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Thursday 1 April 2010

Easter papercutting

If you are looking for a quaint little craft fitting for this time of year you could do worse than turning to papercutting. Why this time of year you may ask? Well in Denmark there is a tradition of papercutting for this period up to Easter called "Gækkebreve". You fold up a piece of paper and cut it with a pair of scissors. When you unfold it you will have a symmetrically cut paper. As the tradition goes you write a riddle on the paper and spell out your name with dots. You attach a snowdrop and send it through the post to somebody you know. This person then has three guesses before Easter to find out who the "Gækkebrev" is from. If they guess it is you, you must give them an Easter egg. If on the other hand they can't guess who it is from then they owe you an Easter egg.

Cutting a "Gækkebrev"

1. Fold a square piece of paper three times until you have a triangle.



2. With a pair of scissors cut out shapes at the edge of the folded paper. Be careful not to cut away to much on the folded edges of you will end up with several smaller pieces of paper.



3. Unfold the paper and write a riddle where you can find room.
4. Sign your name with dots.
5. Send it to a friend or hang it up as Easter decoration.



The images in this post are copyright of Eddie Roued-Cunliffe. You are hereby granted permission to use them for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit Eddie and link back to this page. If you are using them and talking about this post I would love to hear from you in the comments.

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