Wycinanki - Polish paper cutting

Pronounced - vee-shee-nan-ki

The tree of life is a popular design.



Pupil design on a provided template.



Pupil design on a provided template.

  

Pupil design on a provided template.

 


Fold black A3 paper in half, use the fold as the centre and draw one side of the tree of life - as large as can fit - just four of five branches. You may like to draw some half shapes inside the trunk as, when cut out, these will make shapes inside the trunk area on the final design.



Keep the paper folded and cut out along the drawn line only - do not cut along the folded line (unless there were shapes drawn on there eg the half heart shapes). Glue the cut out shape onto A3 coloured paper.



Pupil's own design - begin adding coloured cut-out shapes to glue inside some of the black shapes on the design. For example, in the flowers at the top, the pupil has cut out yellow circles, then slightly smaller blue circles to go on top.



Completed pupil design - try to stick to two or three colours that will look good together against the black silhouette.



Batik unit

On A4 size (or similar) paper, draw the design - be sure to keep it simple and with large gaps between lines or sections; this is important because the glue may fill the gaps but you also want plenty of area for the paint.

After drawing over the design with a dark vivid felt pen, tape the corners of the paper to a firm backing eg a board or a flat section of newspaper.  Place a piece of clear foodwrap over the paper and tape this down as well. Next place the piece of cotton cloth over top of the design and tape the corners down also.

Using the bottle of PVA glue, slowly and carefully trace over the design lines - be sure to keep your hand lifted up from the table and to work from left to right (if you are right handed) so you don't rub your hand or wrist over glue that is already on the cloth. (See video... below)



A completed, glued design - this now needs to be left overnight to dry.



When dry, paint inbetween the lines of glue - we used a heat-set textile ink but I think acrylic school paints will work just as good. This is why it is important to have thick lines of glue and large areas inbetween - so the paint has plenty of fabric to stick to and the design will still show up later.





A washed and dried student example - these examples were ironed under a cloth for a few minutes as per the textile ink instructions before being washed in warm water. The second lot of batik were just washed (see examples further down).  These ones were washed in warm soapy water then rinsed with cold water, dried and ironed (under a cloth) - you can see the bright white lines still show up and the paint has not completely washed out.



This example has worked well as the design was simple,with large areas for colour.  Note the paint stains - I think this was from the glue having been heat-set which made it difficult to wash off perhaps?



Another from the first batch.



First batch.



First batch.