Paper Hedgehog!

Paper Source, the store, is one of my favorite place to shop for high quality paper.

I used to have one in Boston near me, but since our move to CA, I've been going to the one in Palo Alto. Burlingame will be getting a Paper-Source store, too, though we might move to San Mateo in the meantime. But, it will be close enough, and that means a lot.

Anyway, the reason I am mentioning Paper Source, is that sometimes when I'm browsing their products (online and in person), I get inspired to create or re-create something from paper. For example, I will see a pattern I like, whether it's on a paper, or pillow or anything, and then I will try to do something similar in my own way from paper.

Case in point, the hedgehog you see here is a direct inspiration of one of their rubber stamps.

I made it via paper-piecing technique, and in terms of materials, it's just two shades of card stock (white and shimmer brown) and glue.

It is part of my new obsession with paper animals. I have recreated the owl, the turtle, the fox, and I have a few other forest animals in the works. The hedgehog is ready, and as soon as we make the move to a new apartment, it will hang on our wall.

Paper Owl

I got the inspiration for this owl from Paper Source; their holiday owl garland, to be precise. I made the owl using a paper piecing technique.

Overall, I used only two kinds of paper punches: a 3" whole punch, and a 1" scalloped circle punch. I cut the rest of the paper pieces by hand.

Since I wanted something clean and white, I used two different shades of shimmer white card stock over a base color of blue.

As you can see, the body is made of layered circles.

I am also making a few more paper forest animals: a fox, a hedgehog, a turtle and so on.

A deer, a rabbit, a squirrel and a badger

I have always loved to draw and dabble in watercolors, but it's been years since my last attempt. A couple of weeks ago I started thinking about it again. Unsure at first, I started to draw an animal, and little by little, it started to actually look like one :)

The inspiration behind the effort was the idea that I'd maybe create some kind of watercolor art for my soon-to-be-born son's nursery.

I hadn't done it in a really long time that I wasn't too sure I'd pull it off with these little forest animal drawings, but now that they are actually done, I feel so happy and proud of them.

The drawings were partly inspired by Esop's fables (which both me and my husband used to read as kids), from illustrations in old-school children's books that we received from a close friend and from me spending hours looking at animal prints on Etsy.

As you can see in the pics below, each animal drawing is mounted on a couple of layers of designer paper, which I'll hang on the wall next to the baby's crib using push-pins instead of picture frames (for fear of them crashing down and hurting my baby).

I'll post more pictures of the wall art once it is set up in the nursery.
Stay tuned...