Scherenschnitte Christmas Cards

 Santa’s Workshop Papercutting

Here it is January 19, and I haven’t gotten around to posting my Christmas card design from 2023.  Oops.

It’s always such an ordeal for me trying to figure out what the theme will be for my yearly card. I take forever and go through lots of prototypes. 

This year I ended up using the theme of Santa’s workshop. This way, I got to cut a fancy border design, which was the house. Architectural designs make such nice designs that can be set on a table or hung. And in Santa’s workshop, I got to add a bike, which was something I really wanted to include. 

Most of my cards were cut out of heavy drawing paper. After about 95% of them were cut, I noticed a pack of watercolor paper I have hoarded for years. And wouldn’t you know, that stuff is perfect for my greeting card snips! 

My Christmas Scherenschnitte Cards for 2022

 Annual Scherenschnitte Christmas Cards

Oh, boy. I suck at taking pictures of white art work. Sheesh. But here are my paper cut Christmas cards this year.

I first decided that I wanted to have a bike design. I like designs that have different scenes on different sides. So, voíla! Here is card #1. Santa riding a bike through the woods. Okay, so fine. Simple. I cut a boat load of this design.

But then I wanted to cut a design for a thank you note to friends who live in a well appointed craftsman style house. I based this cut on a Frank Lloyd Wright design. I like this one soooooo much better than the Santa. 

But......I already cut a ton of the Santa ones. And this one takes longer to cut.  Ugh. Which ones to send to whom???

Scherenschnitte Christmas Card 2020

 Every year, designing my 3D scherenschnitte (paper cutting) Christmas cards takes FOREVER! I cut designs that I love but they take too long to produce en masse. Here's the one I have settled on to send this year. 

I started far away from that design though. After contemplating cutting a fancy covid molecule, my first real attempt was at a Celtic knot, thinking it would be quick and easy.  Nope. Not quick and not easy. 

Then I went for a beloved image; the matryoshka or babushka. 

I took pictures of myself dressed as a babushka to have a model to work from.  I liked the design but just could not seem to cut them very quickly.  That, plus the fact that when I asked people to tell me what the image was, they called it a Santa. Instead of adding more details to make it look more grandma like, I went to other designs that I just never loved.  My Christmas cards are 3D and I was going to sew together the babushka and bunny side with the boy, tree, and house side. 

Russian stacking dolls followed that. The face took too long and easily fell apart because it is so delicate. Again, for multiples, it just would take too long.  There were multiple iterations of that as I was determined that this was going to be the theme. 

Next, we move to birds. This is a delicate and small design. Once again, the intricacy was just too much.

This one, not enough action.

The birds inspired the final design though.  Actually, I bought a dishcloth at a Norwegian festival that had a similar bird on it and that is the image that inspired the final designs.  

Now I am in production mode.  Each Christmas card takes a minimum of an hour to produce....but all made with love and care. All a little bit different than each other.

Christmas Scherenschnitte 2019 - Planning

I've been contemplating whether or not to do my annual 3D paper snip for Christmas.  Those are what I send out as Christmas cards.

They are a boost to my self esteem, for sure.  People post their collections of my snip ornaments/Christmas cards on Facebook.  Some folks leave their Christmas snips hanging up all year, which is fun to see when I come to visit.  Fewer and fewer people send cards back anymore though.  I really enjoy receiving them so I am disappointed to not get cards in return.

Last year, I was in the throes of a sculpture class during this season.  I spent WAY, way too much time working on my projects for that, so the cards had to be set aside.  This year, however, I could easily do them.

Some 3D snips take an hour and a half to complete and that's not even taking into account the amount of time it takes me to settle on a design.  So, these things are really labors of love.


Here are the contenders for this season, albeit in a really unfinished form.  You can see one that I gave up on pretty quickly. The designs are not complete, and only one is 3d.

Some, I had to retreive from the trash can just now.  Most of my samples, I hate right after doing them.  When I went to bed last night, I had decided to not take on this project this year. This morning I changed my mind. I am ready to snip!

Scherenschnitte Christmas Card for 2016

The month of November was filled with much papercutting.  I snip my own Christmas cards each year and it is no quick task.  I do love doing it though.  If I wake at 4 in the morning, I get excited because that means I can go down into my studio and snip in the relative dark and quiet for a few hours.  It feels like Santa's workshop.




Anyway, this was the design for my 2016 cards. The cards are 3D.  The four sides each have a different scene.

Though I get a lot of positive feedback from the folks to whom I send cards, I do not get many cards in return anymore.  I guess the tradition is going out of fashion. Makes me sad.

Scherenschnitte Angel - Christmas Cards 2015

Every year I snip my own Christmas cards.  They're 3D and labor intensive.

This year I chose to make angels.  My initial thought was that these would be quick to do.  Hahaha!  They were not quick to make.  I also made many that I threw out.  Hours wasted, yes, but lessons learned.

The main problem that I had with my angels was the face.  Snipping is problematic at best because it is tricky to know where to cut so that the whole thing does not fall apart.  Double the problem when you are cutting it on the fold for four halves of a face.  I snipped some of the ugliest angel faces you have ever seen!  I learned way too late, that I needed to cut the faces first.  It was painful to have spent hours on body and wings only to snip an ugly face at the end.

I know on that top photo, the angel looks as though it was cut from black paper, but that's not so.  It was cut from white.  The January blizzard of '16 in the background is putting her in shadow.

I was pleased with many of the angels and sent them out.  My family and friends always tell me that they have a collection of my cards and many people display them every year.

I am finding that every year, fewer and fewer people send out cards. It brings me great joy to send mine out, but I also enjoy receiving cards.  I guess this is a tradition that is ending.  That makes me sad. I'm not sure how long I will keep on creating my own.

Christmas Cards for 2014

You would think that since I retired six months ago, my Christmas cards would have been snipped ages ago.  Not so.  I've busied myself with everything but snipping.  Once I got down to crunch time though, I enjoyed the task.  This year's batch are pleasing to me but they are more simple than those done in years past. Here are a few of them.

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Card Snips - 2013

Every year I try to set time aside to snip Christmas cards.  Since I am off work right now, nursing my foot, I had time to get my cards done.  This was a design I originally came up with years ago. I decided to use it this year because I thought I could replicate it easily and send them all out in early December.

Some of these are symmetrical with the snowman and child on every side.  Some I alternated the snowman/child side with an animal side.  The later took too long to cut, so now I am just cutting the symmetrical one.

scherenschnitte sculpture 6" x 8"

Christmas Scherenschnitte Cards 2012

My creative juices have been spent mostly on yarn related activities lately.  Nothing highly creative; just pleasurable. 

But since Christmas is coming up, I've started snipping my holiday cards.  They often change from the time I start designing until the time I finish the last snip.  Here's how they look at the moment.

I'd like to add some sparkly white powdery stuff, but I have no clue how to do it.  I think it involves some hot air blower tool.  No clue where even to begin on that one.  Do you know?

(folded, this is 4" x 6")

Sparkly Cards

I'm still snipping along with my Christmas cards.  It seems that with every card, I make changes.

My hope was that I could find the perfect sparkly background paper at the craft store.  There was none to be found that was remotely like what I saw in my mind's eye.  A trip to the Dollar Tree solved that problem though.  They had gift bags that were made of exactly the right paper and were cheaper than craft store paper.

The difficult part now is to figure out which of all the styles I have done the last few weeks will go to whom.

scherenschnitte

Finished Cards

These are the cards I have been working on.  I like them all, but I am not really sold on any one of them.  I still think they need to be a little more personal but I'm not sure where to go with that.

scherenschnitte

Crab Template

Last night I was snipping trial versions of Christmas cards. I decided that they weren't personal enough, so I tried using a local icon from back home; the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab. My thinking was that I would cut it out of white cardstock and back it with some glittery , shiny Christmas paper. We'll see. I may still just head over to Hallmark.
I'll post photos of a finished piece later today. This template has some rough edges, but I really just made it for my own use and wasn't worried about presentation.


scherenschnitte

Planning for Christmas - Card Template

I like snipping my own Christmas cards. 

The ones I made the last two years were 
3D.  It took 5 months to make all of them. 

 With a month to go until Christmas, 

it looks like this year's cards won't

 be as involved as that.  So I'm trying

 to get some sketches done before getting 

the production line going.  Honestly, at

this speed , I may be heading to Hallmark 
for my cards. 

scherenschnitte  

Ornament Template

I'm having so much fun making templates for scherenschnitte. What i need to do is to start cutting these out!

Russian Churches -- My Christmas Cards

When my friend, Lynda, showed me her book on Russian churches, I was stunned to see an image that I knew would be this year's Christmas card snip.  I've snipped 20 plus of these, and I am guessing I am not done yet.  These will start going in the mail sometime this week so I needed to get photos taken now.