Word/Project of the Day: Scherenschnitte

For many years, I have harbored a secret love of the art of papercutting.  There’s something so immediate and enchanting about the intricacy of the art.  Today, I read a wonderful article about friend and paper cutter extraordinaire, Cindy Bean, whose work was featured on the fantastic blog The House That Lars Built.

Image of Cindy Bean from The House That Lars Built

Although I don’t want to even attempt to compare my skills to Cindy’s when it comes to scherenchnitte (which means “scissor cuts” in German and is the art of papercutting design – thanks, Wikipedia), every once in a while I attempt a project to exercise my novice papercutting skills.  I recently designed a gift for my husband for Valentine’s Day: a papercut map of the world to showcase our travels together.  It’s not perfect–I wouldn’t use it to navigate the globe or anything like that–but I’m pretty proud of my handiwork.

My 24″ x 36″ papercut map of the world (don’t look too closely)

Papercuts are inherently cost-effective, which is one reason I like them.  (Relatively cheap materials and tools make me happy.)  To make my map, I searched the interwebs for a map image that I liked; copied and pasted it into Photoshop; enlarged it to the preferred size of 24″ x 36″; and finally printed it out.  With this template in hand, I overlaid it on black paper and proceeded to cut out each continent.  Once I had completed the papercutting, I pasted each cut piece onto a sheet of watercolor paper and mounted the whole shebang to a cork board that I had discovered at the local thrift shop (I painted the frame of the cork board black – I always go for a black frame).  I then added some sleek and simple pushpins to locate where my husband and I had traveled over the years, and voila! I had my map and the perfect gift for my honey.  A fairly simple but handsome DIY project that turned out pretty well.

I like these metal pushpins showing where my husband and I have traveled together.

A close-up of the map.

 

 

First words.

Greetings!  Welcome to my very first post, the first of what I hope to be many, many more to come.

I realize that first meetings can sometimes be awkward (this coming from a person who is assuredly on the socially awkward side), so I’ll make this as brief as possible to get it over with quickly.

For numerous reasons, I’ve had a burning desire for a while to commit my musings to a blog. I’ve been a faithful journal writer/blogger for years.  I have boxes of handwritten journals that I treasure (the earliest records from 1992, jotted down in six-year-old penmanship on pink lined paper), and I continue to journal in ink and paper.  I’ve also authored a few blogs now and again in the past, but I feel inspired to turn over a new leaf, so to speak, in the form of a fresh, modern blog.

To sum up my presence, I’m a wife; a mother of two, with another one on the way; an architect; an artist; an amateur photographer; a novice chef + baker; an avid thrift shopper; a seeker of adventure in my own backyard; and a lover of good design and creativity.  I like to think that I view the world from a slightly different and interesting perspective.  I hope to share with you my musings of my life, which is one of creative idealism mixed with heavy doses of realism (in large part thank to my kiddos, who provide a daily reality check for this momma). Enjoy!