I've been thinking for a while now that I need to do something with the free time that I do have that doesn't have anything to do with a keyboard and a screen. For the longest time, I've been pretty envious of people like Rob Ryan who do incredible things with little more than some paper and a very sharp knife. So yesterday, I went out to the art shop and bought myself a scalpel, a rubber mat and then trawled a few stores for cheap/damaged but cool books. Here's the result:

I'm hoping my hands will get steadier as I go along but it was a lot of fun. You start learning pretty quickly about some aspects of an art when you simply jump in. My discovery was that this Penguin/James Bond reissue from a few years back has a very thick laminate applied. Which is probably why, when I've looked at similar art in paper-cutting books, they tend to use dime store westerns. The cheapest of the cheap covers that you can slice through like butter.

Now I've started though, I want to finish the whole set. Donations of the remainder of the set along with ideas about how to display the damn things gratefully received.