Tuesday, April 12, 2011

What is Fussy Cutting

In tomorrow's post, I mention fussy cutting and I thought I would explain ahead of time what that is.  Fussy cutting is a term most used in quilting and it means "to target and cut a specific motif that's printed on fabric, rather than randomly cutting yardage." The concept applies well to and is often used in scrapbooking and stamping, too.  I am a BIG fan of punches that coordinate with stamped images. HUGE FAN.  But, that's not always an option.  Fussy cutting allows you to carefully cut around any shape you want. I find it much easier to leave a little border of white around the image (rather than trying to cut exactly on the line of the image).  With practice, the borders end up being fairly even.  The key to fussy cutting is a very fine tipped scissors like this one...
I try to only use these scissors for very fine paper cutting so they stay nice and sharp.  When fussy cutting you want to hold the scissors steady and rotate the paper. Here's a piece of patterned paper that I fell in love with, but couldn't figure out how to use as patterned paper, so I fussy cut all the owls while sitting in front of the tv (this was so repetitive, it was very relaxing!)  And below it is what the cute little owls looked like all cut out and ready to be used on cards, pages, etc.
Finally, here are some other patterned papers that I have that would work well for some sort of fussy cutting. 
So now ya know what I'm talking about tomorrow when I say "Fussy Cut".

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