“making the snapercut” by gingerbred

[gingerbredshaus]

For mywitch, because you are just the coolest ever!!!!

Recently MyWitch made me the most amazing 🌈beautiful bloated dead unicorn ambigram🦄 (I’m so counting the legs as one view, lol) currently gracing my profile page. So I made this for her as a little ‘thank you’.


So... Background! For Valentines’, MyWitch posted the following pic:





And I thought, hey, I can do a papercutting of that.

I’ve been asked what kinds of things I use to do those, so I took a pic of much of my gear. The scissors on the right are my favourites. They have the best action. (I think they may have been the cheapest, too.)





Notable exceptions: a computer and printer for working up the initial pictures. Markers for editing them, because for me that often goes faster. Some means of getting them back into the system, either pics or scans, to repeat the process if necessary, and thin (lightweight) paper for the print outs. A matt for cutting on (I actually finally cut a chunk out of one yesterday, but those things can stand up to a *lot*). Rulers, clear plastic to see what you’re doing, and at least one metal one you can just go nuts with and don’t have to worry about slicing into.

I find the needle and dentist’s tool very helpful for boring thin slits a little wider, and I have a strange variety of dangerous looking tweezers I use for similar purposes.

Usually I’d say the most helpful item is the headlamp. This time around, however, I’ve decided the most important thing is the fecking glue. For one thing, I lightly coat my matt to reduce slippage while cutting. I find that seriously helpful, and if you look at how thin the frown lines turned out - the glue didn’t cause the paper to rip when I lifted it from the matt. Great stuff. Lasts for a whole bunch of cuts. And I also need it to mount the finished product.

I usually use the green stuff in the pic below, and thankfully it was what was on my matt. I’ve been using it for years, and it’s treated me well. It was empty. No problem, I ordered more and got the blue stuff.

Great gods, it was an absolute misery. (Naturally I bought two cans...)





The front and back papers matched perfectly before gluing. After, not so much. It practically melted the paper. Much cursing was involved, and I don’t usually feel the need for that. (Put it this way, the straight lines were the easy bit, so you know that went wrong after the fact.)

I also think in the future, I’d glue first and then cut the piece out to the desired size. (I think I don’t usually glue smaller pieces onto paper. In fact, if it isn’t necessary, I don’t glue to the background at all, so that way the colours can be changed. And it was definitely a first time with the 14.85 square format for me. (Half of a DIN A4’s length.))

And that’s about it.

Thanks again, MW. 😘 I loved the Ginger-unicorns to little bitty bits. ❤️

Design by Unknown.
Originally Published: 2019-04-06 in gingerbred’s LiveJournal, where it contained way more emojis and personal asides...
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