Papercut card tutorial

Well, I promised that I would do a post about how to design a paper cut card, so here it is! I'll do it really simply, with lots of pictures and try to explain in English- I'm not making any promises though!

You really don't need much- a card blank, some paper to line the card, a pen/pencil, a sheet of scrap paper and a craft knife (and ideally a cutting mat, but I can't find mine so am currently blunting knives at a rate of knots using a piece of card to protect the desk!)

The first step and probably the hardest, is to think of a design. I need to make a new home card for my brother, so I'm going for a house with 'New Home' inside it. Draw the outline of your design onto scrap paper, but make sure it'll fit on the front of your card first.

Sketch in the wording/interior of your shape. When you realise you can't fit all of the letters in, adapt your outline!

When you are happy with the design, start to block in the bits you are going to cut out. Remember that the paper surrounding your shape is the card and therefore, your interior bits need to join to it or they will fall out. If you have done this correctly, it should become obvious when you block it in- just don't draw lines anywhere you're not going to cut like I've done in the photo below.

Place your template over your card on your cutting mat and start to cut away the shaded areas.

When you lift away your template, you may find that you need to go over the design with the knife again in some places.

That's it! Add your lining paper, and voila, a super-impressive paper cut card!