Free Cut Paper Art Template / Summer Time

Summer is my favorite season!  I love that there are lots of fun activities, I am on summer break, vacationing, hanging at the beach, relaxing with family, connecting at family reunions, lounging and just being lazy. 

What fun things do you like to do in the summer?

I took some of my wonderful free time and designed a fun Summer Time paper cut art for your pleasure! Take time to unwind, get out your craft blade, colorful paper and take your time cutting this summer time paper cut template. I made it legal paper size but you can increase or decrease the design size to meet your needs. If you have time add colored paper to the summer icons to make it even more fun!

*Updated*

Please remember:

You can download the template for personal use only... and see how well you do with paper cut art! Free templates will be posted on the last Tuesday of each month. 


It is a jpg but you should be able to download by right clicking on the art and copying it to your desktop.

Please comment below on how you liked the template or use hashtag #WCTemplate and @WashingtonCuts on Instagram to show off  your skills!

Paper Cut Art- Yoga Poses

My latest paper cut art is inspired from the beautiful poses of yoga. I don't participate in yoga but as an artist the poses are so perfect. Straight lines, feet pointed, arms steady.... Beautiful.

I had to do research on poses, names, and meanings since I don't take yoga classes. On Instagram I follow a group that creates hashtags for people to use to show off their yoga skills. The pictures are wonderful to view. The pictures give the viewer a intimate look into their homes, studios, relationship and lives.

For this paper cut art I sketched a couple of poses I liked. Then I scanned my sketches into Illustrator to clean them up and give them life. I knew I wanted to do a mirror image of the pose displaying the energy and power that the poses create by using shapes are connected to yoga.

I love how these turned out and I am working on prints, with watercolor added to the art.

Paper Cut Art / Why the Sun and Moon are in the Sky

I recently decided to participate in an artist contest that is based out in California. The theme is myth and folklore. I can summit up to three pieces of art but I will only do two. One will be based on the African tale of Why the Sun and Moon live in the Sky and Anansi the Spider tales.


For the sun and moon I drew twin sisters drawing design inspiration from the actual story and other African symbols and patterns.

For Anansi the spider I am designing the spider god as women using her hair as the web and pulling from the story illustration, actual tribal marking and patterns.

I am really excited about what I have done so far and hope this will be helpful to my career as an paper cut artist. I can't wait to cut my design and see how they look.

Wish me Luck!

Inspiration Tuesday Creative Inspiration - Laughter

I have been thinking about my weekly blog post and what I want them to convey to my readers and decided as artist, thinkers, lovers, humans we all need inspiration. 

So on the first Tuesday of every month I am going to post some of my favorite inspiration quotes, cartoons, pictures. I figured life can be tough let's figure out how to make it easier and what better way to get going than this one:

Did you laugh today?

Cut Paper Art / Afro Comb Inspiration

I get ideas for my art by researching a certain topic, looking at pictures, reading books or flipping through blogs. While looking up African mask styles I came across a website about an exhibition in London at the Fitzwillam Museum called The Origins of the Afro Comb: 6,000 years of culture, politics and identity. The exhibit was over, but it excited me to see so many designs of the Afro comb. As an African American woman with lots of hair this tool has played important roles in the creation, maintenance, and decoration of my hair and in my cultures history.

I was so interested in this exhibit and the history I decided to design and have my own interpretation of the Afro Comb. I first created rough sketches and scanned my images into Illustrator. From there I refined my shapes and ideas, until my Afro Comb was symmetrical and looked the way I wanted. I then printed my design out, taped it down to black paper and started cutting.

Paper Cut Art Afro Comb

Paper Cut Print in Orange and Blue

I loved these two so much I am currently designing another Afro Comb paper cut. Stay tuned!

Natural Hair Art t-shirts / Royal Queen

When I first started creating paper cut art I designed a couple of silhouettes of women's faces. One of those silhouettes really struck a cord with a lot of people. I received several request to put the art on a t-shirt or a even a bag. I thought that was an awesome idea but before I could even think of screen printing I needed funds.  I needed to sell some art on Etsy to fund this idea. Orders trickled in through the summer but it took awhile.... sadly. I didn't want to miss the hot weather, which was perfect for cute t-shirt wearing.

Through-out the summer I was in constant communication with a friend that has a screen printing company. I knew I wanted her and her husband to do this project for me. I had figured out the cost, worked on the color way, cleaned the art for printing and tried to get a marketing plan together. The summer came and went and I was finally able to get some funds together to purchase and screen a small order of tees. Big problem was Fall was knocking on the door and I wondered to myself if anyone successfully sells t-shirts in the Fall.  I did some research and found that t-shirt sell all through-out the year! So I went ahead and placed my order and got some pictures taken. Didn't have time to find a model so I used myself.

You can find my lovely Womens T-shirt Royal Queen at Etsy! I carry small, medium, large and xlarge.