New papercutting templates in the pipeline!

I finished my map of the Thames this week! It's all scanned and ready to be printed in a guide for Le Boat in the new year. I can't show you the finished map yet as I painted it in two parts and it's scanned in sections to be knitted together and labelled by their graphic designer. I can't wait to see it all in one piece and will share it with you as soon as I can!

New papercutting templates

This weekend, in between Christmassy bits and bobs and a celebratory dinner for Sam's mum's birthday, I've been working on a new set of paper cut templates to sell in January. I've designed four wedding card templates which will all be sold together.

This is the first one which I cut out today.

I'm going to save all of the originals as I have a few friends and family getting married next year. I hope they don't read my blog in the meantime else they won't be very surprised!

A recent commission

As I don't have much new work to share with you today, I thought I'd show you this paper cut which I was commissioned to do by my Aunty for my cousin's girlfriend. It contains lots of little bits and bobs which represent her and their family.

It's been a while since I've done a paper cut like this so I'm looking forward to hopefully doing some more next year.

My favourite bits of this one are the teapots and the bumblebees - both things which I'm very fond of!

Elf on the Shelf

I have had an extra responsibility this weekend too. I had to look after the work elf, Derek. He's an 'elf on the shelf', which, if you don't know, is Father Christmas' helper who has been sent to keep an eye on children's behaviour in the run up to Christmas. He's not particularly well-behaved himself though, and gets up to all sorts of mischief during the night!

Anyway, on Saturday he came with me to Living Coasts in Torquay where he tried to make friends with the penguins but unfortunately, his efforts weren't really reciprocated. In fact, the penguins were downright mean!

 I love the way Derek appears to be looking at them out of the corner of his eye!

Luckily, he was rescued before they could do any lasting damage!

Thank you

I found out this week that my blog has unfortunately not been shortlisted in the National UK Blog Awards but I just want to say thank you to everyone who voted. I was very touched by all your support and will be entering again next year!

Happy Christmas!

Finally, I wish you all a very merry Christmas filled with lots of love, laughter, mince pies and cheesy Christmas classics!

I'm sharing this post on Blue Chair Diary Illustrations!

Detailed paper cut template: World design

Those of you who follow my facebook page will have already seen this, so I apologise if it's old news! I'm very excited that my first proper paper cut template is now available to download from my Etsy shop. The design is based on a paper cut I did a while ago.

It's been a bit of a learning curve as I normally hand draw all of my templates, which is fine for when I'm cutting them myself, but to expect someone else to follow my wonky lines and rubbings out is a bit too much to ask! So I've spent a bit of time a lot of time getting to know a free program called Inkscape which you can download here if you've got the next three days to spend getting to grips with it! Seriously though, it's very good because you can make vector images which is great because they can be scaled up and down with no loss of quality.

Anyway, enough about the design process, this is the paper cut which you can make from the template which can be downloaded from my shop.

For those of you who would like to give it a go, I thought I'd include a few tips in this blog post.

• When cutting, start from the middle and work outwards; that way you're not weakening the paper around the edge before you've cut the middle. Cutting around the edge of the whole design should be the last thing you do. You can also leave it with a solid border if you like, depending on how you plan to frame it.

• Use the same rule for cutting each individual element, for example, cut the windows out of the bus before cutting the outline.

• When cutting the circles I find it easiest to cut half, then turn the paper to cut the other half. I'm better at cutting curves around to the right (if that makes sense) so just find out what works best for you. 

• For fiddly bits like the countries of the world, use the tip of your finger to hold the paper firm, but be careful not to slip and chop it off!

• Finally, just take it slowly, make sure your blade is nice and sharp and don't press too firmly. Your movements should be steady but not stiff, else you'll end up with straight lines where you want curves!

I hope that helps, I've love to see how you get on if you give it a go!

Just a short post today as I will be back tomorrow to take part in the Blogland Tour which is a great way to discover new blogs.

I'll leave you with these few photos taken on our bike ride along the Tarka Trail today.

I'm sharing this post on the following blogs:  Handmade Harbour, Manon Popje's Illustrations, Nifty Thrifty Things, Be Different Act Normal and Tatertots and Jello.