Thursday, March 18, 2010

my wedding things (on thursdays)

At both my friends' Anna's wedding and Alison's wedding, the decorations were gorgeous. Both of them hung papel picado, strings of paper cut-outs with Mexican designs. I adored the way it looked and paper cutting is also a popular Chinese folk art so I thought I would attempt my own Asian-inspired version of it.

First I designed it, with the double happiness symbol (the traditional Chinese character for a lucky marriage) as the focus. In Chinese culture, magpies are harbingers of happiness and cherry blossoms are symbols of love. So I tried to intergrate those images into the design as well:

(the design is halved as the paper will be folded when it is cut out-- like a paper heart. By the way, feel free to use my design if you ever feel crazy enough to make your own Asian papel picado.)

Designing was the easy part, however. Cutting it was far, far from easy. I gave myself a blister.

But it was soooo satisfying when I finished and unfolded the paper: And I think it added a lovely, subtly Asian touch to the whole room: