Kia ora, I hope you're enjoying challenge one and creating some pretty exciting windows.
I'm gonna talk about some craft
knife skills today.
First off, make sure you've got a cutting board so that you're not cutting straight onto the table.
If you don't have a cutting mat, just a normal kitchen chopping board works really well.
If you don't have a cutting board, several layers cardboard on top of each other
can still protect your table, you just have to be extra careful to make sure that it's not gonna cut through.
A couple tips today - first is how to hold your knife.
You really want to make sure that you're holding your knife nice and lightly
and that you're not putting too much pressure.
Now you've got two ways, some people hold it like this, which is great if you're doing long cuts
and the other is to hold it like a pin and that's great if you're doing really detailed curved cuts.
The biggest thing to think about is which part of the paper you're wanting.
So if I want this middle part, if I want that shape here, rather than the outside,
then I want to make sure all the lines that I'm cutting are gonna preserve this
interior shape as best as possible.
You really want to make sure once you've got your chopping board down,
is that you're not gonna cut yourself.
So if you start and you've got your thumb like this, when I get to here, I'm gonna cut my thumb.
It might seem obvious, in fact it seems really obvious, but the number of times
even myself, I've not realised that lined up and that tiny little bit of my thumb was
over and I get to that point, now most of the time I noticed before then,
but you just really don't want to slice your thumb.
So one of the tricks to do is put your blade on the line, push the top of your
ruler to that, that helps line it up, put your blade at the end of the line
and just rotate it, checking that my
fingers aren't over the edge.
And then, instead of starting right on the line, I'm actually gonna start over the line.
And the reason I'm doing that is it means I don't have any issues with
the ends of that shape not getting cut.
Now I'm rotating my piece of paper because it's easier to pull towards me.
Now, if I decide not to cut and not rotate and I line up my ruler and then I'm cutting
like this, I just don't have as much control because I'm not able to hold my blade as well.
Okay, so now I have a really nice cutout shape, all on the lines, in really nice sharp corners.
If I don't cut over I might not get as tidy corners.
If I want the outside of the piece of paper, I can't cut over and so there's a few tricks to that.
So again, I line up my blade and my roller on the line making sure that it's all nice
and straight and then just starting at the edge of the line and just go into the corner.
Next, so this is good, but oh the corners
aren't quite loose, that one's still a bit
stuck, so the tip here is if you've got a corner that's not quite right, you just line
up your blade and just push down and that should give you a really nice tidy corner.
Doing curves often requires a bit of freehand.
Now you can use things like French curves to help you here and that means
that you can line up where the lines match and run your blade along those edges
and notice I'm just holding the blade in its same place and that means you always
get it lined up and then you look for your next part that matches.
Keep going now, the trick, one of the tricks here is to keep your blade really
light, because the more you push in, the less control you have over it.
You might be doing it freehand, just go really slowly.
Now you can see that pulling there, that's because I'm pushing a little bit too hard,
so I'm gonna lighten my blade a little bit.
I'm having to turn a little bit too much so I'm going to turn my paper again.
You're just going really nice and slowly and if you kind of get, like it feels like it's
getting away from you, you just pause and turn your paper again and if you begin
to push too hard, you can just lighten your hold a little bit.
With a circle, one of the key things is to be light, very gently going around making
sure you're following that line, slowing down, turning your paper.
But, honestly, scissors is the way to go.
So don't underestimate your scissors, it's much easier, again I like to turn my paper rather than the scissors.
And that actually creates a bit of a smoother cut.
So taking your time and using the tools that you've got.
We hope you have a lot of fun making your window displays.
We're really looking forward to seeing them.
So make sure that you get them in before the 1st of July or on the 1st of July
using the hashtag #futuredesignersNZ.
