Hi there!
We've been a right crafty duo recently, with M and her paintings to me and my paper cutting; we've been delving into hobbies that don't involve make up and shopping.
If you've never heard of Paper Panda then I'm about to introduce you to a bit of an internet phenomenon.
Paper Panda seems to be the most loved, extremely popular name to the papercutting hobby. Not only does she create some fantastic pieces that are absolutely beautiful (see here for product she sells) (see here for a gallery of her work available) she also has a basic starter kit that people can buy and trach themselves how to paper cut along with beautiful templates to progress to.
She really has filled a niche not only with her starter pack but also her imagination, some of the designs are her own woodland animal type images but others stretch to Alice in Wonderland, Red Riding Hood and the Wizard of Oz. In all honesty I bought the starter pack as soon as I could and cannot WAIT to progress to more complicated designs from her other templates; if only I had the time to paper cut all the time!
The starter kit costs £30 (£4 P&P) and comes with the scalpel and handle, spare blade, cutting boards and pritt stick as well as the basic designs to get you up to speed.
I haven't included a picture of the designs as i don't want to infringe on any copyright issues but there are images on her website if you look hard enough. There is another kit which you can find here showing all of the designs and comes in at £22 without the blade and mat.
The kit comes with full instructions from Paper Panda herself (Louise Firchau is her real name) and a step by step guide on each individual part of the tutorial. It goes from basics to complicated little hedgehogs and then you can move on to the full designs.
The kit even contains backing paper you can use to mount your full designs onto and it has given me so many ideas for future pictures.
This would be a lovely gift for someone for Christmas or indeed a new hobby for yourself, I've sat without watching tv or getting my laptop out for a fair few hours already and it has been quite enjoyable to have some time away from screens that seem to dominate my life otherwise.
I definitely need to get some more creativity back into my life and this is a great start; look at my little hedgehog that I did the other day!
I think he needs some friends to join him....
What do you think of the paper cutting trend? I hope I can get to the point where I can make my own designs.
L xxx
