Inspire Me Monday: Adding Depth to Paper Piecing

Hello Power Poppy friends!   I’m going to show you something simple that can add a fun twist to your paper pieced creations, perfect for our Power & Spark Challenge this month to Cut It Out!  

The technique of paper piecing is a really fun way to give an image a completely different look, especially the intricate botanicals that our Marcy illustrates.  Today I’ll go through the steps of how to paper piece a digital image and then add depth to the paper piecing with limited colouring.  

Above you can see that I’ve printed out my digital image of our brand new Bees in Foxglove.  I open up my digital images in Microsoft Word, resize how I’d like them and then print.  

To paper piece a digital image,  it’s really important that you keep your image the same size, so once you’ve printed your digital image onto your white card stock, don’t adjust it or resize it in any way before you also print on your patterned paper. Above you can see I’ve chosen some pretty pink and peach sheets of paper (KaiserCraft Cherry Blossoms). I wanted very subtle prints or patterns on my designer paper sheets because the foxglove a very detailed image. Choose prints/colours and patterns that blend well together, have a similar scale and won’t be too busy.  

Next with my Bees in Foxglove image still open in Word on my computer, I take a piece of copy paper and with tape I tack my designer paper onto the top of my copy paper where the image will print.  I put the copy paper into my printer tray and then send it to the printer the same way as I would on my cardstock.  If I’ve lined it up properly, my foxgloves will print in the right spot :).  I did this 3 times to print on all three pieces of designer paper.  

You’ll need to pick several different sheets of paper for a detailed image like this (like these 3 styles), because as you will be cutting out different blossoms in the steps ahead, you’ll want to vary what sheet you’ll use.  

Here’s how it looks after it’s printed.  I followed the same steps with two pages of green patterned paper from the same pack as well.  

Then it’s the patient process of cutting out the blossoms from the different sheets of paper and adhering them to the main design one by one.  I try to cut my images right in the middle of the black printed line.  They’ll match up much better to the main image if you don’t cut inside or outside of the lines but right in the middle of the line.  

To make sure you don’t get mixed up as to what cut piece goes where, I cut and then adhere blossoms or leaves one at a time. It also helps me choose the next pattern of paper to use so that the design is varied.  It does take time (especially with a really detailed image...) but it’s quite relaxing and I love the effect. 

Here you can see the blossoms and leaves adhered to the main design. It’s such a cool effect, but great news!!! You can even turn it up another notch by now adding some colouring to the paper pieced image. As you can see I left the top tiny blossoms without paper piecing (that would make me a bit nutty trying to cut that small), and the bees need some colour too. I also want to make the leaves and the foxgloves look more realistic with some depth, right now without colouring the image looks flat. So I took out my Copics and added some colour to the leaves and flowers as well.  

You can compare the two shotsabove to see the difference just a little bit of Copic Colouring adds to the leaves and to the blossoms.  I imagined my light source coming from the top left, so most of my shadows are along the bottom right. Because the image is paper pieced... it really almost takes on a 3D effect - even though I didn’t pop anything up. If you wanted to really give it more depth you could add more popped up layers in a paper tole style too.  

Here’s the completed image adding even more depth by giving the design a pointillism background in the shadowed areas. It’s one of my favourite techniques for making a delicate background.  

Finally,  a closeup of the design above and the simple inside shown below with the sentiment included in this digital set.  

These are the Copics I used to add that depth in colouring. Hopefully you can give this a try this week .... and submit your entry into our Power & Spark Challenge this month! A great way to win Power Poppy goodies and be geared up for our June release coming up! 

Christine