DIY: How to Make Halloween Papel Picado
Create spooky papel picado to decorate your home this Halloween!
In Mexico, we use papel picado or punched paper as decoration in many of the festivities. Still, the most important one is the Dia de Muertos which we celebrate on the 1st and 2nd of November.
Day of the Dead or Dia de Muertos is originally a pre-Hispanic tradition, but now it coincides with the Catholic celebrations, All Soul's Day, and the Day of All Saints. Mexican traditions are now a mixture of foreign influences that have been part of history. However, we still follow many indigenous pre-Colombian traditions that have also had a deep influence on Mexican culture.
Papel Picado is one of these pre-Colombian influences, symbolizing the wind and often the joy of the celebration.
Some popular colors for papel picado in the Dia de Muertos altar are white, orange, yellow, and purple, the last one is very important because it symbolizes mourning for a lot of people.
I have been excited about decorating with papel picado for the Day of the Dead this year. Still, I also wanted to be able to leave the papel picado outside for a longer period, and it occurred to me that I could use the same technique but with Halloween-inspired designs!
The traditional way to make punched paper or papel picado is with a chisel and hammer, but I found a way to make it simple using a regular exacto knife.
Decorating your patio for Halloween with paper will be so much cheaper than buying seasonal decorations from the stores, plus, it will be great to be able to create any design you have in mind.
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MATERIALS:
Exacto knife like this one here
Ruler
How to Make Papel Picado for Halloween:
Fold the Paper
Fold the paper in four, to be able to create four rectangles with the same design in one sheet of tissue paper.
Create your Halloween-inspired design
Sketch a design with pencil in the middle of the paper. Some Halloween-inspired ideas for your papel picado are pumpkins, bats, skulls or ghost, whatever you find interesting and spooky.
In this design below, I sketched a skull that I found on the internet. You can trace any shape into paper using the light in your computer or print an image and draw it on top of your tissue paper.
3. Cut Out your Design
Figure out a way to leave the main image intact and instead cut shapes around it. I know it sounds complicated but it's not so bad once you figure it out.
Check out the picture below, don't cut the outline of the skull. Instead, cut out the eyes, nose, and mouth, then trace the shape of the head by removing some squares and triangles around it.
4. Decorate the Edges of your Papel Picado
When you finish the main design in the middle of the tissue paper, it's time to decorate the edges.
An easy way to do it is by folding the tissue paper several times and cut out geometric shapes with the exacto knife. When you unfold the paper the geometric shapes are going to be repeated several times.
TIP: Another way is to fold the tissue paper with your fingers and make cutouts with the scissors. Simple rhombus are simple and easy to create.
For every piece of punched paper or papel picado you will have four rectangles with the same design.
Check out the pumpkin design below. You can create the shape of the pumpkin by removing long pieces of rectangles around it.
You can tape your designs with clear tape on your windows or walls.
Another way is to tie a thread on the walls and hang the papel picado inside your home or your patio.
Happy Halloween y Feliz Dia de Muertos!
More ideas here: HALLOWEEN / DIA DE MUERTOS
