I have been creating handmade greeting cards for many years now and have even taught classes at several Arts and Crafts stores in greeting card design. My love for papercutting has grown over the years and I wanted to incorporate papercutting with my handmade greeting cards. Now the headaches began because I wanted the right look for the greeting card but didn’t want to overshadow it with the papercutting.
After several prototypes and God knows how many changes to the design, I finally came up with a design . The design still gives credence to the greeting card side of it and yet when you open it---there is the papercut. With this part of the creation out of the way, I now had to find the right subject for the papercut that would fit the occasion for the greeting card.
Christmas is a wonderful season to create this type of greeting card because the subject matter could be endless. But, there are so many gimmicky cards out there for Christmas that I had to find another occasion or a generic card that could be used for several occasions. I started looking through all the papercuts that I had created in the hopes of finding one that would not be too difficult to cut in this smaller size since most of my papercuts are either 8 x 10 or 11 x 14 and some even larger. Can you imagine receiving a pop-up greeting card that measured 11 x 14. I would be afraid of opening it for fear that whatever would pop up might knock off my head.
Butterflies were the perfect venue because they could be reduced in size without sacrificing detail and they would lend themselves to many occasions. But, I still wanted something more special and there it was. Staring me right in the face was my papercut called “The Kiss”. If only I could reduce this papercut, which has many curved and intricate lines, to the right size.
My journey began with the layout of the greeting card and then the execution of the papercut. Upon completion of these steps would be the choosing of a background color. After several attempts, I completed the papercut pop-up greeting card and showed it to my wife .If it passed her inspection I knew it stood a fighting chance to be accepted by the general public. Guess what!!! She loved it and only had me change the background color(she was right yet another time). WHEW!!!!!
Please take the time and write out a comment to let me know if you like it and if there is something different you would like to see. Again until my next post, HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY. THE ORIGINAL PAPERCUT OF "THE KISS" CAN BE VIEWED ON MY WEBSITE GALLERY UNDER PAPERCUT ARTWORK(WWW.FUNTASTICCARDS.COM)
cards. Now the headaches began because I wanted the right look for the greeting card but didn’t want to overshadow it with the papercutting.