Meet Sakura - revisiting an old friend and tackling infills

Meet Sakura

A business assosiate of Rob's (husband), a lovely lady who helped me with some HR advice last year, commissioned me to produce a papercut version of a digital illustration that I made for Heidi's nursery in 2013.

The design never considered the closed paths that papercutting requires so there was a wee bit of adjustment but overall I am very happy with the cut. In fact it's my new favourite. I was always fond of the illustration but it was a little crude, I am not master of Illustrator and my formal graphic design training was minimal.

I cut the design from a piece of 160gsm smooth white card, as a negative cut, removing all sections of detail rather than cutting away the negative space. The blossoms were infilled with pink 120gsm paper and rather than struggling with my cocktail stick and wanderlustful superglue, I secured the infills with slivers of masking tape. (thank you to Paper Panda and By Charlie's Hand for that revelation! and seriously join the Papercutting groups on facebook, an education and social life rolled into one!)

I then superglued my firm favourite, kraft card, to the back of the piece, dotting superglue over the masking tape slivers too for extra security.

Client wants to piece mounted so her friend can chose her own frame.

Here are the pictures of the original print, through to completed conversion into cut. Links to papercutting groups at the bottom.

Sakura Digital Illustration available as print only £4

Negative cut Sakura - cherry blossom

Infills, secured with masking tape 

Detail of negative cuts

Papercutting Groups on Facebooks: Advice, support, inspiration, chats, hints and tips.

Papercutting Hideaway,

Papercutting and Paper Craft, Trainee - Expert,

We Love Papercutting