Attempting to papercraft, part 1 (Patreon)

I'm actually not quite sure what this craft is called - papercraft, paper cutting, paper theatre - but I've long been fascinated by the art of layering paper and adding dimension to flat artwork. I decided to finally try it out while I'm on social media "hiatus", starting with a small one-off project to see if I like it!

I mocked up a gift for my boyfriend, a portrait of his favorite VTuber Nekomata Okayu. I don't really gift him art so it was about time, and plus it's a low stakes enough project because even if it turns out awful he'll still love it 🤭

Usually this type of papercraft is done with a lineless art style, similar to the style of my Princess Serenity series. Being the extra af artist I am, I wanted to try standing out among other papercrafters by also cutting out the lineart - I think visually it lends itself better to the stained glass style of this portrait. I figure I might as well experiment! If this doesn't work out, lineless can be my backup plan.

I bought enough materials for this project only as I didn't want to fully invest in this craft quite yet. The total price came out to around $45 but with a gift card from Amazon I actually only spent $22, which was cheap enough for me to decide on giving this a shot!

What I bought: 

• Cardstock in grey, lilac, purple, purple glitter, black, and roses (the skin tones I wanted only came in a giant pack boooo) from Michael's
• Foam tape from Michael's
• A3 cutting mat from Amazon
• X-Acto #11 blades from Amazon
• Post-It glue stick from Amazon (they lost the Post-It branding so it's called a removable glue stick now but it is still the same)

I already owned a couple of other tools, including: 

• An X-Acto knife handle 
• A metal ruler
• Prismacolor colored pencils and markers from my traditional art days
• Scissors (of course)
• A knife sharpener (generally ppl recommend switching blades whenever they get dull but I'd like to sharpen them as much as I can before tossing it)

Once I finished my mockup of Okayu, I had to separate everything into layers and then separate those layers by colors. From this I created stencils to print out and glue onto the cardstock. They're flipped so that any residue glue or mistakes won't appear on the final public-facing side. 

The cool thing about this glue stick is that anything you apply this glue to will act like a Post-It note - it sticks pretty well but you can peel it away easily without ripping the paper. I was not expecting it to work this well and I highly recommend this as a temporary glue!

My stencils are not perfect but there's enough information for me to put two and two together. If I were to pursue papercutting long-term and start selling DIY kits I would probably have to make my stencils a little neater, but I'll worry about that later :)

So then I got to cutting...and it was a lot harder than I expected. 

I had watched so many papercutting artists wield their X-Acto blades so expertly that I foolishly thought it would be easy. It was not.

Curved lines especially are tough for me, because with straight lines I could at least rely on a ruler. Apparently it just takes a lot of practice and getting used to the blade. 

It's been a few days and I think I'm better at it now, but I'm still not great. Some tips I've picked up: 

• Cut out tiny shapes first before cutting out the larger pieces. Cut steeper, narrower curves (e.g. rounded corners) before cutting wider longer curves. If you save these for last instead, the paper is more likely to rip.
• When cutting, try to keep the part you want to save on the bottom and the part you want to discard on top - your knife is more likely to run amok facing the top (especially if you are using a ruler). 
• Nothing wrong with relying on scissors where you can, such as cutting out larger shapes. Scissors are much more reliable especially with cutting curves.

I made the mistake of starting with some really detailed shapes like the purple triangle, so there are some pieces I'm gonna have to redo but thankfully I have cardstock to spare. 

Here's everything I've cut out so far!

It's not aligned quite nicely but you get the idea...

I recolored some parts - the original portrait has two shades of purple and two shades of grey, but the parts were so tiny it didn't justify getting additional colored cardstock so I just recolored them with colored pencils. 

Some things I learned about recoloring: for recolors that are darker than the original cardstock I would use marker instead of colored pencil next time, you can see how the dark grey looks kind of waxy and adds an odd texture. But the purple that's been recolored lighter is not too bad! If I were to do that again, I would prefer to color the smoother side of the cardstock (you're looking at the textured side and sometimes it made the color look uneven). 

There are no lines here yet because I've saved the lineart layers for last, knowing those will require the most expert X-Acto skills I possess. I'll be working on those next week, pray for me...