How to Cut out Papel Picado

During state and religious holidays, Mexican streets are decorated with garlands made out of unusual openwork flags. They are called Papel Picado. This art known all over the world took its features in Mexico, too. The history of this tradition is not very long. It's about a hundred years. But these flags became one of the symbols of Mexico.

Now, this tradition has spread all over the world, this style is used for party decorations.

When I started making Picado, I made such a kind of stencils. The thickness of the jumpers is 0.5 cm.

Way 1

Put such a stencil on a stack of tracing paper or tissue paper.

Here are some prepared stencils:

Place such an image under a grid pattern. Find it a good position and draw all out — the image and the grid. Then remove the grid and draw out the internal contours of the figure.

Fasten all layers with a stapler in places that will be then cut out. The areas with brackets are cut out the last.

The bottom part is punched. All is done!

Way 2

You can draw flags in Illustrator. Print the stencil out, use thin paper.

Put all sheets together and the stencil over them, fix the corners and cut out.

The thinner the paper, the more flags are cut out at the same time!

The template can be reused to transfer the pattern.