WIP Wednesday - Exhibition Papercut and Letterpress Gift Tags

For this weeks WIP Wednesday I thought I would show you what I've been working on....I've been creating a completely unique and one of a kind papercut for the We Are Raw exhibition. I was recently asked by We Are Raw if I would contribute a papercut piece to their 5th birthday exhibition and I said yes!

You can see all the other contributors here and all of the money raised from the collaborative artworks will be going to the local charity the Wood Street Mission, helping children and families that live in difficult circumstances.

I thought I would use this as an opportunity to experiment with my style and design something that is heavily influenced by Papel Picado - the traditional Mexican craft of papercutting.

Something else that I have been doing this week is taking photos of the NEW Mr Yen Letterpress gift tags! I have been planning to create these for a while and have finally had them printed and listed for sale here! I wanted something meaningful and simple so they don't distract from the gift they are attached to - but also enhance the gift giving experience by adding a tactile element. So you can now have your very own set of four gift tags, with a choice of either grey or white ribbon and all for a very reasonable price!

{Exhibition & A sneak at a new product}

Today I thought I would show you what my work looked like during my University exhibition. You can also see a sneaky peek at another product that I will be launching soon too - Papercut notebooks that will have gridded paper within them and a geometric pattern hand cut out of the front of the cover with my logo cut into the back of the cover. These will be hand sewn and will come with a variety of coloured cover inserts {I will have a more detailed post about these next week though, so stay tuned!}

Anyway...if you follow me on twitter, you will know what grade I got for my degree, but for people who don't use or have twitter I got a 2:1 !

For my exhibition space, I designed the layout of my work and what work I wanted to include in the exhibition, which got the go ahead from my tutors and then I printed, mounted and hung all my work that you can see below.

I have a banner print of my papercut notebooks, a photo of my logo - which was hand cut, my finished Alice in Wonderland books, geometric greeting cards, my papercut notebooks, my business cards and finally my portfolio. I also had a stack of free papercuts that I mentioned here, which were placed next to the stand that says "Please take One ->" but they were all taken pretty quick! Also I have never had to top up my business cards so much! I think I have restocked my business cards at least three times through the past week!



Also when topping up my business cards after getting my results yesterday, I found a small leaflet placed under them, which was from The Bowery in Leeds asking me to exhibit my work for this exhibition!

Today is the final day for the exhibition, with a VIP night tonight, then the exhibition will be taken down tomorrow and some representatives from my course will be going down to D&AD to exhibit some of our courses work. I will have some work in a portfolio at my Universities stand there, so if you can make it to D&AD don't hesitate to stop by the Leeds College of Art stand!

I will create another post tomorrow with other peoples work in the exhibition that I really liked and will show the yearbook, that was created by people on my course.

{weekend goodness}

Well I thought this blog would be getting more attention the past week, but due to setting up my exhibition at University I have been busy all week. All will be back to normal next week!

For now I will show you a small sample of the free papercuts I had available for people to take away from my exhibition space.

These designs will also be featuring in my new project Recycled & Rescued which you can read about here.

{Monday Morning}

I just thought I would let you know, especially all you people in the Leeds area, that I have been asked to contribute some work for a rapid exhibition by TestSpace Leeds and I will also have some of my work for sale too.

"From 4th-12th June Test Space will be taking over Crash Records basement space and 42 New Briggate hosting a series of rapid exhibitions, live music showcases, workshops, film screenings, arts markets and retail opportunities" (borrowed from TestSpaceleeds.com) You can find out more about TestSpaceLeeds here on their website, here on their blog and follow them on twitter too.

Oh and The Guradian have already blogged about the event too!

Below are the papercuts that I will have for sale in the retail space, alongside some of my papercut postcards. I have created some of my typographic papercuts on a smaller scale, with two new papercut designs being launched at the retail space too. These will also be available in the mrYen shop from Tuesday. Hope to see you there!

*NEW PAPERCUTS*

{wednesday morning}

First thing this morning I have had a check up at the dentist and later in the evening I will be going with some friends for a late Xmas meal, So I think today is time to start the mammoth task that is the dissertation in between. I will be doing some reading, some writing and some organising of the order of quotes/citations and chapters. I thought I would also include a few WIP shots of some papercuts I have been working on, in the post, as its been a while since I have posted any work in progress...

Yesterday I posted about some new products to be listed for my Etsy shop this year and I thought I would get started straight away, staring with an original customisable silhouette of your choice. The first image below is a papercut silhouette of me that I have listed as an example of what your customised papercut could look like. (which is an actual paper example, its not a digital illustration)

*With every custom silhouette order, you will also receive the cut out section of the head silhouette for free!* (like the second image)



The following images are papercuts I have created for the Cut Click mail art exhibition. More details here.