Iris Folding and Paper Cutting

I haven't been actively trading my ATCs, so this is only the third ATC which I traded but first one received - "A Peek Inside the Fairy Garden" by Carlin from USA. I love flower fairies, especially Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies. I believed Carlin used rubber stamping and applied the stones and ladybird sticker on the background picture, which was cut from some box. It is a nice composition.

And look what I have here....

Well, these are not done by me, but how I wish they are! These colourful pictures are actually Chinese paper cuttings which I bought and lightly mounted on acid-free cards. The paper cuttings are very, very delicate. It is so amazing how they were cut with such thin papers and how they were coloured. I would think they were hand-cut (unless someone knows there are machine-cut Chinese paper cuttings!)

These are my fist attempts at paper cutting. These three paper cuttings in black paper are Western style, very unlike that of Chinese style in my opinion. And the ATC on the top left is an Iris folded pot with tatted flowers.

Iris folding is not a new technique, but it is certainly new to me. It was an accidental discovery for me when I was browsing the books in the library with my children. If you don't know what is it and want to find out more, Iris Folding is a paper folding technique that resembles the iris, or lens, of a camera. The patterns are typically circular and focus around a central point. Here's a pretty good website on Iris Folding:

http://www.irisfolding.circleofcrafters.com/

I think children should be able to handle this technique well enough to create complicated-looking cards that look more difficult than it really is.