Created: 22-02-2004
Last update: 21-03-2004

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Pretty snippings



In my last school year, I lived in a room at a small art gallery. This had little effect on my life, except to occasionally suck me into some creative activity like candle-making or snipping shapes in paper. The results of the latter were, I thought, worth keeping, and so I kept them, in folded form, in an envelope. Each time I took them out, though, they would get caught in each other, and require careful teasing apart to prevent them ripping.

Sticking them on a cardboard background would, I hoped, make them less fragile, especially if I used a special glue that, it said on the tube, didn't soak and swell the paper. That glue was a major mistake. Refusing to spread, it stuck under the paper in big beads for a very lumpy end result. So I resorted to "wet" glue with similarly awful results. In all, the treatment hasn't improved the originals.

Except for one small spot where two snip-creations were glued too close to each other and I couldn't scan the one without including a bit of the other - this bit I clone-brushed away - no attempt has been made to improve or symmetrify or de-smudge these snippings. What you see is what I got, so to speak. Enjoy, inasmuch as possible.



The basic technique is to fold a piece of paper and cut out shapes in the folded paper, which then unfolds into a a symmetrical pattern. This is a first cautious experiment.


I then became a bit bolder, as well as finding a use for a very small snippet of real glossy snipping paper (the candle paper was of the cheap ordinary folding paper kind).


I don't remember in what sequence I made these, but this may well have been my next attempt: a stylized plant.


Plain white paper gives much better results than the grainy, dull-coloured folding paper. Another plant depiction, this time folded in four. It's meant to be a tree with toadstools at its base.


The lady with the lamp - and a firearm. This was supposed to be a woman in nightdress with a lantern and pistol, checking for burglars after waking up to suspicious sounds. A potted plant divides the two reflections.


Two fiddlers - pity I snipped away the end of the bows - sitting sunk very low into their stools. The thing under each stool is a cat.


A scene from work - sort of. As a student, I made some money picking tulips in a greenhouse. We didn't have clouds like these, believe me. It was probably after this snipping that I was allowed a whole leaf of real snipping paper.


A vase of flowers on a table, a teapot with a very strange spout, a cup without a saucer, and a... wineglass? Not a well-thought-out design.


This one's design is better: a proper teapot, cups with rising steam and a plant that must get cramps trying to hold up its many branches and prevent them hanging in people's tea.


Here endeth the exhibition.





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