Marbin

 It's one of my best friends 20th Birthday coming up super soon, and I have been browsing the inter webs for days now trying to find something good to send as a present, and although I came across a few contenders I couldn't choose. In the flipped a film on and got my craft on and ended up making a paper cutting piece of her nickname.

Final piece in decorative frame

Paper cutting in process (8x6 inches)

Owl Post

A little while back I found out and managed to get to the Graphic Art of the Harry Potter Films, which would be exhibiting work by the graphic artists Miraphora and Eduardo - MinaLima. It was such an amazing opportunity to look at the work in great detail. What was even more amazing, and I still can't get over til this day - both Miraphora and Eduardo were there, and they talked to us! It was so interesting to hear about their work, and so lovely for them to take the time to talk to us and point out little design secrets. They are a bit inspiration to me, and to actually meet and talk to them - yep. I therefore wanted to make them a thankyou card. I then got pretty carried away! It went from a card design to a full blow mini-craft-project!

Owl diagram and plan

I drew out the design for the owl and then I was able to apply the feathers on top of each other, separately, into the correct formation.

Final Card

Close up of some of the card illustrations

I originally had a few thumbnail ideas of possible cards, but I ended up going for a collaboration of different Harry Potter related objects, all in monochrome.
Mounting the illustration onto the black card, really work well with the black ink illustrations, and really brought them out.

Completed wing, with separate feathers

The wings of the owl were crafted from the original design. I used it as a template for layering the feathers in the correct formation, to get that wing-span shape. All the feathers were cut separately, so that on the back of the bird, you can still see all the feathers.

Owl: BACK

Final paper-constructed Owl 

Holding the owl up to the light clearly highlights all the wing construction

I wanted to make the owl hold the card-envelope.
To make with possible, the beak and neck feathers are only glue at the top, and the feet are glued at the bottom of the talons. This way, the letter can be slipped under at both ends of the owl, and it will be as though the owl has the letter in its mouth, and the talons keep it secure.

 The whole point of the design was to have the owl - based on Hedwig - carrying the well known Harry Potter-Hogwarts style envelope.

Full collection of pieces

Vulpes

Final Piece

It has just been my friends birthday, and I thought it the perfect opportunity to have a first go at paper cutting, which is a technique I have been admiring for a while now. 

I first created the design in photoshop, and then went ahead on paper.

Sketching out the initial design in Photoshop

Fully cut out frame

Why make a first attempt at something easy? This did take me two days to fully cut out, but my exacto knife was so good. I drew the pattern out onto the paper, and then cut away from the lines so that the detail would be on the paper. I then just turned the patter over, so that the pencil lines would be left underneath.

Piecing together the fox

With various pieces of paper cutting I have been studying, illustrators have used a combination of layering paper simply on top of each other, but also have sections where the paper will be slightly manipulated to create a more 3D effect. I haven't really been able to find any tutorials for this, so I went ahead and played around with a few of the pieces from the forefront of the fox - like the legs and the snout, and then also the features like the ears and tail that would perhaps have more movement in them.

To make sure that I would still able to stick the pieces down, I used a combination of sticky pads used in layering artwork, and layered cardboard pieces, so that they would still have strength onto the base card.

Frame Detail

Mediums used: Drawing tablet in photoshop for the initial sketch. & exacto knife and scissors for the paper cutting.