Make This: Heart In Hand

I grew up in Pennsylvania and use to make these all the time as a kid. I have a ton of origami paper laying around so I decided to make one for my bulletin board. Its been a while though so I goggled hand in heart tutorials to get a refresher and was shocked to find there wasn't a single one. I fooled around with some paper last night and managed to recall most of the basics, so I decided to post this DIY.

What You Need:

• Two pieces a paper
• X-acto knife or razor blade
• Scissors
• Pencil and Ruler

Step 1: Cut out your hand shape

 I traced mine and then altered it to make it more attractive and added a bottom detail.

Step 2: Cut out a heart

 You can make your heart any size you want. I wanted mine to fit inside the hand and drew one accordingly. I did a zig-zag design along the edges. I didn't have a pair of those handy craft scissors so I cut it by hand.

Step 3: Decide on the detailing

You can get pretty creative with this though I didn't.  I just tried to replicated the orange one below, since I was a little uncertain if I would remember how to do it. 

A little side note: In boarding school, I finished most of my classes two years prior to my permitted graduation so I filled up my schedule gap with 4 hour painting classes every day. I had the most amazing teacher. When I first entered the class however I was a bit put off because we were not allowed to paint anything original. My teacher made us replicate paintings from famous artists: Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, etc. It took me awhile but about twenty Van Gogh replicas later, I got the point. When you're new at something the best way to learn is often by replicating the things you love. You can't translate your ideas until you get down the technique and the best way to do that is learning through the artists that inspire you. Although papercutting is arguably less difficult than painting, I love this concept and wanted to share I think this Jim Jarmush quote sums it up perfectly. Major tangent, so back to the tutorial.

If you want to do the same detailing keep reading, if you want to skip this mess and keep the fingers simple skip to step 7

Step 4:  Draw some guidelines

I boxed out the areas I wanted the paper woven details to go. I used a ruler but I didn't measure the boxes out, you can just eye it. You want to keep your pencil marks pretty light so they are easier to erase later.

Step 4: Draw in block arrows

Again I used a ruler for some lines but I eyed this, you want to make them as even as possible but it doesn't need to be perfect. The more arrows you add the more intricate that finger details will look. I did: 

Pinky: 6 arrows
Ring, Middle and Pointer finger: 8 arrows
Thumb: 4 arrows
Bottom Detailing: 3 arrows each

Fill the top arrows, because we are going to cut them out completely in the next step.

Step 5: Cutting

This is probably the most tedious step. You are going use a razor or x-acto knife to cut your arrows.

The arrows at the very top arrow on the fingers and the bottom arrow on the bottom detailing are cut out completely. 

For the rest of the arrows you will need to make two v-cuts, a small v-cut up top and bigger v-cut beneath (If this is confusing check out step 6, it might help you visualize the cuts).

After you are done cutting very carefully erase your pencil lines. 

Step 6: Folding

Carefully fold all of the partially cut arrows back.

Once that's done gently push the raised tip of the point beneath the point of the the paper above.

Step 7: Adding the heart

Decide if you want your heart up or down, then flip it (it will be upside down on the hand). Gently crease both pieces of paper down the center

Now take a pair of scissors and make 5 diagonal cuts.

Uncrease your paper and flip the heart right side up. Starting at the bottom carefully slide the point of the cut on the hand through the cut in the heart

Slip the remaining hand cuts through the heart, when you're done it should look like this:

The heart is now attached so you are  free to do a little paper weaving. I did a very simple weave by pulling the purple points over the points of the hand tips, and then repeating that process by raising the white points beneath. 

Once your done with the weaving, you are finished. Mine turned out being way too big for my bulletin board but now that I remember how to make them it hopefully will be easier to make another smaller version. You can get pretty creative with these by weaving in paper bracelets, using colorful paper and possibly adding some paint. Have fun. I hope anyone looking for a heart and hand tutorial finds this helpful :)

Some of my favorite heart in hands for inspiration :