The Adventures of Dot and Mae

Dot and Mae have a really big word for you today . . . Scherenschnitte . . . whew! What could that mean? Dot and Mae’s friend, a little cat named Nixie came by to tell them all about it. Scherenschnitte is a German word for a type of papercutting. Here is how it is described on one website:

The craft of papercutting has been done for many years in many countries all over the world. One of the earliest known papercuttings is from China and dates back to 960 A.D. In Germany and Pennsylvania ,Scherenschnitte (pronounced shair-en-shnit-teh) was a popular folk art in the 1800s. ‘Scherenschnitte’, which literally means ’scissors-cutting’, was used to decorate birth and marriage certificates and Christmas decorations.

All you need for creating scherenschnitte is time, patience, a steady hand and a few inexpensive supplies. The designs can range from small, simple ones to intricate,detailed ‘masterpieces’ and once you learn the craft you can experiment with various papers, colors, frames and projects. You can make your own unique frameable gifts, cards, invitations, notecards, and many more projects with this simple craft.

Here are some examples of scherenschnitte that Nixie found to show Dot and Mae

Images copyright Karin Dickel-Jonasch and  Heike Müller-Kulski

If you would like to make your own scherenschnitte, here is a great video and website to visit to learn how to do it.

Here is another movie of some wonderful paper cut shadow puppets made into a lovely movie - maybe you can make some paper cut-out shadow puppets and put on a play for your friends and family - doesn’t that sound fun! Dot and Mae are going to work on some scherenschnitte, but first they are going to enjoy this lovely movie!

Have a good weekend!