Making Paper Illustrations in July 2026

Electric Caterpillar, 16x9cm, 19/07/26

I've made paper collages and paper cut illustrations before, but I think this is the smallest I've ever managed to go with hand cut stuff. This was insanely fun to make. I first plotted it out by drawing it digitally, flipped it, and then printed out all of the individual shapes onto white paper.

I then stuck those onto the separate colours of card and cut those out by hand. I also printed a sort of stencil, so all of the pieces stuck together in the same orientation. I started by sticking together the body pieces, stuck that to the background piece, and then added the feet, face and antenna, on top. I think the scale I went for was perfect for this design, and was definitely a challenge for me to cut out all of the detail pieces, I had to use tweezers to position and glue them in the right place! This was made as a card for my friend.

Three Little Guys, 7.5x15cm each, 27/07/26

These guys were the project I took with me on holiday in July. I knew they wouldn't consist of too many pieces or colours of card, so it was easy to pack the supplies with the rest of my stuff. I had already planned them out digitally and printed the pieces, so all I did on holiday was cut them out and glue them together. I love how they came out, I wasn't sure I was going to have enough shades of each of the colours to make the features, especially the ears, but I managed. The orange guy was originally going to be pink, but I liked the texture of the orange card I had much better. These were not made to be cards, but instead came to me in a flash of inspiration and had to be made. ♡

My Initial Sketches of each of these Illustrations