Winter may not technically arrive until December 21^st, but once November ends, it seems that everybody begins embracing the holiday season. One of the biggest and most recognizable symbols of winter is undoubtedly snow. Now, no matter where you live or what the weather is like, you can bring a little snowfall inside your home with two different, fun decorating techniques.

 

For both of these tutorials, you’ll need a sewing needle and thread or fishing wire. The first technique also requires white paper and scissors. For the second, you’ll need cotton balls and glue (optional).

 

Image via Paper & Stitch

 

The first technique is a classic with a twist. Paper snowflakes have been around forever, but usually you see them taped to windows. For a crafty update, try turning those paper flakes into a curtain of snow by hanging them in strands. First thing’s first: grab some white paper and cut out circles in different sizes. Trace things like plates, bowls, and cups for variation.  Then fold each circle and cut shapes to create snowflakes. You’ll need a lot of snowflakes, so feel free to get the whole family involved! Once you have your snowflakes, take a needle and thread and sew them together in strands; just a few stitches per flake will do it. Try varying the sizes for a more haphazard look. Once each strand is the length of your window, hang it from a curtain rod (or tape it to the head of the window) until the window’s width is covered. The resulting effect: falling snowflakes. Gorgeous, right?

 Image via

 

Next up—a real oldie, but a goodie:  the cotton ball technique! This uses the same concept as above, but requires zero scissor work. Cut a piece of thread the length of your window and knot one end and thread the other. Separate your cotton balls into different sizes; puff some up so they look bigger, break others into equal parts and roll them so they’re smaller. String the cotton balls onto your thread, alternating the sizes for a natural look. Underneath each ball as it’s threaded, either make a knot or dab a tiny bit of glue so it stays in place. Be sure to leave space between each cotton ball so it resembles falling snow. Once one thread is full, hang it up, start your next thread, and repeat until the width of the window is covered. Again, the whole family can get in on the fun and the decorating will go that much faster!

 

Both of these delightful DIYs bring a little winter magic inside your home. Which technique are you excited to try?

Let’s keep the Thanksgiving momentum going with another fun turkey craft! If you missed yesterday’s variation, take a look here. Today’s turkey gets a beautiful, natural twist by using dried autumn leaves. It’s the perfect way to celebrate both the holiday and the season!

 

You’ll need leaves (dried and flattened), cardboard or brown cardstock, glue, and crayons. If you’d like to make some substitutions (synthetic leaves, googly eyes, construction paper, markers), go right ahead!

Image via Baby Center

 There are several ways you can approach this project, depending on your desired final product, so feel free to put your own stamp on it. Cut out a brown cardboard or cardstock circle for the turkey’s body. Then cut out a smaller circle to use as the head and glue it to the body. If you’re mounting this to a piece of paper, glue the body to your paper and leave a little space unglued at the top for leaves. Start arranging your leaves by sliding then behind the turkey’s body (in the unglued space) and gluing them down.

  Image via My Creative Stirrings

 If you’d prefer to leave your turkey freestanding, just glue the leaves to the back of its body. Finally, add some facial features to your turkey’s head—cut out leaves to make a beak and waddle and use crayon or marker to draw its eyes.

 Image via

 So cute, right? And it not only celebrates Thanksgiving, but really honors this beautiful time of year. Make sure to hang your turkey somewhere special as Thanksgiving approaches! What other Thanksgiving crafts are you looking forward to trying?

Thanksgiving is coming up in just about two weeks. Are you looking forward to it? This holiday combines a few of my favorite things—food, appreciating the little (and big) things, and family. That last one is particularly special because it’s probably what I’m most thankful for. That makes Thanksgiving the perfect time to try a craft that involves the whole family!

 

A traced-hand turkey craft is simple, colorful, and can include everyone! You’ll need scissors, glue, and either construction paper or cardstock in pretty fall colors (red, orange, yellow, green, brown, and dark brown).

 

Start by tracing each family member’s hand on a different colored piece of paper. You can use members of your household, or if you have relatives over, include them too! Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins… the more the merrier! Cut each handprint out and arrange them as feathers. You can do this by color or size—one option is to order them largest to smallest so you can see each hand.

 

For the body, cut out a brown circle; for the neck and head, you can cut out a bowling pin shape, or skip the neck and just cut another circle for the head if you’d prefer. Once everything is glued in order (head onto body, body onto feathers), you can add facial details—cut out a paper beak and waddle and use a marker or pen to create eyes.

 

Image via Pounds 4 Pennies

  Image via Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

 Image via Happy Home Fairy

 

And there is your teamwork turkey! Display it as is or mount it to a piece of paper and frame it. What a great way for the whole family to start celebrating Thanksgiving! What are you planning for the holiday?

Happy (almost) Columbus Day, Scribblers! How are you planning to enjoy your long weekend? This holiday marks the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival to America in 1492. Everyone knows any good explorer always has a few tools on hand and a definite crucial one is a map.

 

It seems only right to embrace the adventurous spirit of the day with some fun DIY inspirations involving globes and maps! This is a great way to use souvenir maps from past trips or vacations, old atlases, and road maps; or breathe new life into broken or shabby globes with these exciting updates. Have fun exploring these cute and timely crafts on your day off!

 

 

Take half a globe and turn it into a unique bowl.

Photo via Better Homes and Gardens

Spread “peace” on earth with contact paper and spray paint.      

Photo via Endlessly Inspired

Grab some maps and some modpodge and spruce up a piece of furniture with decoupage.

Photo via Shelterness

Photo via Roddy & Ginger

Save souvenir maps from vacations and cut them into shapes to display. Try butterflies or hearts.

Photo via Image Surgery

 

 

Are you going to give any of these projects a try? How would you transform your old maps or globes?

 

Have a great Columbus Day everyone!

If you have younger kiddos, you know that Halloween is super fun, but can also mean tempering some of the extra scary stuff. Well, kooky meets spooky with these adorable tissue box monsters! If you want a great Halloween craft for some little ones that’s festive without being frightening, this is the one for you.

 

 

Photo via A Girl and a Glue Gun

You’ll need empty tissue boxes (one per monster), but after that the decorations are up to you! A good decorating base is: some paper (construction, wrapping, computer, any will do), paint, glue, and scissors. For the creatures’ eyes, you can use cut up egg cartons, pom poms, paper, or googly eyes. Feel free to throw some glitter, stickers, feathers, markers, or pipe cleaners in the mix—whatever you have on hand will do.

Photo via Spoonful

Once you have all your materials set up… assemble! The box’s opening (once for tissues) should serve as the monster’s mouth, but how you align it is your call. Start by decorating the box, which serves as the creature’s base. If it needs to dry once it is complete, let it do so before adding eyes, arms, and legs.

Photo via Danielle’s Place

Explore colors, patterns, and shapes—they all add to your monster’s personality. Make it friendly! Or angry!  Be as creative or outrageous as you like. See if you can add fun details like hair, eyebrows or lashes, a tongue, moles, and teeth.

 

Once these crazy guys and gals are all finished and dry, you can play with them or add them to your Halloween display (or both!). Just Boo-ti-ful!

Scribble Town (ST): Béatrice Coron is a visual storyteller who creates in the forms of illustration, book arts, fine art and public art. Béatrice describes her work as, “Collecting memories from individuals and communities, I stage narrative allegories in silhouette to create a dialogue with the viewer in playful fantasies.” Wanting to know more, let’s start with, where are you and what are you up to these days?

Béatrice Coron (BC): A lot of different projects, fences in Chicago (http://oakpark.suntimes.com/news/publicarts-OAK-08152013:article), a subway station on the A train in NYC (will be installed 2014-15), artist books, an ebook and of course papercuts for different exhibitions.

ST: Wow! How did you become so well versed in so many different mediums?!  How did these mediums get introduced to you and was there anybody to encourage you in your art practice?  It really amazes me when I look at your portfolio which consists of paper cuts, public art installations, animation, and what else am I missing? I can imagine the adventure has been an exciting one!

BC: Self-taught. See my TED talk:

You cannot make a living on papercuts alone I’m always curious to cut my stories with different materials. The base is full and empty shapes, the material and techniques varies.

ST: Amongst them all, what tools and mediums do you find most helpful when building your creations and visions?

BC: Sketching with pencil, cutting with xacto knife

ST: October looks like a busy month for you already with upcoming workshops and lectures.  Please let us know about some of the events.  We’d love to participate, if possible.

BC: The workshop at the Future of Story Telling was really interesting as everybody comes to this conference with an open mind and looking to discovering new fields. It’s a yearly event.

ST: Where or when do you find yourself feeling really inspired to create?  Do you ever listen to music or look at other art to trigger inspiration?  I know that when I look at your work, I want to pick up some paper and cut away!

BC: I listen to podcasts about philosophy, history and current affairs. I also read poetry. Every domain is an inspiration.

ST: You have done some remarkable public art pieces like Postcards from North Carolina and Bronx Literature.  How do you go about creating for that space?  Do you sit in the space for a while and observe the visitors or is there some other way you work with the space?

BC: I research the history of the place and study the space. From there I visualize how it feels to arrive in that space and what I would like to see. For example in Charlotte’s airport “Postcards of North Carolina” depict the historical roots of the region.

ST: What or was there a pivotal point in your childhood that got you making art?  Where did you grow up?

BC: I grew up in Lyon, France. I am an only child and was very quiet. I often escaped with my imagination.

ST: Who are some artists and authors that you like?  What draws you to them?

BC: Among many and many artists I admired, I like woodblock prints of Felix Vallotton, I enjoy his black and white’s balance. I also enjoy Japanese prints for their creativity in composition.

ST: Béatrice, what is a good piece of advice for Scribblers?

BC: Just start to cut and enjoy!

ST: Will do! Thanks Béatrice! For more info on Béatrice and her artwork, please go to http://beatricecoron.com.

It seems like magazines always find a way to pile up. For some reason, I can never bring myself to just throw them out. Filled with beautiful images, colors, and articles, it feels wrong for them all to end up in the trash. So anytime I can put them to good use with an art project, I jump at the chance! This magazine strip silhouette is a great way to transform your old magazine pages into something creative, personalized, and beautiful!

 

For your silhouette, you can pick an animal, a person, your home state—whatever you want. Just keep in mind the level of intricacy involved in cutting the strips to fit the shape.

 

 Photo via Meaningful Details on Etsy

 

You’ll need some old magazines, scissors, glue, a pencil, an X-acto knife, the shape you want to trace for your silhouette, and something to mount this project on—it can be canvas, cardboard, or poster board.

 

Start by cutting your magazine strips. Tear out any pages that have a lot of color (or just the colors you’re looking for). Don’t worry if it’s a picture of something weird—you won’t be able to see it once it’s cut up. Cut them into thin, straight strips, roughly the same width (the length can and should vary).

 

 Photo via Apples of Gold Set in Silver

 

In pencil, trace the silhouette on your canvas. Then, start gluing down your magazine strips inside. You can trim each piece with your X-acto knife as you glue it down, or you can mark them with a pencil and trim them afterwards.

 

Once your silhouette is all filled in, it’s a good idea to finish it off with a coat or two of mod podge. This will seal down your collage.

 

 Photo via Designed By BH

And that’s it! Let it dry and hang it up. Colorful, customizable, and recycled—this fun project is great for the eyes and the environment. What are your favorite projects with recycled materials? Any other fun ideas for magazines?

Scribble Town (ST): Patrick Gannon is a magician when it comes to paper arts and storytelling with images! Maybe he has magical powers elsewhere too! He knows how to play with paper in a way that shapes space and builds a mood for all kinds of places.

Patrick Gannon (PG): Hi, I’m Patrick Gannon.  I’m a cut paper artist, which means that I cut up sheets of really fantastic hand-made papers, then layer them on top of each other to make a picture.  I’m originally from New Jersey in the US, and now I live in Fukuoka, Japan.  I spend most of my time drawing, cutting, gluing, walking along the ocean, hiking up slightly creepy mountains, dreaming up odd creatures in the forest, and collecting tons and tons of paper.

ST: The way you’ve described your day look like this happy creature in your piece on the right, ‘A Bright and Sunny Day.’ Where are you and what are you up to these days?  I’m sure very busy with your The 2014 Cut Paper Art Calendar campaign on Kickstarter.  Please let us know more about the project so that we can support you.

PG: For the past 2 years, I’ve been making my home in Fukuoka, in southern Japan.  Before that, I lived in Tokyo around 5 years, learning as much as I could about hand-made washi and chiyogami papers, and creating as much cut paper artwork as I possibly could.

When I’m not hiking up the nearby mountains or exploring the island of Kyushu, I spend most of my time slicing increasingly intricate cut paper artworks.  The last few years, I’ve been showing my work in galleries, Art Fairs, etc. in Japan and more recently, Korea.

The 2014 Cut Paper Art Calendar is an annual project for me.  It’s a great way to share my work with as large a group of people as possible, and to introduce cut paper artwork to people who might not have the chance to see it in their daily lives.  The campaign (which has already met it’s goal) runs until October 7th this year.  Without the campaign, I wouldn’t be able to publish the calendar – or all the other cool rewards like laser cuts and stickers.

ST: I know it’s a hard question, but how would you define your work?  It seems to be a peaceful combination of craft and fine art. It reminds me of traditional paper arts, but with a new twist. I have never seen anything like it before.

PG: Honestly, I try not to define it.  For me, defining it too much creates boundaries, and I’d be in danger of failing to experiment and try new things.  I approach the work as a fine art, I guess, by which I mean I create all of the designs and sketches myself.  I begin with an emotion or a concept in mind, sometimes as simple as a single word.  Somehow, when traveling from my mind to my hand, the ideas become these beings and environments.  Then I let it grow organically from the sketch, to the final drawing to choosing the right papers.  If there is a craft mode, it’s in the final steps of cutting and gluing.  I’ve certainly gotten better over time.  Looking at my clumsy early work can surprise me sometimes.

ST: You seem like a person on a playful path steered by passion. I wonder what what led you to paper arts. Was there somebody that encouraged you?  I like how you use different methods of paper cutting like tearing.

PG: When I was in graduate school studying art (I was a literature major as an undergrad), I wasn’t particularly experienced with paints, or using color at all.  I had really only worked in black-and-white.  I didn’t dislike painting as such, but I found the infinite possible colors I could mix to be stressful.  One of my professors suggested using cut paper – at the time, big blocks of colored paper in abstract shapes – behind my ink drawings.

And it just felt right.

At the time, I had no idea about the history or traditions of cut paper art.  I just started experimenting and creating a technique and style of my own.  As time went on, I started to discover different paper cut art, from the jazz-inspired American styles to the traditional Chinese and Japanese monochromatic work.  It’s been an eye-opening journey.

ST: When it feels right, it feels right! Where do you find yourself feeling really inspired to create?  How do you find themes for your artwork?

PG: I find myself inspired almost everywhere.  A short train trip can be a great time to sketch.  Ideas pop into my head while I walk or run and listen to music.  Escaping from the city and hiking through the mountains around Fukuoka is a huge source of inspiration to me at the moment.  Most of my work combines these elements, and my themes tend to be a conversation between the conflicting partsof my life; urban and nature, ambiguous relationships (especially parasitic vs. symbiotic relationships), pop culture.  I think it’s important to allow yourself to be amused or fascinated by just about everything.

ST: Please let us know about some of your cut paper installations such as The Ghost Parade and A Pacific Place of Rest.  Where were these installed and how did you fit the themes with the environment?

PG: Both of these pieces were created for a Yokai (Japanese supernatural… and really weird… creatures and beasts) themed exhibition I held in Tokyo.  The gallery space already looked a bit like the inside of a cave, with warm brown and orange walls and protruding chunks of wood.

The exhibition was also doubling as a Halloween party, and I felt hauntingly playful while designing A Pacific Place of Rest.  It was designed to be a graveyard rising out of the back of a long, black bench against the main gallery wall.  Over it’s length, it transforms from a traditional Japanese style graveyard to an American one (probably from the deep south – before coming back to Japan, I lived in Savannah, Georgia for a little while.  They have some amazing cemeteries).

For a long time, I had been thinking of creating an illuminated cut-paper piece as well.  The Ghost Parade was a way to continue the playful halloween theme while combining it with truly beautiful lighting and layers of shadow.

ST: Savannah does have some amazing cemeteries and ghost stories to match! What forms of art do you include in your mixed media paper cutting paintings? What are some tools you like to use? Do you put your cut paper on wood for a reason?

PG: I started to use wood as a backing to my work for the simplest reason of all.  I thought the grain and warmth and depth of color was beautiful, and I wondered it if would go well with the textures and colors of the paper.  Luckily, they suit each other.  Which makes sense, seeing as paper starts out as a type of wood.  I also like the roughness that the wood adds to the finely cut paper.  Life is full of seemingly conflicting feelings coinciding together.  I wanted to reflect that in my work.

Other than wood, washi and chiyogami papers, I don’t use any other media.  I sometimes stain or varnish the wood, but the paper I like to leave as is, without adding any paint or color to it.  I think it’s a fun challenge to find exactly the right combination of colors.  I have some papers which have waited years for me to find the exact right place to use them.

My tools are pretty basic.  A self-healing mat, and NT cutter design knife – it’s similar to an X-acto, but the blade is thinner with less of an angle.  It breaks more often and needs to be changed more, but I’m able to make finer cuts with it. – pencil, eraser, tracing paper, various glues (I’m always trying to find better glue and adhesives).  A computer with design software gets used to put together my sketches and blow them up to the final cutting size.

ST: Patrick, can you give us Scribblers any advice on creativity?

PG: The best advice I can give to anyone dabbing in cut paper art (or any art, actually), is to play.  Play constantly.  Draw without thinking sometimes.  Draw the craziest thing.  Don’t worry if it’s great.  Not everything has to be perfect.  I never use 90% of my sketches.

In each project, I usually come to a point where I’m not sure which color paper to use.  I take out and test all of the colors that I think might work.  Then I grab a few pieces which I’m positive will absolutely not work.  And sometimes they are absolutely the right thing.  The greatest things in life come from play.

ST: With that said, let’s play! For more inspiration please check out Patrick’s website, http://www.pgannon.com. You can follow Patrick on Twitter:   and get updates on his Facebook Page:  .  Thanks Patrick and keep us posted on your 2014 Cut Paper Art Calendar!