DIY Kits

So, recently you all seem to have bought a kit and got the papercutting bug. It's good, huh? Super relaxing and annoying in equal amounts? Yeeeh, it's great! I love that everybody is having a go themselves and finding a new hobby - and in some cases opening new businesses. Fab! If you haven't yet bought a Paper Panda kit then WHY NOT? It's seriously addictive and you can make all your Christmas pressies on the cheap, hee hee! You can buy kits from the shop here: Paper Panda Full Kit or if you already have a knife and a cutting mat then there's also this one (same but without equipment) Paper Panda Indroduction to Papercutting.
After that there's lots of little downloadable designs that you can buy in the shop from just £3, or you can have this one here for free House Rules Template just download it and and save it to your computer and print it out. This 'House Rules' one shouldn't be attempted by beginners though as it's a bit tricky and you might swear lots and that's never good. It's copyright to Paper Panda so don't be selling it or owt, okay?
When you've finished it should look like this:

But nobody will shout if it doesn't!
If you are unsure of how to use Dropbox, or are struggling to download please ask your friend/brother/postman etc (not us) because it's nearly Christmas and we're reet busy and can't deal with 45,000 emails asking us about downloading stuff as it's just a freebie. Fanks ;)
Enjoy!
Panda xxx

Bunny & Bird Template Giveaway

So! Hello there and welcome back to my quiet space, aka The PP Blog!
I have these two sweet lol' framed papercuts that the Bunny & Bird DIY templates were made from recently. Those that bought a template since release day and today (25th) were all stuck into a virtual hat and I've pulled two names out to recieve the originals. They are the only Paper Panda original papercuts that will exist of this design, so that's quite cool, no?
*drumroll please*
Angie Partridge & Penelope Bates will each win one of the originals! *applause*
Now, it'll be a suprise which one you recieve to be fair, I've already boxed them up, so I hope that you recieve your favourite :)
Thank you to everyone that has purchased a template so far and I really hope that you're enjoying making your own papercuts.
*squidge*

Go Sober Winners!

Well it's been a tough month for lots of you but you raised a serious amount of money for Macmillian so you should be proud of yourselves.
As an added incentive I offered up two prizes for Paper Panda liker Go Sober peeps. One to whoever raised the most dosh and one to a random luck-o-the-draw type person. Here's the results...

Joanne Regan raised a whopping £1175 as of midnight last night. She wins a Paper Panda goody bag including the gold 'You Star' Teeny Weeny papercut and as yet unreleased new Paper Panda goodies.

The other lucky lass who was pulled out of the virtual hat is Kerry Ryan who also wins
a Paper Panda goody bag including a red 'You Star' Teeny Weeny papercut. She raised £210.

WELL DONE to you both and to everyone else that went sober for charity. *applause*

P xxx

Diary of a miniature loving papercutter

So this week in between rescue attempts at car accident scenes and pooping on a London surgeon I have been experimenting with miniature papercuts. I should say it's been a resounding success, I mean, who doesn't like tiny things? There's something a bit magical about something small, like it belongs to a fairy or you could find it in the niche of a tree somewhere. Let me rewind a bit. I recieved from eBay a vintage letterpress printing tray and popped a hook on it and it's on the wall in the hall. I then scoured the cottage for tiny things of wonder to put in the little spaces, then pootled all over Etsy for other oddities of the itsy bitsy variety to add to it. The next day some new frames arrived from Dave the farmer, and oh my...they were so small! After I'd stopped laughing I saw the potential and got to work. Miniature is the new black.
PP has, over time, developed with the farmer a seriously cool way of floating papercuts in gorgeous handmade frames, and on a small scale this technique has worked brilliantly. Bunny was able to float with a 'shmall' balloon next to bird which is always a bit special and reminiscent of the recent popular House floating papercut that reached a record price when it went up for auction. I'm enjoying cutting the tiny pieces so much I wish I could make them all the time, just getting smaller and smaller. Have you seen the guy that carves animals from burnt matchstick heads? Ooooh I'd love to try that!
At the other end of the scale I'm battling with a massive A1 papercut that I spread over the kitchen table every few days and add a bit to it. I just sketched very loosely a nature inspired design and I'm busy ignoring all that and just cutting freehand. It's scary and I'm not sure it's going to work, and if it DOES work how on earth will I frame it? We shall see. I'm not a big fan of working on a large scale so far, that's for sure. So if I ever pull off a fabulous large piece of papercutting then you know it's pretty much a fluke and I'm feeling rather relieved that a cat hasn't used it to dance on. Or maybe it has and that's why it looks fabulous, who knows?
Apart from small things, something else has happened this week and I'm still not sure if it's really happening or if there's some kind of Facebook bug. My Facebook likes are increasing by approximately 800 likes per day. Where on earth are they all coming from? Why is there a sudden influx of people clicking the 'like' button? I'm getting quite obsessed. I'll go for a wee, come back downstairs, refresh the page and announce to Mr Panda that we have gained 8 likers in the time it took to visit the lav. I'm sure my time can be better spent but right now it's quite exciting to watch.
Usually, with Facebook, you'll find people with other crafty business type pages will come and 'like' your page and leave a copy and pasted message asking you to return the favour, but this isn't happening. These are regular people who are liking it for, well, me and no other ulterior motive. How strange! My likes have increased by 34 whilst I've been writing this, if you are interested.
Is my ol' mum paying them?
Well, I best go and get out of these panda printed pyjama's and start some cutting. It's 12.55pm and all I've done so far is drink two cups of tea and eat a boiled egg from a Holly Hobbie eggcup. Artists keep such odd hours, you know - well, this one does ;)
39....40....41....

 

Go Sober 2013

Heard of it? I hadn't until very recently but I think it's a grand idea. I gave up booze in June 2012 so I can't be a part of it myself because it's waaaay too easy and nobody would sponsor me - but you guys can give it a shot!
So, as an added incentive every Facebook Paper Panda page liker that signs up for Go Sober 2013 will be entered into a draw to win a wee Paper Panda goody bag. In fact, there will be two, one for the person that raises the most money for Macmillan and the other will be randomly drawn from the entrants.
Part of the goody bag is the tiny weeny papercut below, one in gold for the person that raises the most money, and one in...'something else' (because I haven't made it yet!) for a random person, as well as other PP goodies just to say BLOODY WELL DONE, YOU.
Once you have signed up, pop your link on the Facebook photo the same as the one below so I can see how well you are doing - and so can everyone else! You may even get some sponsors :)
This is not in any way linked to Facebook.
1. Be a page liker.
2. Sign up for Go Sober 2013
3. Pop your link in the comments below and/or the FB picture pinned to the top on the FB page before 1st October 2013
4. Be sober for October and raise lots of pennies!
Find out about Go Sober 2013 and sign up here: http://www.gosober.org.uk/about/
You can do it, YOU STAR!

Diary

So I seem to have found a little place on the interweb that I can ramble away on and only 6 of you see it. I like that. It's cosy. It can be quite daunting when you make a spelling mistake in front of 13,500 Facebook people, (where the hell did they all come from?) especially if you write like me with some kind of odd Northern accent and my typo's are usually on purpose. Why am I Northern when I type? I have no idea! I have quite an odd, silly voice like a guffaw type drawl, not Northern at all even though I grew up in sunny Widnes.
I digress. As usual.
Today I took a trip to the garden centre and had lunch with a friend. This is unusual for two reasons. One: I generally don't go outside as a rule. Two: I don't have real life friends.
So how did this come about, then? I met up with Kath from Genie Lampshades on Facebook, she lives down the road from me. I actually warned her right in the beginning that I don't make friends because real life people can be a bit bastardy. She wasn't phased at all though and just keeps coming back! The lil' monkey. So, she is now my friend, only taking the title because she made me see that not all people are bastardy (new word for you there) and some can actually enjoy roaming around garden centres, looking at material, saying how expensive everything is and cooing over the pottery.
She bought some lovely Emma Bridgewater fabric and made a shade this afternoon and sold two of them immediately. She's a bit clever. It's handy having such a talented friend. All my lights look AWESOME.
Am I rambling? Tough. This is my diary, um, blog, so the 6 of you will just have to wait until something more interesting happens.
So I came home, drew a picture of a cat, ate a 'Cook' ready meal (fab posh quick food, I don't cook) and cut the cat out of paper, like you do. Photographed some cushions that have just arrived from the fabulous Ohh Deer and already half of them have sold to friends before I've even put them on the website. Um, sorry! They are nice though.
Tonight saw the release of the very first collaboration piece between me and Rebekah Heyburn Jewellery. She has taken my papercut design and turned it into a silver masterpiece. I adore it. So I popped it on eBay at a starting price of 99p and an hour later it's on £36 - cool huh? No idea what it'll reach. I love that about chancing it with the 99p start, it lets other people decide what something is really worth themselves rather than me putting a ridiculous price on it and hoping for the best. Oh, and it's really good fun watching it!
I blame Miranda for all this writing a diary/blog lark. I just finished reading her book and found it rather jolly. If you haven't read it then give it a go.
Right, I'm off to show those Facebookers my picture of a cat called Bruce, then off to watch Big Brother (I know I know, it's naff). Cheerio!

Big Fat FAIL

So today I've been framing a lot of cuts that have been hanging around the studio for a week or so before they get damaged. So I wasn't concentrating and ripped one. POO! Yes, I swore a little and was about to chuck it in the bin when I figured that one of you guys might like it.
I stuck it on ye olde Facebook and got hundreds of comments before I called down Minecraft addict, Poppy (age 10) to scroll through the names and randomly pick one.
I video'd (how DO you spell that?) it all on my little phone fandangle, but being completely crap I couldn't get it to upload to Facebook. Tried Instagram instead but it'd only show snippets and 99% of you guys don't even have Instagram (you should try it, it's pretty addictive!) so all in all a big fat FAIL.
So here I am to write in these black and white wordy things that I'll be sending *goes to check spelling* Jessica Kyei-Yamoah this sadly ripped yet magnificent papercut.
Thanks for your support guys. You are, as always, a bit odd but I do like you ;)

 

Fame & Fortune

....may one day be something that applies to me. Until then I'll make do with being in this months Craftseller Magazine. I jest, it's been great and I'm still astonished that anyone would want to read about lil ol' me.
When the nice lady came to interview me I was so scared! I hadn't seen any people (apart from my husband and daughter) for about a month, being a proper loner oddbod artist, so to meet this wildly enthusiatic little jumping-bean of a lady was quite astonishing, but pleasantly so. She soon had me at ease, complimenting me on my nail polish (always a winner) and before long I was nattering away almost oblivious to the tape recorder.
Then the photographer arrived. He was incredibly stern and professional. He never did edit out the spots on my chin like he promised, though. He took some very good photos, but you didn't get to see the REALLY good ones as they would have had my heavily tattooed arms in them which wouldn't be a good look ;) We had a good 'ol romp around the garden with the cats. I sat on the strawberries while I posed. I tried to go for demure but ended up looking slightly awkward, but the effort was put in and I think, in the end...it turned out rather well. Don't you?
Pick up September 2013 copy of Craftseller in all good retailers. And possibly some not so good, but we won't hold that against them.

Thank you to everyone who entered the "Name the Un-named Papercut" competition.  

There were so many amazing entries it was really hard to choose a winner.... but we finally have

*Drum roll* 

Many congratulations to Jennifer Gray

MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT

It was night in the magic woods that protected the enchanted castle but not all was quiet. On the branch of the old tree where the wise owl had her nest some pixies were up to no good. The pixies were trying to steal owls eggs so that they could take them to the evil sorcerer that lived in the caves beyond the castle.

The sorcerer wanted to use the eggs to make a potion that could control the movements of the sun and the moon as the sorcerer hated the daylight when people were busy and happy he prefered the night where he could skulk around unseen casting spells to cause despair and sadness

In order to create his potion the sorcerer needed the ground shells of the young of the wise along with a few strands of hair from a fairy the colour of the moonlight among many more available ingredients. The owl however had hear of this plan and had already warned the fairys and moved the eggs to a seceret location where the fairys would protect them for him leaving him free to trap the pixies.

The enchantress had agreed to help the owl as she was good and kind and was the one who balnaced out the evilness of the sorcerer to keep the land in harmony so the conjured up some special decoy eggs which they placed in owls nest.

When the pixies tried to remove the eggs from the tree the eggs would suck the pixies inside leaving them trapped in a bubble with no escape, when all the pixies had been caught the enchantress came along and gathered them up and removed the spell the sorerer had placed upon them many years before, as it was this spell that turned the pixies into mischief makers.

The sorcerer was stopped, the pixies went back to being peaceful lovable carpenters making beautiful things out of twigs and fallen logs, the fairies came back out to play and the owl had 5 lovely fluffy chicks which would grow and help protect the forest for many may years to come.

The End

Love You

This is a beautiful piece, perfect for a first anniversary.

Hand drawn and hand cut from a single sheet of cream paper, it's simple but striking sentiment will remind you of....oh shurrup. It's a pretty papercut ;)

Backed with cherry red paper and framed in a handmade beech wood frame, finished with the Paper Panda tag. Signed by the artist on the reverse and also the mount. 11x14".

http://paperpanda.bigcartel.com/product/love-you-original-large-framed-papercut

I'd love to tell you that my things come from the old eBay favourite line 'a smoke and pet free home' - but, actually I'm not, because then I'd be very bored without these lil guys getting in on everything I do haha!
(I don't smoke, though lol)
'Rotten Apples' luxury print available now.
http://paperpanda.bigcartel.com/product/wizard-of-oz-rotten-apples-luxury-a4-signed-print

Millions & Squillions

Hand cutting at it's finest.

Love you millons & squillions!

Many congratulations to Mr & Mrs Paul Danson on their wedding. Paul commissioned this piece for his new wife as a suprise.

Silhouettes

Brother and sister hand cut papercuts. Custom printed background and handmade wood frames. 

If you would like to commission a piece like this they are currently £45 and I can scribble your details in my lil book. I'm afraid I can't promise a timescale though as I'm super busy xx

paperpandacuts@hotmail.co.uk

Tweet Heart

"Tweet Heart"

Hand cut in cream Canford paper with a blue backing.

A delightful piece presented in a hand made white frame. Also available as a laser cut.

William Boris

"William Boris" Original A4 Papercut

A one off A4 original papercut "William Boris"
Hand cut in cream Canford paper with a rich maroon backing finished off with subtle matt gold highlights.
Inspired by William Morris
Presented in a hand made beech frame

Alice In Wonderland Paper Panda Style

This is one of the many Alice inspired papercuts that are available to commission. Prints can be found in the online shop, too. www.paperpanda.bigcartel.com

We Have A Winner

A massive thank you to all who entered Paper Panda's very first HUGE HAUL blog comp, totally blown away with the response and the amazing ideas you came up with for Bird & Bunny. 

Poppy had a tough job choosing from them all but had great fun and she has decided, so just to recap the winner will receive:

A Woodland Circle luxury screen printed, 

vegan (yes really) cushion.

A screen printed tote bag.

An original, hand drawn, hand cut papercut. This is a little decorated watering can, mounted, unframed and it's the only one of it's kind.

All three Bird and Bunny badges.Two Bird and Bunny laser cuts. 

A pack of three luxury greetings cards.

A Bird and Bunny handbag mirror.

We have a winner!

Roz Meredith - I was thinking out loud and my little boy came up with this - "I think bunny and bird should be sheltering under a toadstool umbrella in the rain, but with the sun peeking out from behind a could with a rainbow overhead" (Suggested by Xander age 7)

So Xander aged 7 is the winner  How awesome is his idea 

Congratulations and thank you for such a fabulous idea! 

From Beginning To End

    

....& this is how it ends :D

"Up Up and Away" from the Bunny & Bird series of papercuts. Hand drawn and hand cut from a single sheet of Canford cream paper with a blue backing.

Framed in a beech wood hand made frame (23x23cm)with a double layer of glass for a floating effect.

Paper Cutting Starter Kit

Feeling bored or a little bit poo?

You can cut holes in paper too!

You can make something dead pretty

Even if your art is a little bit shi**y

You just follow the lines y'see

And you'll make some pictures

A bit like me 

GET YOUR KIT HERE

Paper Panda Laser Cut 'Carousel Horse'

Laser Cut "Carousel Horse"
Laser cutting - for when you reeeeeally want a Paper Panda piece at a fraction of the hand cutting cost.
Cut from cream or ivory card with a loose coloured insert these look fabulous when framed. 21X27.5cm.
Laser cuts are made by burning pieces away from the paper leaving the design behind. Due to the nature of the product some discolouration may be present, giving an antique look and charm to the piece.
Made by a machine and hand finished in the UK by a lass called Jenny.

Paper Panda BigCartel

Competition Time!

In the comments box underneath the photo on the Facebook page please say what you'd like to see Bird and Bunny doing in the future - I already thought of that, keep it clean  

You may well see your idea turned into a papercut!The winner will be picked by my daughter on 1st June 2013 and announced on the blog. Heres a peek of what they have been up to already:

Bunny & Bird Album

You don't have to like or share to enter the competition although it's always very sweet when you do. This competition is in no way associated with facebook and you may email your entry if you wish to paperpandacuts@hotmail.co.uk

By entering you are also giving me permission to make your suggestion into pretty little papercuts.

What do you win? Loads!

A Woodland Circle luxury screen printed, 

vegan (yes really) cushion.

A screen printed tote bag.

An original, hand drawn, hand cut papercut. This is a little decorated watering can, mounted, unframed and it's the only one of it's kind.

All three Bird and Bunny badges.Two Bird and Bunny laser cuts. 

A pack of three luxury greetings cards.

A Bird and Bunny handbag mirror.

Good luck... and if you don't win here's where you can buy everything except the watering can papercut...

Love Birds

Mushroom

I've been so very very busy developing the Bird & Bunny range. Here's "Mushroom" with mid-blue backing paper.

Make A Wish Papercut

"Make A Wish" little hand drawn, hand cut papercut from the Bunny & Bird series

Ohh Deer 'Woodland Circle' Cushion

Luxury cushions printed with your favourite Paper Panda designs are now available.

Paper Panda Store

Intricate Cutting.....

Pandas are proper OCD about accuracy...

I'm not just sitting here twiddling my paws and making Bunny & Bird cuts. I'm still hammering my way through a mahoosive order list and this is a suprise for one of my regular followers....is it you?

Prints Charming!

There are many prints available in the online shop!

Panda Panda Store

Latest Cuts & Favourite Authors

Been busy getting ready with a few orders and sending my favourite author a special package, can you guess who it is?

This lovely delivery arrived at Panda HQ and will be available for sale at out BigCartel shop later :D x