Cut Paper Christmas: Encore with a Solstice Slant

My goodness, there has been a lot of Christmas-time paper cutting at my house over the years! Here are some more paper cuts that we've done in years past - some by my kids, some by me - mostly with a snow/winter theme. I'll add some tips for making your own.

The snowmen above were part of a large quantity of paper bag papercuts we made one year to adorn our packages, which were wrapped with either plain white or plain red paper. One of my kids did the cutting for the one above, following a free hand drawing I did on the back side of the paper. It was cut on a fold (sort of paper doll chain style, only with just a single repeat). I reused the lightweight paper bags the kids took their lunches in - they have enough body/stiffness to cut cleanly, but are light enough for small hands to get the scissors through two layers easily. The eyes and buttons were made with a standard circle hole punch. I let all my kids graduate to real scissors (often Fiskars embroidery scissors) at a relatively young age (6 or 7) and just supervised their cutting. No one ever got hurt, not even a smidge, though my guys did not have especially good fine motor skills. (I think kids are sometimes more careful when they're using real tools - and the results are definitely superior.)

The house above is basically the same method, but a single picture with no fold/repeat. Also cut by a child (though I may have cut the windows - don't recall).  For interior cuts (like the windows and door), I usually (re)folded the paper so the kids didn't have to poke scissors into the middle of the paper to get the window or whatever started. Afterwards, I ironed the paper cuts on a low setting to get out the folds. (You can even mist kraft paper lightly to steam it and make it smoother.)

This was our Christmas card one year. I apologize for the crappy image - my cheap scanner seems to have a tough time with hard edges and it's made them look all uneven, which they aren't in the original. I cut this one, using a craft blade rather than scissors. The papers are thin origami papers, though a heavier paper likely would have worked equally well.

What I like about it is that the polar bear is a negative - I cut away part of the blue paper to leave the figure. The moon and stars are also negatives. It's somewhat trickier thinking the drawing through - and also harder to cut (you have to be careful not to cut away the lines of the legs and make an effort to keep the lines thin enough), but going slowly and holding the thin unconnected bits with a fingernail to stabilize them as you cut are the keys. I start first with the small interior cuts, like the space between his hind feet and the rearward front leg - it's easier to do those while the paper is still mostly whole. Then I cut the edges of the lines for the legs before cutting away the rest of the interior bear. Last I cut away for the snow and forming the outer edges of the polar bear's legs.

The shadow is a piece of gray paper added separately - though obviously I didn't think through the direction the moonlight would cast it!

This was also our Christmas card one year - made by my oldest when he was in kindergarten. We planned the picture together - and what was notable was his idea not to show the whole person, just part. That's an unusual approach for a child that age - but it shows the value of sharing good art and talking about it with your children. Just before we made this, we visited the Carnegie Museum of Art here in Pittsburgh. I have forgotten which painting served as his inspiration, but I clearly remember our discussion about cropping images and choosing what to show and what to leave out.

He cut the snowflake freehand (I folded the paper for him first). Making snowflakes was a constant winter activity for my kids in those days. Then he cut out the shapes for the mitten, sleeve, face and hats from white paper following lines I helped him draw on white printer paper. He also cut fringes from black construction paper for the hair and shirt cuff and we glued everything onto another piece of black paper. I cut the curves for the eyes and nose, and he made circles for the pupils with a paper punch. To make the cards and gift tags, I photocopied the image, reducing it to a variety of sizes and ganging them onto a single sheet so I could print a bunch at a time. This was pre-photoshop years! We cut and pasted the images manually onto white cards or manilla tags. They looked pretty sophisticated for a five-year-old's work.

The images above and below were cut by me from silhouette paper, using a craft knife. They look challenging (and were, because the originals were fairly small - but carefully planning and working slowly are again the keys to success. 

Real silhouette paper is nice to work with - a good weight and reasonably strong.  You can buy it here. For these kinds of images, I draw the image on vellum tracing paper with a soft drawing pencil (like an Ebony pencil - love those guys) because they make nice thick lines that are easy to leave behind as I cut. It's best to use a slightly dull pencil. I then turn the drawing upside down onto the back (white side) of the silhouette paper and transfer the image with a wooden stylus. This means the final image will have reversed back to the same as your drawing.  Be careful not to press too hard or the lines will show through on the final silhouette.

Again, I always do all the interior cuts first.

I like how the pinecone and some of the needles "violate" the borders in these. I always like that in book illustrations too. The illustrator Tomi Ungerer often had elements in his pictures violating the borders.

You can often reattach bits you've accidentally cut away by taking a thin scrap and gluing it to the back side of the main piece and the cut away part. Touching up with a little permanent black ink will hide any telltale white lines.

Below is a Santa cut by my son when he was nine or ten. I did the drawing, and he did the cutting using embroidery scissors and silhouette paper.  I cut the black frame for him with a craft knife - it gives the work a nice finished appearance, I think.

My son wanted to make a Santa holding a star like the one in this charming, quirky vintage Christmas book first published in 1956. It's by Mary Chalmers, one of my all time favorite writer-illustrators.

Elizabeth discovers the star for the top of her tree has gone missing, and she bravely sets out into the snowy woods to find a new one. This was a favorite holiday story in my family growing up. We always called the book "Wizbiss" - which was how my younger sister pronounced the protagonist's name.

Unfortunately, the original, which was lovely and just the right size for small hands, belonged to that same younger sister, and I wasn't able to steal it away once we were grown. For years I tried in vain to track down a copy of my own - luckily it was reprinted a while back, though in a larger, glossier format I just don't like nearly as much.

Sigh. Books like this that were scarce before CPSIA have only become rarer still. But if you want an old copy, you can hunt for one on sites like Amazon, Alibris and AbeBooks.

I'll leave you with one last snowflake blizzard - arranged into a wreath one year to fill the space above my mantle until I could come up with some art to put there. (We'd just taken down the damaged mirror that was there before and repaired the wall.) I think I got the idea from a magazine. (Martha Stewart?)

Cut Paper Christmas

I'm not sure why, but I always have urges to do cut paper crafts at Christmas (which is why the floors are always covered in tiny scraps at the holidays).

The two paper cuts above were leftovers from a flurry I cut one year to decorate packages. They're basically just the snowflake idea. I precut thin paper (these were origami paper) into a circle, folded it in half (right sides together), in half again, and then into thirds and then cut patterns out freehand. There are a few simple tips that may help you make especially intricate ones: first, do the folding carefully and press the creases well (you can even iron them). Second, have a mixture of large cut away areas and others that are narrow and repeating. Be sure to use very sharp scissors; I use embroidery scissors. (Though check out these amazing Polish paper cuts that were traditionally made with sheep shears!) Finally, take care not to tear delicate areas when you unfold them. (Small tears can be repaired by gluing narrow support pieces to the back of the paper cut.) I always iron my finished piece flat.

The paper cut above was done by my oldest son when he was almost 10, and the similar one below was cut when he was not quite 5. You can see he gained a lot of skill in the years between. In both cases, I folded a piece of paper for him (right sides together) and drew one image onto the wrong side, making sure I had an area of join along the fold. By 10 he was able to cut the design out pretty accurately by himself. I showed him how to trim the excess paper close to the drawn lines and then to cut into tight areas, removing sections at a time, rather than trying to cut along the whole perimeter. When he was younger, I held the paper and rotated it for him as he snipped (mouth open - why do kids do that when they cut with scissors?). Even so, he accidentally snipped off the antlers, but they're cute fawns or does anyway.

Other tips to help young cutters: First, work moderately large and minimize the number of curves or delicate stand-alone areas. Also, use a moderately heavy paper, like old paper bags (below) or coated silhouette paper (above). Cardstock is usually too heavy for folded designs - takes a lot of hand strength - and thin papers flop too much, becoming frustrating.
The teddy bear below was by my daughter when she was going on 6. She had better fine motor skills than my son did around that age, and she was able to cut the bear on her own, though I recall cutting out and gluing in place the eyeballs and nose/mouth pieces.
Can't recall which kid did the penguins below, but they were accordian-folded, like the strings of paper dolls.
The tree below was our Christmas card one year. Last year I made up a page of smaller images to use as gift tags, and meant to post them as a printable pdf - but apparently I never did. I'll see if I can hunt it down and put it up tonight. I made the ornaments with handheld punches while the design was still folded in half.

Hm. I just thought of one thing that has probably prompted my Christmas paper cut connection: these Danish paper cuts. I bought these at a little shop at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware many years ago. (Sorry the photo is blurry.)

The top red one I hung the Christmas after I got it. Then I decided I could leave it up until Valentine's Day, because of the heart theme. Then I decided I could leave it up all year because of the kitchen/cooking theme. Then it faded to almost white...

I was about to throw it away when I realized I could just paint it red again, so I did! I think it's even brighter now than when it was new.

If all those paper cuts sound too complicated for you or your kid, you could make something like these trees instead, which are crafted entirely from recycled materials (from left: newspaper, greenish magazine and catalog pages, and someone's old physic's homework. The stars are from a Triscuits box and the papers are just taped to cones I made by twisting - and sometimes stacking - and taping together subscription cards from magazines. I stuffed extra recycled paper inside the cones to weight them and make them stand better).

To make these, cut long strips of paper, fold them in half, right sides together. Mark a line to cut to, and use your scissors to cut fringye-y "bites" up to the line. For younger kids, cut the strips over-wide, so there's less chance they'll cut all the way through, and stretch the paper taut by taping it between two chairs; you can trim the paper near the fringe afterward. Start attaching the strips of fringe near the bottom of your cone in a spiral, anchoring it frequently with small pieces of masking tape. You can make a little extra piece taped into a cone for a nice pointy top, and tape a star on to hide any lopsided parts.

I used these for a centerpiece at a party last year, and several people asked me where I bought them - they really come out looking nice.

After you finish your craft, relax with Jan Pienkowski's gorgeous silhouette illustrations in his telling of The First Christmas. This book was first published in 1984, making it toxic waste under CPSIA; fortunately there are later printings available.

Or enjoy this incredible silhouette version of The Night Before Christmas by Thai artist Niroot Puttapipat. Absolutely breathtaking - and with an amazing pop-up on the last spread. (It's a recent book - 2007 -- so no CPSIA worries.) Although the cover says it's a papercut edition, I think Puttapipat actually made his silhouettes with pen and ink (as did Pienkowski I believe). [You have to scroll down to see the photo of the spread - I think I needed to crop the photo.]

CPSIA and Vintage Books 2 - and Silhouette Art

Sara Reading, copyright 1997

I love silhouette art. The stark black and white contrast, the carefully picked out details, the sense of shape and mass - just utterly beautiful to me.  I remember going to have my portrait cut as a child in Cleveland by the silhouette artist Wally Spatz, who was a traveling regular to department stores around the midwest. Her speed and accuracy were truly amazing.

I cannot even approach her finesse with scissors, and I definitely can't work freehand. The portrait above is a papercut made from a drawing I did of my daughter Sara and was loosely modeled on a black and white woodcut silhouette of a nude on a bed by the Swiss artist Felix Vallotton. I transferred the drawing onto black silhouette paper and cut it out with an xacto knife (and it took many, many hours). I always cut the smallest interior "whites" first, and save the largest areas for last.

I trace my own interest in this kind of art back to even before I had my own silhouette cut, to children's books illustrated with silhouettes, created in a number of ways. I owned several Arthur Rackham books, and he often had spot silhouette illustrations, though I believe they were largely pen and ink creations. You can find materials and learn techniques about making silhouettes here, and read more about the history and techniques of silhouette art here.

The book below, Rhymes About the Country, features some outstanding silhouette illustrations, the kind that made me catch my breath as a child and still do. They rhymes too are sweet and funny and great to read aloud, which I did often with my own kids. The book, written and illustrated by Marchette Chute, was published by Macmillan in 1941, and was reprinted a few times in the 1940s and never since. Ms. Chute died in 1994 and you can read her NY Times obituary here. 

This book might fall into the rare half of too rare and valuable to given to a child under CPSIA, as I was only able to locate a handful online - but at prices ranging from $8 to $19 it hardly qualifies as too valuable. Too bad, because as rare as this lovely book already is, there's a good chance it could end up discarded into extinction by booksellers worried about lead liability and not willing to spend money on an $8 book for XRF testing to find out if it's okay or not. (And of course when destructive testing goes into effect next February, it would not be possible for a seller to test it, since I've yet to find any who have more than one copy).I love both this illustration and the poem that it accompanies. Made my kids laugh every time I read it. Ms. Chute had a real knack for cutting objects so that your brain "filled in" the blanks - you easily "read" the curved shapes by the bat as a playground ball. And you can feel how the child has tipped his weight forward along with his chair. Masterful.
The illustration above is just stunning to me. I hope someone somewhere has preserved the original silhouette art for this book.

Books like this one tend not to be reprinted. The poems, although they scan perfectly and are in touch with a child's psyche, would be categorized as "quiet" and therefore not likely to make a big enough splash in today's children's market. Also, I'm not sure what the deal is with the copyright of this book. Perhaps it's out of copyright in which case the Gutenberg project could at least scan it and preserve it that way. (Copyright laws have changed over the years and I find it tricky to figure out which one applies. Currently, books get the author's life plus 70 years -- and that's a discussion for another time.) Black and white only illustrations are also rare since color printing became inexpensive and easier. (Illustrators used to have to make time-consuming and technically challenging "color separations" to reproduce the colors in their final art; I for one am very glad to be well past that era; I think it would have exceeded my skill.) Publishers today see kids as more drawn to colorful artwork, and perhaps they're right, but I'm convinced nonetheless that there are many kids who would still enjoy these charming illustrations. (There are some exceptions. This year's Caldecott winner, The House in the Night, illustrated by Beth Krommes [and written by Susan Marie Swanson] features black and white scratchboard art, with touches of yellow. It's a beautiful book and a timeless, and quiet goodnight story. Maybe it bodes well for Marcette Chute's books.)
These last three silhouettes are by me. They're portraits of my three kids that I gave to my in-laws as part of a larger piece featuring all their grandkids. The technique and poses, so different from the traditional head and shoulders profiles I remember from my Wally Spatz portrait, were inspired by Ms. Chute's art. (I'll be hanging onto my copy and writing a fierce note to my heirs to keep it out of the trash bin.)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that CPSIA goes away before every copy of Ms. Chute's lovely books do.