Second Thursday Tutorial: bringing back those decorative scissors

Today is the second Thursday in June, and it's time for my monthly tutorial.  Are you a mixed media artist, a collagist, a scrapbooker, or stamper?  If you answered yes to any of these, I suspect you have at least ONE pair of decorative scissors.

I have no idea how I collected so many of these scissors,

but they are everywhere.   My friend Erika sent me a pair and asked if I had one like it, and I truthfully had to say no.  Every one may be similar,

but each is still different.  Although I've never found a good way to store them, I do so by shape.

In the back are my two large ones.  In front of them are squiggly ones.  The colonial one is similar to the one to its left, but there is a subtle difference.

It looks like the two large ones are Provo Craft, and I know someone gifted me with them, but I no longer remember who.

Frills and what I call the lace Iook are next.

It  looks like for the most part, the brands are Fiskers, Bycin, Provo Craft, and No Name.   The handles are quite distinct.

Next are the zig-zag and zippers.

Finally, we have round and wavy scissors.

Of course, my favorite are

the deckle edged scissors.

Now that you've seen the many different designs I own, let's find a good use for them.

First, we'll make a tag using my large half circles.

Then, lets grab some smaller patterned scissors and our hole punch.

This is the tag I came up with.  I'm sure you can make one even better than mine.

Switching gears, it's time to make a collage.

If your scissors look like they are "chewing" rather than cutting, remember to NOT cut all the way to the edge, but stop short.  This often causes the paper to tear rather than cut.  If that doesn't work, simply grab a piece of aluminum foil (some call it kitchen foil) and wrap or fold it about six times slightly longer than the length of the scissors, then cut until the scissors no longer chew the foil.

You may not have as many scissors as I have, so one thing you can do is cut the paper backward.  The blue paper was cut in the traditional way, then I turned the scissors so the thumb position was where the finger position had been before.  That's how I got the orange sheet using the same scissors.

I did the same with the Provo Craft scissors and got this weird shape.

I'm thinking this should be called the "wave."

No, the "wave" didn't change colors, but the lighting in my craft room did.   I suspect this is a small "colonial."

This is the Fiskers "colonial,"

while a different company has their own version.

It was fun finding different things for my collage.   Each scissor gave a different look.

I apologize for the horrible lighting and out of focus scissors, but you can see the different pattern you get based on what scissors you use.

Zippers, zippers,

zippers.

Fiskers often don't (or is that doesn't?) have names for their scissors, but they can be turned one direction to get one look,

and the other direction to get a different look.

There are large zig-zags

and small ones that look like pinking shears.  As an aside, if you look closely directly above my watermark, you can see where I got in a hurry and didn't line the scissors up carefully for the next cut.  I'm sure you will do far better than I, though.

I have a love for the unique ones.

These are one of my favorites.

Of course, I think I have enough of these to now make a collage.

You can put them together

one way, as I did,

or change them around before you actually glue them onto your substrate.

But tags and collage aren't the only things you can make with these scissors.  I cut a piece of 12 inch paper 1 1/2 inches wide,

then cut one side the length of the paper.

Using gold pigment ink, I gave the decorative edge a bit of color.

I did something wrong.  I have no idea what, but I thought I could make a flower out of this by rolling it in a circle.  Guess this one is a bust.  However, I hope it sparked an idea for you, especially if you know how to make rolled flowers.

Since that was a genuine waste of time and products, let's move on to a few things 

you can use on your gelli or glass plates.

Forget the expensive tools you can buy, and make your own fabulous edge texture tools yourself.  If you don't have many faux credit or old hotel key cards, you can cut shapes on two sides of the card.  That way you get twice as many, while taking up less storage space.  Be sure these edging tools aren't sharp, if you are using a real gelli plate, though.

Once again, it's time to shift gears.

Raiding our recycle bins, grab some No 6 plastic.  It should be marked somewhere on the container.  Now if you've been following my exploits for awhile, you are aware No 6 plastic can also be used in place of shrink plastic.

If the stamp is large, I stamp it before I shrink the plastic.  If it's a small stamp, I wait till I've shrunk the piece first.  For this I used gold pigment ink.

I also used a rather detailed stamp, which I probably shouldn't have chosen.  I thought it went well with the lacy decorative edge scissors, though.

Of course, after I shrunk it, I realized I should not have used pigment ink.  What was I thinking?  Obviously not what I should have been.

So now let's try that again, this time using the proper ink.

HMM!  I probably could have done a better job stamping.

Don't you just love how this plastic you would have sent to the recycle bin turned into a work of art?

Let's switch gears one more time and make our own stamp for fabric (or even the gelli or glass/plexiglass plate).

Supplies you will need from back left clockwise include mastic double stick carpet tape, fun foam, decorative scissors, clean styrofoam from a take out container.   If your fun foam has sticky backing, you don't need the carpet tape.

For the first sheet of fun foam, I adhered it to the carpet tape

and worked my fingers to the bone cutting the fun foam and tape.  I do NOT suggest doing that, unless you have very strong hands and fingers.  This small piece took me forever to cut one side, and I ended up using straight scissors to complete the piece.  This was NOT easy at all.

For my second attempt, I decided to cut the fun foam,

then add the sticky back tape to the styrofoam, over which I placed the fun foam.  Sprinkling or brushing a bit of baby powder or corn starch over the tape will help remove much of the "stickiness" when you use your brayer to ink the piece.

Had I been thinking, I would have placed the pieces shown at the top left better because after I stuck them to the styrofoam, I thought they looked a bit like wings.

And to think, I never got to use my favorite scissors after all!

I said earlier this year I was on a mission to bring these scissors back to life and use them for things other than just cutting mats or photos.  I hope I've given you some ideas of how to use your old decorative scissors, too.  Please let me know if you decide to create something using this tutorial and I will feature your post with your blessing and proper recognition, of course.

As soon as this post goes live, you will be able to access it anytime on my Tutorials page under the heading "A few uses for decorative scissors."

Thanks, too, for sticking with me through this tutorial.  It took several days to create this one and I greatly appreciate your visits and comments.  They really mean the world to me.