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Paper Cut Project - featuring Elmer's products
In my neck of the woods, spring has sprung. All the birds are romancing each other, the garden is waking up and the trees are budding. All that courting inspired me to do this paper cutting project. I found this lovely pattern in a book on paper cutting at my library. I traced it using a #2 pencil.
I chose a piece of 20lb paper (copy paper or nice writing paper will do perfectly) folded it sharply in half and taped it to my cutting mat. I carefully positioned my tracing over the paper with the inside edge of the heart on the folded side of the paper and taped it down.
Using the edge of a spoon, a burnishing tool or, in my case, a paper scoring tool, transfer the tracing to your paper by firmly (but not too hard!) rubbing the image. Make sure you've taped the tracing paper down securely so your image transfers clearly and isn't smudgy.
Remove the tracing paper and the image is ready to cut out. I started at the top and cut all the smaller bits first, then the larger chunks, slowly working my way down the paper. I used a piece of scrap paper under my hand to keep skin oils off the image and to keep the graphite from smearing as I moved my hand.
Here is a picture showing progress as I work my way down the pattern, sliding my paper guard as I go. I rotated my mat frequently to make cutting the angles and curves easier and I also used my fingers to gently hold the paper down as I made cuts, supporting the more delicate parts of the pattern.
Almost done.
Here is the completed paper cut before mounting. It's a lot of fussy work, but when you unfold it, it's very rewarding to see the whole pattern!
To prepare the paper cut for mounting, I placed it between two pieces of copy paper and gently ironed it flat. I chose a dark piece of card stock for a good contrast and cut it to a pleasing proportion for my image. I centered the card stock on my cutting mat and used the measurements on the mat to center my image on the paper. I placed the paper cut PENCIL SIDE DOWN. You shouldn't have many marks, but turning the pencil side down gives you a snowy white, clean image.
Cutting a piece of double-sided foam tape, I placed it in the center back of the pattern to create an 'anchor' to help keep the piece in place when I added the rest of the tape. I kept the pieces of tape small, making sure none of it extended over the paper cut. Once you have your paper cut taped securely to you card stock, it's ready for framing!
