Rose Street art

                                  

For those of us who do all we can to avoid walking the gauntlet that is Princes Street, Edinburgh (even now the teams have been installed it's still a bit of a bun fight) the parallel running Rose Street is a welcome retreat. Relatively pedestrianised (when festival theatre company vans aren't unloading) it is pleasant enough in its own right. 

This year it has been gloriously decked out with Rob Ryan-esque cut out metal work: window coverings, plant containers and murals deck the surfaces. Really weaving in the verses of a Robert Louis Stevenson  poem 'Songs of Travel X'

I am yet to discover the artist of such work... Any clues?

Home is where the art is: How to recreate Rob Ryan's Cutout Art.

This is a little something I took a punt at over the weekend. I'm a big fan of Rob Ryan but always felt I needed a really good reason to spend hours with nail scissors and a scalpel painstakingly cutting a message out of paper. I am designing a production of 'The Little Match Girl' for the Family Christmas show at The Wardrobe Theatre this year, and we've been dreaming in paper and pop ups whilst shaping the show.

I hope you like it. It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would.

Why dont you have a go at creating your own Rob Ryan homage.

You will need:

• scalpel
• cutting mat
• nail scissors
• pencil
• paper

A sneaky trick though...I drew out my design, and however hard I try it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to have a light touch with a pencil. Therefore, when photographing the image, I turned it over to reveal a squaeky clean white side even though the writing was now backwards. All you do is Horizontally Flip it back in your photo editing programme, et voila!