Freebie Friday - Death's-head Hawkmoth

Okay, I'm mixing it up a bit. From now on, the free templates provided will happen on Friday. I will still make templates on Tuesday, but they will be a little more ornate and available for purchase on my Etsy site.

That said, here's a free template! It's October already, guys. Can you believe it? Halloween will be upon us soon. Here's my first template this month, a Death's-Head Hawkmoth. Can you believe these suckers really exist? The first time I had ever heard of or seen one was when I was a teenager watching the movie Silence of the Lambs. That movie freaked my noodle right out. Anyways, these moths are just fascinating.

Here's what the template looks like. There are two difficult things about this cut. One, the skull in the center. I'd start with that first in case you mess up so you can just start over. I think if you mess up on the wings you can glue them but those eyeball and nose holes are tricky at the attachment points. The other part that is tricky is the wing lines. Be sure to cut from left to right (or right to left if you're left-handed) so that you can see how thick you are cutting. If you cut the opposite direction, your hand gets in the way.

Anyway, enjoy. Halloween is one of my most favorite holidays. Go get spooky! Here's the template: Death's-head Hawkmoth.

©2015 Cindy Bean (www.bean-cutter.com) 

These templates are for personal use only. You can make them for your mom, you can make them for your aunt, you can make them for your family reunion, etc. Please don't sell these free templates for your own personal gain. I put them out there as a service, don't make me get frustrated and stop doing them. Don't ruin it for everyone else! Also, if you're going to sell art, maybe you should make it your own. You can do it, I promise! It's not good karma to pass off someone else's art as your own. 

Template Tuesday - Explore

Here's a fun Template Tuesday that's a little more outdoorsy themed. I've been going on a few hikes with my kids and friends lately and felt like this template really captured the mood. Get out there! Go where there's no reception and breathe in the air. Reset your mind, body and soul!

Then come home and try making this template! Here's what the template looks like, it's pretty simple. I cut it out while the baby napped. Download Explore!

©2015 Cindy Bean (www.bean-cutter.com) 

These templates are for personal use only. You can make them for your mom, you can make them for your aunt, you can make them for your family reunion, etc. Please don't sell these free templates for your own personal gain. I put them out there as a service, don't make me get frustrated and stop doing them. Don't ruin it for everyone else! Also, if you're going to sell art, maybe you should make it your own. You can do it, I promise! It's not good karma to pass off someone else's art as your own. 

Commissioned Piece - Team OHSU Race

A friend of mine works up in Portland for OHSU and recently asked me to design the t-shirt logo for the race they were going to be participating in (Race for the Cure). The design originally had the name of the race but they liked it enough to want to use it for other races they might be involved in, so they scrubbed that part. It was fun to work on and research. All those little running people to cut out really maxed out my skills.

Commissioned Piece - The Pond

A little while ago an old friend of mine commissioned a piece to go in the entryway of her home. The only prompt she gave me was bubbles, I can't remember why. I decided to do a little fish papercut for her with bubbles. The fish represent the family, two parents and four kids. Now all I have to do is mount it and mail it!

Here's a detail shot of how it looked like when I was just sketching it.

Commissioned Piece - L'chaim!

Sometimes I get to do papercuts for friends who've had my heart for a long time and you can tell a little more love goes into them. Mazel tov to Eve and Jared, may the bluebird of happiness sit in your heads forever.

Template Tuesday - Easter Banner

I was looking around my house the other day and realized I was severely lacking in Easter decorations. Not a bunny rabbit in site. Because I'm thrifty, I decided to make a few myself (check back next week for another one). Here is my very first Easter Banner.

It has all the cute Easter things you can imagine, kids hunting for Easter eggs, bunnies, ducks, chicks and frolicking lambs. Below is what the template looks like. It's separated out onto two 8.5" x 11" sheets of paper. I used a kind of thinner scrapbooking paper (so it was easier to cut through, yet still rigid enough for the lambs to frolic in the air).

Here are my helpful hints for cutting this out.
1. Notice that there are notches underneath the letters. Those are so the letters don't bend in the middle when you fold the banner.
2. Tape or glue the tabs on the side BEHIND the next scene so that it will look like a continuous banner.
3. When I translated this papercut into vector format, some of the eggs got a little wonky. Don't' be afraid to make the eggs actual ovals instead of cylindrical like they look here. They aren't supposed to be that way!

I think that's it. Enjoy cutting! You can cut this out with an Xacto knife or use your Silhouette or other digital cutting machine. I have no idea how to go about getting it from your machine to that cutter, all I know is that other people have done it!

 

Download the template here: Easter Banner

©2014 Cindy Bean (www.bean-cutter.com) 

These templates are for personal use only. You can make them for your mom, you can make them for your aunt, you can make them for your family reunion, etc. Please don't sell these free templates for your own personal gain. I put them out there as a service, don't make me get frustrated and stop doing them. Don't ruin it for everyone else! Also, if you're going to sell art, maybe you should make it your own. You can do it, I promise! It's not good karma to pass off someone else's art as your own. 

Template Tuesday - Thanksgiving Place Settings

I'm not through Thankgiving-ing you guys yet. I want to make sure that your table is properly outfitted for the coming holiday. Hopefully this is being posted so that you have enough time to create these before the upcoming feast next week. We are going up to my parent's house in Lava Hot Springs and plan on getting good and stuffed. Since we're invading their home, I wanted to do my part in helping with the decor. I made these little place cards.

Here's a close-up of it. It's the name of my beloved!

Currently I've cut out 5 of them and have 6 more to do. The leaf part isn't the hard part, it's the name part that is difficult. Which brings me to that part of the message - the name part...

Here's what the template looks like. Notice there are no names on here. That is because I have no idea what your family member's names are. So, you can do three things.

1. You can open this up in Illustrator or whatever program you use to open these up in, place your names in each of the leaves, flip them so they are in reverse and then cut them out. Don't forget on parts where there are complete enclosed spaces, like O and A, to not cut all the way through one section of the letter, otherwise the inside part will fall out (unless you like that sort of thing). 
2. You can print this out on scrap paper, write your names in, scan them in again, flip the paper so that the names are in reverse, print it and then cut it out.
3. You can just say aw, to heck with it all and write the names in with a nice pen (that's probably the smartest thing to do).

Does that make sense? Here's the template: Thanksgiving Place Settings. Now, go to! Create!

Oh, I forgot to mention, I cheated and used a really teeny tiny hole punch that I got at Michael's for the circles of the acorn. When you've got 11 of these to cut out, you really don't want to mess around.

Template Tuesday - Woodsy

Sometimes I think that people are sick of my paper cuts and they're like, "Cindy, paper cut, paper cut, paper cut...don't you do anything else besides paper cut?" And sometimes, really, that's pretty much all I do. So I feel like people might not want one, but when I receive gifts from people that they made, I generally like them. I like them a lot. So it was my friend Elin's birthday today and I asked her what animals she liked or what fairy tale and she said she liked woodland creatures, particularly owls, squirrels and deer. So I made her a little papercut based on those things. And in giving to her, I also give to you. Enjoy!
Download your template in pdf format here: Woodsy

New London Safari

My friend Dave recently commissioned me to do a papercut for him to give to his partner. He wanted something that captured where they live, where Mark is from and one of Mark's favorite things to do. So I had the daunting task of combining New York, London and Safari into one complete papercut. I think I did pretty good. My favorite is the giraffe.

Cheshire Cat

Now available as a print on Etsy!
So, way back in December, my church had a Sub For Santa Auction. I donated a custom papercut and my friend Diane purchased it. It's taken a little while to get it together, but we finally figured out a theme and I sketched it out and cut it this last weekend. Diane liked the Alice in Wonderland papercut template I did a little bit ago and wanted something from that story. The Cheshire Cat has always been my favorite. I'm glad I was able to do this for her!

The Silence

This one was my favorite piece of the whole show.

The Saint

I have always loved deer. Growing up in Las Vegas, I heard that Wayne Newton had a deer in his backyard (he also had penguins and raised beautiful Arabians). In my head, that made Wayne Newton the coolest person in the world. It still kind of does.

The Pirate

The Diviner

Here's one of my pieces for the Festival last Saturday. This one I called, "The Diviner" but I don't know if that guy is really a diviner. I don't know if that guy is even really a guy. When I drew him, I was thinking of him as a guy but everyone I've shown it to thinks that it's a woman. I guess I just drew a pretty decent shim.

I have five that are similar to this. They are all pretty small - the green part measures 4.75" square. So teeny!

Anyway, thanks to all who came to the show. It was nice to meet those of you who I hadn't met before!

Template Tuesday - Mushroom Bunny

I just moved into a new house and everything is so overwhelming so I'm trying to ignore the chaos and put some normality back into my life. I figured I'd do that by starting up exercising again. This silhouette was going to get pushed aside but I decided to take advantage of my new porch and the moonlight and the giant floodlights the old lady had put up who previously lived there and sketch a little something. I'm researching mushrooms for a different project I'm doing and thought I'd try out a little scene with that theme.

Here's what the template will look like. Remember to cut out the gray areas first and then the outlined area in the back.

Download your free scherenschnitte template here: Mushroom Bunny

I cut this out at work and am using a different mat than I normally would use. This one doesn't suit me. If you are trying to use a craft knife to cut out your papercuts and it tears all the time, maybe try getting a different mat. It'll make a big difference.

He Was Demanding More and More Sacrifices

The poor mini people of the village were always getting terrorized by this bird until they started offering up sacrifices to him. It's a good thing that there are always plenty of bugs around!

Size: 5" x 7"

This one is still up and showing at the Terra Nova Gallery!

Papercut Family Tree

Something fun I've been working on lately has been these three family trees. They are cut out of census papers of my ancestors. I scanned them in and blew them up pretty large and cut out these giant family trees.


It's interesting the different color variances you can get with different eras of census records. I think the first one is from the 1920s, the second one is from the 1910s and the third one from the 1880s.


I'm going to give one to my parents, one I'll keep for me and I'm still debating what to do with the third one.

Deer Me

More experimenting with 3d papercuts. I've had these shadow boxes from IKEA for years and never have used them. I finally got around to it and painted the inside blue and the outside gold and made a deer papercut for Jake for Christmas. I think he liked it.