvested from a beach in Connemara. All packaged nicely. Seaweed in a net bag. Apparently, you throw it in a bath and sit and soak in the seaweedy water that becomes infused with lots of rejuvenating and age-reversing minerals. More Christmas Magic!

So I tried it. Dear God. The smell. Fr Jessop in Fr Jack’s underpants hamper couldn’t have suffered as much as I did. Mysterious dark bits managed to escape the netty bag and float around looking suspiciously like dried insects or other organic matter. Had the Connemara beach been formally awarded Blue Flag status?

But, the smell was the worst of it. Like bathing in a mens’ public urinal. Mr Monday came to investigate the smell wondering if we had backed-up sewer problems. The atmospheric urea content made our hair curl. The packaging claimed the seaweed could be dried and used again, not something I would ever repeat so we decided to use it as fertiliser on the garden and get that s*it out of there. After a shower and me all freshened up, we had a good laugh – shits and giggles!

Changing the subject, I stumbled upon a pretty paper cutting project on YT:

I downloaded the template and hot-foiled it – along with a bird-spinner pattern that Maarit was giving away:

But back to goal-achieving and getting on with academic stuff. Tomorrow. Cats don’t do the ‘W’ word and nor do I, at least not on a Monday.

So, to all of you going back to work, hope it’s not too bad. It’s a new year. 2025 budgets have been approved and there’ll be loads of places hiring. Brush up your CV and shake your tail. Good luck and hope this year brings us all lots of happiness. Make something brilliant of yourself!

Make a paper jubbly with printed graphics

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Papercutting, Photoshop

Paper jubblies are great to make. You can personalise one by printing your own graphics.

If you want the graphics to be the right way up whichever way the jubbly is facing, follow my tutorial.

It will walk you through the steps to setting up the area to fill with graphics, how to hot foil and then how to make the final jubbly. Great way to make a small gift look very special 🙂

graphics-on-jubbliesDownload

Make paper jubblies

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Papercutting
Jubblies decorated with stamped bunnies in pink tutus.

Use pretty paper and decorate for any occasion. They are really cylinders that have been turned 90 degrees and crimped to make a tetrahedron. You don’t need a crimper to create the corrugated top and bottom but it does complete the ‘look’.

Fill them with sweets as party treats or shower gifts. Make 24 and hang them up as an advent calendar. I’ve made advent calendars with them many a year.

Download the instructions ‘crimped-jubbly’ below:

crimped-jubblyDownload
A set of decorative advent numbers to cut out

If you make the jubblies as an advent set, you’ll need to number them – I’m giving you the set I made in Illustrator a while back. If you have a laser printer, some deco foil and a laminator you can foil them and make them look really sensational. For instructions on how to do that, see Jennifer McQuire’s tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP-aBqtRgmg

number-set-for-adventDownload

Personalise with a decorative initial:

Download the image above, scale to size and cut out or, if you have Photoshop, you can create a set of .abr brushes (there are lots of tutorials on how to do that – it’s very easy).

Papercut animals

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Papercutting

Am still working to create a full alphabet of ‘confetti letters’ as I call them (the cut-outs create a shower of pretty mess like confetti) but have been slightly derailed into making a few animals to go with them.

Cat
Porcupine
Fox: I posted the Illustrator design for this in a previous post.
Have changed the eyes slightly
Squirrel
Hedgehog

But did manage an ‘R’:

The letter R
Hare
Hoots Mon!

Owl be seeing you….

Confetti Letters

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Papercutting
Confetti letters, A – P

Did you know there is a word used to describe sentences that contain every letter of the alphabet? One example which has been around since at least the late 1800s is ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,”. They’re called Pangrams.

Am making good progress designing letters and working through the alphabet.

The montage above shows how far I’ve got with the designs in Illustrator.

Confetti Letters: Cut-Out ‘H’
Q

Some progress with ‘Q’ but I’ve been getting distracted with other letters and things:

ZA3_Butterfly
Foxy
Ring_of_Flowers_F

These still need some work. The small cuts in the butterfly are okay to cut manually but a cutting machine might have problems with them so will get round to enlarging them sometime.

A
XOXOXO

Paper Cut Letters

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Papercutting
Let’s start at the very beginning

I’m showcasing the first few new papercut letter designs here and when I’m perfectly happy with them and how they cut, they’ll be up on Etsy.

I’ve been designing a few types before I decide which way to go and complete a whole alphabet with; some have already been cut out others are still in Illustrator:

Still in Illustrator
J
H for Happy
Doh!
Let it Be
Letter N
C
E
A

A for Again

Quite a few to cut out. A job for this weekend. J for Joy.

Celebration Freebird Papercut

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Papercutting
Papercut Freebird on slub-silk background
How the papercut design looked in Illustrator with a coloured fill.

I designed the bird some time ago; it came to life as a pencil and paper drawing, was then scanned and imported into Illustrator for tracing.

Designing for a papercut means paying attention to legibility, that it will cut in one piece and not lose any bits that are meant to be part of the design. After loads of tweaking, the tedious stuff, I eventually settled on the design above.



Papercutting and Dupion Silk

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Papercutting

I’m working on a papercutting for somebody at the moment and wanted something special to back it with.

I went to a shop that specialises in raw silk from China, Thailand and India. It’s called Roisin Cross. It has the most beautiful range of silks.

I chose three Dupion silks – these are woven in India and have a wonderful texture with little imperfections in the weave that makes them so pretty. They’re not so flowy or soft as the lighter weight silks as I needed the stiffer backing. They have a certain irridescence about them as well.

The choice of colour had to be something that would contrast with white paper – Canson brilliant white, 250gsm, acid-free cartridge paper. In the end I chose a sharp green, a dark sea blue-green and a dark mulberry.

The pic above is the first cut, on Canson natural white on the dark sea green.

On the sharp green:

On the mulberry:

The Dupion silks:

It’s been difficult to find good quality backing paper for papercuts for the past year and silk makes a superb alternative.

Latest revisions:

xox