A stack of animals and a paper cutting tutorial

Hello everyone, happy Sunday!

Yesterday I joined a paper cutting group on Facebook run by Suzy from Folk Art Papercuts. A new paper cut theme will be set every few weeks for everyone to work on and we'll share our sketches, progress photos and final pieces with the group.

For the first challenge we were given the theme 'stacks of animals'. I sketched mine out yesterday and began cutting it today, here's how it looks so far.

There's quite a bit more cutting left to do around the edge, but I'm really happy with the animals in the middle. I'm used to cutting patterns rather than pictures, so it feels strange to cut such large sections.

The whole teetering stack is supported by a turtle and chicken.

This reminds me, I need to cut out some seeds for the chicken to peck! There's a little spider lurking in the undergrowth too...

This week I've also been busy working on a paper cutting tutorial for Hope and Chances Creativity's blog. It's the first guest post I've ever done so I was keen to get it right! If you'd like to have a go yourself, you can download my free paper cutting template here and pop over to Hope and Chances Creativity for instructions on how to use it. This is the what you'll end up with (fingers crossed)!

The other project I've managed to finish this week is a series of mini heart paper cuts which I started back in the middle of April. This one is to go on our wall so it's taken a back seat while I've been doing a couple of commissions. Here's what it looked like unframed.

And this is it finished.

The box frame was one we picked up at a car boot sale, full of dried plants!

I'll leave you with this photo taken today on our walk along the South West Coast Path through Bucks Woods, near Bucks Mills in North Devon. It was carpeted with bluebells - beautiful!

I'm sharing this post on the following blogs: Handmade Harbour, Be Different Act Normal, Sunny Simple Life and Tatertots and Jello.