Seasonal Character Cut-outs Tutorial

When the seasons change I always get in the mood to change up the decor. And it is no different at the office. We were trying to do things to make our office more fun and inviting for the kids (I work for a WIC office). Then we got our budget for what we could spend and we realized we would have to be very creative! But we do have a lot of scrapbook paper, construction paper and markers at the office, so I decided to make some pretty seasonal character cut outs. I am counting this as a project for Stashbusting September, because I am busting the office stash!

What you will need:
Clip Art (or your own art- if you are that talented!)
Printer or Copier that can adjust size
Scrapbook paper, cardstock or construction paper
Double Sided Tape
Scissors
Regular Tape
Sharpie
Contact Paper or Laminator (optional)

This technique can work with almost any clip art or picture you can find that is cartoonish- doesn't have a lot of small details or shading that would make it hard to turn into a cartoon.

Here is the picture I started with:

And the cutout I made:

I will walk you through the steps with this farmer boy- he is ready for the harvest!!

First print off the picture full page. If the outlines are blurry or not very dark you may want to outline them in marker like I did for the picture above. The farmer boy already had a pretty dark outline.

On a copier adjust the size to whatever ratio you want for how big of a cutout you want- I did mine at 250%. It may take several tries to get each piece you want to have cut out copied at the larger size. If you have one large piece- such as the boy's hat, you may have to piece two copies together. Below you can see how I made one pattern piece out of two copies of the hat (sorry about the blurry pic!).

Decide what pieces you want to be cutout together and cut around them. Once I cut them out I like to label where they go and what color/pattern I want them to be. Example: Overall cuff- orange pattern.

When you have all of the pieces cut out start tracing them on paper of the color you want. I trace on the right side because I go over all of the edges with Sharpie later, but you can trace them upside down or on the backside.

When you are tracing and cutting the colored pieces you want to think about how the pieces will go together and cut out some extra room for sticking them together with double sided tape. As you can see I left extra room on the side of the boot so I could stick it to the back of the overall cuff.

Then start piecing, one by one. Once you have it all pieced together it is almost done, but just needs some finishing touches. I went over all of the edges with a black sharpie and drew in the details from the original clip art.

After I was done with that I covered them in contact paper so that they will last for more than just one year in the office. 

Aren't they so cute up there with the little pumpkins!!

Here are some of the projects my coworkers have done so far using the same technique:

 Cathy's Jungle Animals

Becca's Penguins

The other thought I had was that this would work well with coloring pages- my niece might have some of these in her future:

I am planning a woodland animal theme for my office- I am sure I will post pics when I am done!!

Check out all the great StashBusting projects over at Stash Busting September at The T-Shirt Diaries!

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