Paper cut practice: christmas card

As I am going to attempt paper cutting for my book cover I decided to do some practice so I chose to attempt to make a christmas card as I wanted to anyway. I decided to do a design with a woman wrapped up an a scarf holding some hot chocolate as that feels pretty festive to me. I have not finished the full card yet but I have constructed the main part of the woman, I just need to glue her down. It took about two hours because it is the first time I have really attempted this and it took a few tries. Overall I am really pleased with it so far, I will continue to work on it tomorrow and will hopefully get it finished soon in time for christmas.  Here is what I have done so far. 

Cecilia Alfonso Esteves

I was looking through the book 'Little Big Books' for help with research. I came across an artist called Cecilia Alfonso Esteves she creates collage pieces for children's books. Her work is really pretty and simplistic but still effective. I especially love the colour palettes used throughout her work. 
Esteves work is created by putting cut out paper shapes together to create images and scenes, sometimes her work is flat 2D and other times her images are made with 3D components and then photographed. I thought that looking at these would help inspire my own project because i am using simple cut out characters in my images and also because i am going to be photographing my final images. I also thought that her images of scenery and backgrounds might help to inspire my work as i still have to work out most of the scenery within my illustrations. although i am planning on using real life backgrounds these images might help me decide on what to have in the backgrounds. here are a few of her images that i really like.

Artist research: Papernoodle

Here is another paper animation that i found by paper noodle its great at the beginning to see how the set is built. I think that this will help me a lot with creating my image scenery. 

Artist research: Papernoodle

Whilst looking for more artists that created illustrations with photographed scened i came across an artist called papernoodle that only creates art using bits of paper rather than drawing. The artist also created an animation for a museum, so it was good to see how everything worked for that. Looking at this artist was really helpful because it made me think about maybe layering some parts of my image up to give an even more 3-D look. I really love how unique all of the artists work as it is so neat and well done. looking at this artist and how he works has helped me out a lot with the technique of how to create my image in a 3D form. 

This video is really helpful because i can see how all of the different parts move. It is also helps because i have a forest scene in my story so it gives me some inspiration on how my forest might look.  

Here Is an image that i like by this artist.

I also found a step by step picture too that might help me out with the technique in the future.