Papercut Love Heart Tutorial

 

Fill your house with handmade love this Valentine’s Day with this simple papercut decoration tutorial.

 

Materials

Thin card in your colours of choice

Craft knife – I’ve used a fingertip craft knife here

Pencil and rubber

Needle and thread

 

Step 1

Draw two matching heart outlines onto your card.  I’d recommend making a template first and drawing around this.  You’ll need two hearts per decoration.

 

Step 2

Design time.  In pencil draw your design onto your hearts ready to be cut out.  When designing for papercut it’s important to think about what you’ll be cutting away and what will be left.  Either draw outlines of the shapes you’ll cut out or use a thick blunt pencil to draw your design and cut away the thick lines.

Keep your design in the two separate halves of the heart leaving a line of about 5mm clear down the centre.

 

Step 3

Using your craft knife cut away your design on both hearts.  Start with the smallest shapes and finish by cutting out the heart outline itself.  Finally using the space left in the centre of each heart cut a line that runs half way down – on one heart this should run from top to middle and on the other middle to bottom.  This is how your hearts will slot together.

Gently rub away any visible pencil marks.

 

Step 4

Slide your hearts together so the top and bottom matches up and you’ll have a beautiful 3D papercut decoration.  To hang your creation simply thread cotton through the top of the card (make sure you make a hole in both pieces so your decoration doesn’t come apart once hung) and make a long loop.

These beautiful lovehearts could be strung together to create a garland, used to decorate a vase of branches for a rustic feel or hung in vertical rows as a wall hanging.  Or you could make individual hearts to give to the people you care about most!

 

Thank you to Hannah from the Make It Shabby team for this tutorial.

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