How I Paper Piece -Tutorial

My youngest daughter is SURE that she is royalty. There is no convincing her otherwise. I thought maybe she would figure it out in Kindergarten, but that just cemented the idea in her mind. So, since she is all Princess, all her album pages end up in the Princess theme. This Ariel The Little Mermaid pp is one of those.

How do you Paper Piece?
This is how I do...
I start with a coloring page.


This one was free online.



I figure out the overall background colors and cut multiple copies of the image into sections for those colors. This isnt the same as just cutting out the image... this is planning for stacking and overlap for gluing.



The easiest piece on this one is the rock. Notice that I didn't cut around her fins or the plants... I just cut out the entire rock. I traced with a pencil and cut out. I set the cut image on my cardstock and traced with a stylus (including the lines in the image). This gave me faint impressions to guide my coloring. I color with pencils... for the rock I used grays, browns, a hint of green and white.

When I traced the image with the stylus, I also traced her fins as a reference point for glueing.
I repeated this for the hair. One special thing I did on the hair, to ensure it looked like bangs, was to cut on the hair line with a razor knife. When put together and glued, the skin color will slide under the hair into proper place.
The skin section is next. I want to cut the largest section possible so I lumped all the skin together, marked with the stylus, cut and colored. I sliced this one with the razor knife too... to slide the bikini top under her arm. It takes a bit of extra effort, but gives a more realistic effect.
The final pieces are blue for her fins and bikini top.
When all the pieces are cut and colored, it is time to assemble. I prefer to use Zig 2-Way glue pens. I start with the biggest, most background pieces and build up to the top using my impressions from the stylus as a placement guide.

Now it can be embellished... and final shadowing (if forgotten when coloring) can be applied.

What do you think? How do YOU paper piece?
~Anne