The making of the Great Parade lamp (intro)

**guest post written by Hylkia from Hartendief

Last year I, founder of Hartendief, asked paper cutting artist Geertje Aalders to design a silhouette for our shop with animals in it. We actually met via Twitter- and finally we met in person when we were both attending the Flavourites live fair in november.

For Hartendief I was looking for a happy and funny design with animals, and Geertje was inspired by my idea right away. Just a few key words were enough to set off a creative explosion in Geertjes work space! And within a few days the Great Parade was finished.

Geertje started sketching first, with white pencil on black paper.

After that she began cutting the animal shapes out of paper. I love the drumming crocodile and the elephant with the party hat! Geertje placed the original papercut in her room, where it shows off beautifully against the white wall.............. more >>>

After cutting the original, it was scanned into Illustrator and processed into a work file. A precise job, not every detail could be cut, so a few snips and snaps were made to make the design smooth enough to be cut by computer. The end result is a silhouette cut out by a CAD system in silver shade foil, which leads to a beautiful black and white silhouette when lighting the lamp at night.

Below is the Great Parade in the house of Marielle from House of Dots. She fell in love with the lamp and bought it for her son's room.

The Great Parade is available in many colors. To see more images of this cheerful lamp and all the other funky lamp designs from Hartendief just visit us right here.

If you can't get enough of Geertje's amazing papercutting art and you'd like to see more visit her web site here.