Isagra Naglia

It's the end of the year and you guys are obviously thinking, "Boy, Cindy, you haven't done very many squirrel papercuts." And I am hearing you.



This one is a little squirrel card that you would put in a little forest envelope. Of course, the squirrel is actually a giant squirrel with a giant nut. If he was a squirrel of proper proportions to the trees, there wouldn't be much space to write on anything!



Happy New Year everyone! May you be happy and successful with all you do!

So, maybe when you throw your Alice in Wonderland Tea Party, you want to make sure that everyone sits in a certain spot (only to change seats periodically throughout the meal). You'll want to have place cards that match, right? Right. These are a little more simple to create than the actual centerpiece, but these little papercut place cards will add the right touch to your party. Plus, since you didn't spend as much time on then, you won't care if people spill stuff all over them!

So, say you're having a tea party for some friends and you want to have a fun theme. Wouldn't a nice Alice in Wonderland theme go well for that party? Here's a papercut I did that will hopefully go in a book on how to papercut that will come out sometime in the fall. On one side we have the Hatter pouring Alice some tea. On the other, the rabbit and his clock and the snoozing dormouse. They stand neatly in the middle of your table. I might consider laminating them.

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.

This was my friend Andi's idea. Do you look at this blog, Andi? You should, it's my better blog. If you don't, that's good too because then you don't know that I'm stealing your idea. I suppose this counts as cutting paper too since I'm gluing printed family photos to cardstock, cutting them out, putting divots in them and making a house of cards.



More regular paper cutting to be seen after this!

So I made another one. I really like Martha Stewart's glitter. It's really pretty.

So I've kind of been obsessed with glitter ever since I did those little glitter ornaments. It's so pretty. One of my co-workers, Audre, did a trend trip to New York and picked up this really cute little hanging dangly thing:



I thought, "Heck! I can do that," and so I tried it and I think it turned out rather nice. Technically it's not a papercut since I didn't use my own skills to cut anything. I used Making Memories' new die-cutting machine, the Slice, to cut out the stars, their grommet hole punch to cut out a big hole and a smaller hole punch to cut out the letters.


I think I'd like to make more with other cheesy words like dream or believe and hang a ton or them from the ceiling in my bathroom. These would be so pretty for a wedding, too.

So I decided that the eggs would be too hard to ship and so I'd just give them to friends and family. But now I have a dilemma. I'm a week behind in my sending of these ornaments and I still want to do something cute. So last night I buckled down and made 5 different designs and glittered them. I can't send them out today because I learned that you need to spray hairspray over the glitter to get it to stay on better when I went in to work. I like how they turned out!

The Squirrel!


The Hedgehog!


The Wily Fox!


The Snowflake Loving Seahorse!


The Quail!


Merry Christmas you guys!

So last night, in order to cut all these out and glue them to the eggs and modge podge over the top of the eggs, I watched the end of Anchorman, all of Talledega Nights, all of the Wedding Singer and all of Just Friends. I made these for an Ornament Swap for people online and I kind of don't want to give them out anymore, but I'm way late in sending them out so I think I have to! They are pretty nice. My friend Cassian helped me paint them on Thursday. It's been quite the long process. I'll post the finished product picture tomorrow!

A few years ago, okay, maybe ten, I was roommates with this amazing artist (and super good friend), Kelly. At a certain point in time, she was transfixed with the Grimm's fairytale, The Frog Prince. Her research into the story showed her that in the end, the princess did NOT kiss the frog in any version that she read, instead, she treated him badly, ignored him and threw him against the wall. In return, he married her and made her his queen. Men are so strange! Anyway, my computer broke this weekend and I found myself with an amazing amount of time and so I made this 3D papercut of the Frog Prince. The above shot is the box closed, the bottom is with it opened.



I covered the box with paper, but if I had to do it all over again, I would just paint it. I don't know why I didn't paint it in the first place. Hope you are all well!

I drew this illustration a few months ago. There's this website called Illustration Friday and I subscribe to their newsletter. They have a different topic every Friday that you have a week to illustrate. The topic for that week was "fierce." I drew the fiercest thing I could think of. I think it also works well as a Thanksgiving papercut. The amount of time it took me to cut this out was exactly the amount of time it took me to listen to my friends Nathaniel and Rob's podcast, The Gentle Tyrants. I don't think I'm going to have a lot of time to post anything over the Thanksgiving holiday because my parents live in the middle of nowhere and only have a landline and that's pretty much like life without running water for me so I thought I'd post this now. Happy Thanksgiving!

I think I like too many fairy tales. One of my favorites is of Snow White and Rose Red (different than just the regular Snow White). This is a tale of two sisters who befriend a bear that has been enchanted by an evil dwarf. The only way the enchantment can be lifted is if the dwarf dies. The way I remember it is that the spell dissolves when the dwarf's beard has been cut 3 times. The wikipedia version tells it differently. I drew this papercut en route from Dallas to Salt Lake. I think I would like to revisit it another time. It's a good first draft though.

So, a little while ago, a woman contacted me on Etsy and asked if I did custom papercuts. I told her I did and she asked if I would do a profile of her and her family for her Christmas card. She send me pictures of herself, her husband and son and their dog and parrot. I thought it would be fun to have a parrot in a pear tree (hopefully people catch on that that's what it is when they see it). Kim liked the idea and we went forward with it. We both loved the result! I'm also getting one of Kim's Sweet Little Yeti Christmas Ornaments. It's to die for, you guys should check out her site!

He wanted to tell her in so many ways that he loved her, but he was short and fat and prickly and he didn't know how she would respond.

I realized that I never made a print of one of my favorite papercuts, Brother and Sister. This Grimm's fairy tale tells of a brother and sister fleeing from their wicked witch stepmother. The brother becomes enchanted by the witch and turns into a deer. Eventually a handsome prince comes and saves the sister and kills the witch. So classic.

Etsy site!

I spent most of last night and two DVDs of 30 Rock screenprinting these Christmas cards based on my Angel Scherenschnitt. I'm exhausted! I think they turned out really pretty though. The design is modified slightly from the original papercut to fit on the card better. Not by much though!

Find them for sale at my Etsy shop!

Here are some details from the card - this one is of one of the angel's hands and how it is shooting out stars.



This is a profile of the face. Goccos can get such great detail.


This is my favorite part, how the lettering turned out. It was so detailed in the papercut and I was worried that it wouldn't translate well into the screenprint, but the message is clear!



Enjoy!

I'm getting an early jump on my Christmas cards (probably not early enough) and did these pretty little angel papercuts in honor of the birth of the Savior.

She liked the Knuckledragger, but found out that he only kept her around for kicks. Something had to be done.

I haven't done a papercut I enjoyed this much in a long time!

My friend Erin is turning another year older today and I've had a couple of different ideas for things to do for her for a papercut. I wound up doing this one that goes along with the circus themed cuts I've been meaning to do but have never done. This is of Erin and her two little monkeys that she takes everywhere with her and teaches them everything she knows. Happy Birthday mi hermana!

Okay, guys, there's a woman named Elsa Mora who just made the ultimate papercutting blog. It's so beautiful. Go see what's she's done and enjoy it to the fullest extent!

allaboutpapercutting

This weekend, my church had a conference that I got to sit and listen to. It's sometimes really hard for me to sit through the whole 4 hours on Saturday and then again on Sunday, so it helps for me to have something to do. On the second two hour block on Saturday, I drew these 5 cuts and then on Sunday, I cut them all out.

This one, I really have no idea what I was doing here. However you want to interpret it is fine with me.





This one looks a lot cuter in real life. I think I might rescan it on white paper so it turns out better. It's so cute!

I must confess, when I said I would post something on here that dealt with papercutting and scrapbooking, I had really no clue what to do. I thought I would try to do something digitally since the computer is what I am most comfortable with. I kind of like it! Here is my merger of scrapbooking and scherenschnitte:


In order to create this piece, I had to draw it out first. I had a rough idea of what I was going to do and where I was going to place the picture. Knowing those things, I jumped right in.


If you are ever cutting words out and you're drawing your image directly to the back of the paper, always remember to do a mirror image. Then, before you even think about cutting, take a look at it in the mirror. There are sooooooo many times when I've cut something out only to notice that an R was backwards or that tricky N was slanted the wrong way.


The finished piece. Ta da!


After I scanned it in, I took the image into Photoshop, outlined it and colored it and placed it over my photo. I've been using Photoshop for quite some time now, so I have no clue how difficult this is for the beginner, but once you get the hang of it, it's really pretty simple!

I'm featured on the Making Memories (where I work) blog! I had said that I would do a piece that would relate to scrapbooking and I will put that up tonight. Check back and see!

Oh, and some people were wondering if I had a video of how to papercut and I do, I did it a while ago and I would do things differently now, but here's what I did do!

So on September 25th, I'm going to be hosting an Oktoberfest party at my house and for the invite, I thought I'd do a little papercut of a cuckoo clock. I'm going to see if my mom will send me her dirndl for the party. I don't know if I'll fit into it though. No eating for a few weeks. It's kind of fitting to make a scherenschnitt for a little Oktoberfest party, no?

This is a simple one, but it's going to be a series. Does anyone know the rest of the poem or who it's written by?

A few years ago, I went to a private college in a city in Utah called Provo. When I lived there, we would complain about how there was no art scene or community culture and how everything was just poop. I wish I were going to school there now because it's fun to venture down south and see what's happening on the first Friday of every month. They have a great Gallery Stroll and it's really quite the pretty little place. One of my friends, Raquel, is in charge of a lot of what goes on down there and she asked me to do a papercut for their next brochure featuring buildings from the historic downtown Provo area. It's taken me forever to complete, but I've finally finished it!

There are few things less feared than a Saber-toothed Pigeon.

I made a new set of silhouette thank you cards. This one features chickens! Most everyone likes chickens. I, myself, am rather afraid of them, but that's just me.

This one I did for my friend Brigham's mom, Claire, for her birthday. It got to her a few weeks late, mostly from my own procrastination. I had it all drawn out well before her birthday, but didn't get around to cutting it out until later. Those flowers were so daunting! When I was a little girl, I had a German Shepherd named Tanya. I loved that dog soooooooo much. I loved scratching her chin and while scratching, she would lick my hand. I thought that would be a nice moment for Red and the wolf while she's off picking flowers. Happy Birthday to Claire!

Recently I was contacted by Faith, a professional food writer for Apartment Therapy. She is getting married soon and wanted an icon that is a mix of elements from her and her fiance's life. Since she's a food writer, a lot of their budget will be going towards food (oh how I wish I could go to that reception), so that element had to be present in the image. Also, they have a cute story about sage from when they were first getting to know one another. Their religious beliefs are very important to them, so the wine and the bread has a double meaning. Faith was a pleasure to work with and I am really pleased with the results. Congratulations, you guys, for finding each other!

I've been sitting on this one for a while. It's been in my sketchbook and I finally got around to cutting it. This papercut is of the account of the woman at the well found in John 4:7-30. The Savior asks her to draw some water for Him from the well. She asks Him how He could request this of her since she is a Samaritan and the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. He replies that if she knew who was before her, she would ask water of Him. She doesn't get it and He expounds some more. Still she doesn't get it and He tells her to go fetch her husband. She tells Him she doesn't have one and He replies, "No kidding, you have five." Finally she gets it and understands who sits before her. Sometimes I feel like that is what happens in my life. There are so many examples of God's abundance all around and I trudge through thinking about me and how sucky my life is and in reality, all I need to do is trust in the Lord and do as He says and everything will turn out all right. Maybe not in this life, and I really hate that answer, but in the life to come. As for me and my house, I'm pretty happy and grateful for all that I have received so far, I really can't complain.

I put some more prints up on my Etsy site. Thanks, Billy, for the idea about the color variation on the heart print. It looks pretty cool!