The 12 Days Of Christmas

Without the motivation of college and assignments I find I have to task myself to challenges every so often, or I will be lost forever in a sea of typography and 'cut out' paper cuts. I set myself the task of illustrating and papercutting The 12 Days of Christmas. I've always loved, and been baffled by the song. I was taught the traditional version of 4 colly birds at prep school, but replaced it with the modern 4 calling birds for a wider audience. I love making little albums and books so am going to bind the finished cuts in a book, along with a story slightly less literal than the song suggests. Imagine a beautiful lady peasant fell in love with the moon, and the things he could show her at Christmas when the rich were feasting and she was skint..thus we have my concept. Steal it, and you're cursed.
I did each day separately and coloured then cut it. I used coloured pencils, the cheapest I could find (and afford) and very fine 0.1 Letraset pens and a scalpel. The finished book will be for sale on my new Folksy shop by the end of this month. It won't be cheap, but it will be worth it. I also realised that I quite liked using colour despite being very achromatic for the last few years and want to incorporate this style into my work more from now on..

Paper Cutting From Start To Finish

Google Plus Experiment

As a new business owner, I am constantly looking for new ways to network and make sure my ideal customers know I'm out here. Tonight I posted this flyer on Google plus with a simple premise. If someone not in my circles sends it back to me within 2 weeks I will donate £5 to the charity of their choice. I keep reading that Gplus is the worlds 2nd biggest social networking site after Facebook, so lets see if it falls on stony ground or comes back to me! Exciting!

Getting There, Slowly

What a mad week last week was. Blogged about, and then followed by the Rock Star of paper cutting on Instagram. For all the damn hard work I'd been putting into Facebook networking, it was Instagram and Twitter, the 2 least labour intensive sites I am on that tipped me nearer towards that elusive non friend sale. Not that I mind selling to friends, but they do rather not expect to have to pay. This is the life I have chosen, after living the life given to me all these years and I will not give up trying to make a go of it. I've been cutting paper like a maniac, setting myself little goals. At the moment I am trying to list one new product a day on my Etsy store so I show up better on their search engine. Today I am having a crack at some label style cuts I sketched last night. Its a good job I love it.

Lightbulb Moment

beautiful for a rustic wedding 

Modelled by Josh, thank you Josh

 I've been playing around with this idea for a while. Light bulbs are so ugly now that the old earth killing ones are becoming things of beauty. Its not easy, I will admit. Prepare for mess, splinters of glass and fiddly bits but if you accept the fact that the first one will be a write off and you were only going to throw it out anyway, it's full of feel good factor when its all done

Pointy nosed pliers

Screwdriver

Cloth

Courage

Step 1) Boil the kettle and pop the bulb in a tupperware pot with a lid. This keeps the water hot so the glue holding it all together will melt

Step 2) When the water has cooled use the cloth to pick up the bulb and twist the base very very firmly to break all the connecting bits. If it doesn't give, repeat the process until it does

Step 3) Use the pliers to break any wires and thin glass connecting parts inside the bulb. This bit is messy and please be careful of tiny glass splinters. I used the cloth as a shield, and if you have goggles wear them

Step 4) By now you should have a base and an empty glass bulb. Clean both. There may be unsightly glue inside the silver base to clear out. Fill as you wish

Step 5) Re-attach the silver base to the glass with hot glue or epoxy. There might be cracks which you can cover by winding twine around it as I did and make sure to make or attach a hanging loop

MLP My Latest Project

Following on from CAF and thinking of personalization and kits, I've been merrily drawing and cutting odd little 'tokens' along a theme this week. I had my Grandads photo in mind. I hate to see tomes of buried photos in dusty books, I think if its good enough to keep, its good enough to display. I am ruthless when it comes to pictures.

I love the aesthetic of the ready made or die cut layout embellishments, but the fact that they are so lovely and commercially attractive means their uniqueness is gone. One day I will convert these little guys to downloadable templates so customers can print out and cut them and colour them themselves. 

One day soon.

Chorlton Arts Festival

Our tutor arranged a stall for 5 of us to share on what promised to be a very good exercise in customer profiling and marketing last Saturday in Chorlton. I was glad of the chance to be getting rid of some older stock and judging the reaction to my new direction of papercutting. We set up quickly, soon finding that we were quite unprepared for the low lighting and the professionalism of our fellow traders. Not wishing us to look like country bumpkins I asked our tutor to run me home for some battery fairy lights and whatever else I could scoop up in a hurry.

Doors opened and 2 girls made their first sales, I was to wait a little longer for my sale but it came in the afternoon. Far more fun was going round spying on the competition. Handmade doesnt mean hand thrown any more and we were all impressed with the level of finish and quality of the goods on offer. I was particularly taken with a ceramicist making tiny bottles and keys all with an archaeological aesthetic. It was also great to put faces to names I've seen on Twitter, Artist on a Bike being the first 'craftworld-famous' person spotted. I love her use of maps and bikes. I spent a small sum on another bike related item, namely a 3d town bike that I can't wait to put together.

All in all we all sold something and I learnt a lot.

Namely, finish your product, especially for face to face sales.

Don't ask the customer to frame your work, do it yourself and charge accordingly.

Personalize a much as possible.

Think of kits as a very good impulse buy idea.

Be prepared to work as if your boss had given you a target. Nothing sells itself.

A very good day.

Coffee and Chocolate Brioche

Aldi is a soul destroying place to be. It is badly laid out, the special offers are depressingly irrelevant and the staff are disinterested. BUT it does a smashing line in chocolate brioche which I am going to chomp on with coffee soon.

My fingers are numb at the ends from turning and cutting paper and the floor is covered in a thousand shreds of soft grey cartridge paper. As college comes to a close, with Final Project and End Of Year Show to come, I can look back and say I came a long way, but my journey with Art further education is done. I was accepted on a 2 year degree of Contemporary Art Practice but can't really afford to do it. Materials and trip are expensive and the chaos that comes with finishing projects (morning til night making things and glued to canvases and clay and paper) is not conducive to a healthy me. But I have set my shop up and will make papercuts for the love of doing it and pushing the medium, and get a sensible day job while doing a barbers course at night.

I'm halfway through cutting this delightful little wedding piece, gone through 15 blades and far too much chocolate. Hoping to finish today. Its the biggest most deatiled piece yet and I love working out the architecture of it. The wrong cut can make the whole thing fall apart.

Its a dance between scalpel and negative space.