Today the Department of Phenomenal Papercraft is exploring that awesomely intricate folk art papercuttings of Hertfordshire, England-based self-taught artist Suzy Taylor. Her original designs are inspired by nature and rural life. Brimming with birds, flowers, leaves and more, each exquisitely delicate piece is drawn on a single sheet of paper and then cut out entirely by hand using a craft knife.
“A customer at an art exhibition, on closer inspection of my papercuts, suggested I might be ‘a bit bonkers!’, and I suppose when it comes to my papercutting, he must be right,” she wrote on her blog. “I love working this way, it’s totally absorbing and I can get lost in it for hours.”
To check out more of her wonderful artwork visit Suzy Taylor’s Flickr and Facebook pages. You can learn more about her painstaking papercutting process via her blog. Taylor also sells prints, cards, coloring sheets and templates via her Folk Art Papercuts Etsy shop, which is currently on a temporary hiatus.
Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo Da Vinci, most likely at the behest of the Borgias, once conspired to steal a river.
That’s right folks. They planned to change the course of the Arno River so that they could steal it from Pisa and make Florence accessible by sea.
Please take a moment to imagine that.
Please.
‘So we just divert the -’
‘Don’t worry they won’t notice a thing’
100% better than National Treasure.
This should be a wacky bromance heist film. We need more wacky historical heist films.
It gets better. I just had to go check on the veracity of this and discovered MORE.
Their plan failed, at which point Machiavelli decided to quietly fade out of politics…and went on to write The Prince, one of the most (in)famous pieces of Western literature.
Da Vinci, meanwhile, never forgot the river that got away. In fact, he made it the background of one of his most famous paintings–hell, one of the most famous paintings, period.
After World War II, elements of the Nokmim combined with veterans of the Jewish brigade to form an organization called Nakam (revenge) , to target Nazi war criminals with the aim of avenging the Holocaust.
Broke Bohemian 