Paper Cuts

This guide draws inspiration from many styles, like Japanese kirigami, Mexican papel picado, and German Scherenschnitte.

A complete guide to all the techiques with more than 100 project ideas.--Title page.

Transform a simple sheet of paper into a delicate snowflake, a sweet flower, or a dainty doily—or create an enchanted forest using a modern twist on the traditional technique for making paper dolls. Paper cutouts get a fresh look in this contemporary approach to the practice of transforming paper into art. It’s full of clever and cute designs and a range of different cutting techniques that you can use to make your own cutouts for display, decoration, or embellishment. Offering a range of styles, this book presents paper cutting techniques through clear step-by-step instruction, detailed diagrams, and templates. Once you’ve mastered the basics, creative uses for paper cutouts are offered, including as cards, gift wrap, mobiles, collages, stencils, garlands, and more. Make the paper cuts in this book and add a creative touch to your home, gifts, or projects.

Papercutting is an ancient, elegant art that dates almost as far back as the creation of paper itself. In today’s multicultural world, papercutting embraces any number of themes, designs, and images. It is an all-inclusive art that requires few tools and minimal materials. All one needs is instruction and inspiration, both of which are found in good measure in The Art of Papercutting. The book includes more than 20 projects that feature a range of sizes, subject matters, and techniques. Every project features step-by-step photographs and numerous helpful hints.

Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish storyteller whose fairy tales are known all over the world, was also a gifted artist. He made hundreds, perhaps thousands, of paper cuttings of swans, clowns, toy theaters, windmills, angels, and other whimsical images. Often he made the paper cuttings while telling a story, then gave them to the children listening to him. In this inspired biography, Beth Wagner Brust tells the story of Andersen as an artist who used his many talents to escape the poverty into which he was born and who entertained others with not only his famous stories but also his innovative and original art.

A dazzlingly original memoir, Paper Cuts takes us inside the mind of a young Oxford academic devastated by severe mental illness. ‘I have a small line of red dots on the back of my left hand, where the needle goes in. I have had hundreds of ketamine injections, more than anyone else, perhaps. The needle goes in, and the truth comes out. Sometimes I am a child again. Sometimes I have the innocence of a child, but I am not innocent. I know too much. I have known too much.’ With Paper Cuts, Stephen Bernard boldly lives through the trauma of childhood abuse and mental illness. He writes to escape and confront, to accuse and explain. Each morning when he wakes, Stephen Bernard must reconstruct his self: every night he writes himself a letter to be read the next day. The fractured, intensely personal narrative of Paper Cuts follows a single day in his life as he navigates a course through the effects of mania, medication and memories. ‘Beautifully written... Brilliant’ Henry Marsh ‘Distinguished and desolating... The saving grace is the writer’s undaunted eye for the beauty of the world’ Hilary Mantel ‘Chilling, riveting, extraordinary, wonderful’ Roddy Doyle ‘It is an extraordinary book in its unblinking truthfulness’ Hannah Jane Parkinson, Observer

The definitive work on papercuts, a long-overlooked aspect of Jewish folk art.

"Paper Cut" is a unique perspective into one of the most exciting fields of contemporary illustration. With contributions from 30 of the top papercraft illustrators, showcasing their amazing works and delving into their craft, this book will awe and inspire you. Author Owen Gildersleeve explores why these artists love papercraft, how they use it and what makes their work unique. See their ideas, inspirations and process in 250 full color photos that includes a range of interesting textured colored paper stocks dotted throughout. See exclusive works from designers like Chrissie MacDonald, Hattie Newman, Peter Callesen, Kyle Bean Helen Friel, Rob Ryan, Jeff Nishinaka and more!