For this Mother’s Day, as part of our Mothers Who Make series, we’re celebrating the many ways creativity can find its way into family life.
In this interview, we speak to Hannah, a papercut artist based in Hull, whose making journey grew out of a need for calm and focus during the early years of motherhood. Surrounded by creativity from childhood and inspired by everyday moments with her children, Hannah shares how papercutting became both a way to unwind and a way to rediscover a sense of self while raising a young family.
1. Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your family?
My name is Hannah and I live in Hull with my husband Peter and our children, a son (6) and a daughter (4). We all enjoy being outside exploring, going to the beach to build sandcastles and growing vegetables on our allotment. We also all really like reading stories together.
2. Do you come from a family of makers or creative people?
My family are creative but in different ways. My sister likes drawing and painting, my Dad is a photographer and my Mum makes us beautifully decorated cakes for our birthdays. My Granny made us clothes by sewing and knitting and my Grandad built us a Wendy House, seesaw and slides when we were little. So there has always been creativity around me.
3. You mentioned discovering craft as a way to unwind when your kids were small – can you tell us a little more about that experience?
I’ve always had various crafty things on the go, usually cross stitch or knitting, but I tried papercutting at a class in 2022 when my daughter was about 15 months old. I really liked how you absolutely have to concentrate – if you don’t you’ll either ruin your work or injure yourself! Papercutting has brought a calmness to me amongst all the joyous chaos of having little ones. I can’t be worried or distracted by anything else I have to do when I’m papercutting, I’m just concentrating – usually listening to the radio but still concentrating!
After working through a beginner’s kit of patterns I started designing my own papercuts. I stopped working just before my son was born (my contract finished and I assumed I would find something new when he was one, but then the pandemic was happening, we moved to a new city and our daughter was born!) and although it has been wonderful to be at home with my children whilst they are so little I also felt like I wasn’t doing anything that was just mine, I was missing work. In the past when I’ve made anything I’ve always followed a pattern but with papercutting I felt like I could do something of my own. To my surprise the first one turned out well! So, I kept going and started selling on Folksy so that I didn’t fill our house with papercuts.
Papercutting has been a way of relaxing whilst my children are little but it has also been a way to do something for myself again that has fitted around being at home with them.
4. How has motherhood influenced your career?
It has stalled it! Before my children were born I worked as an archaeologist and a historian, my last jobs were leading a community project on First World War allotments and researching allotments in the 1950s in Edinburgh. So completely unrelated to papercutting!
5. Do you find that your creative practice helps you carve out time for yourself even now?
Yes, life is a bit different now they are both at school – too quiet! But I still really love paper cutting and it is still just as helpful at keeping any worries away, at least for a little while most days. It is also giving me something to focus on whilst I am job hunting. In addition to selling on Folksy, I have started selling at a local art shop and it has been very good for my confidence to make sales. It would be a dream to make paper cutting my job!
6. How do you bring creativity into your children’s lives? Are they involved in your craft at all?
They haven’t tried any papercutting, it’s too dangerous! My daughter likes to use my cut-out shapes, especially the flowers, to stick into her pictures, so that’s some nice recycling. I have also made some special papercuts for presents where my children have done a colourful painting for the background instead of me using plain coloured paper. We’ve always done lots of painting and baking together and we’ve been trying sewing. Now they are a bit bigger we like to do something my son has nicknamed ‘Saturday Art Club’. Although I don’t do any cutting out whilst they are there, we do all sit at the kitchen table together and I draw my papercut designs and they draw or paint their own things. It feels really lovely to be able to do that and share what we are doing.
7. Have you found your children influencing your work or inspiring new ideas?
Yes all the time! I’m often inspired by something we have seen or done together, flowers that we’ve spotted on the way home from school or somewhere we have visited or a story we’ve been reading. One of my favourite papercuts I have made is of a boy and a penguin, after a particularly lovely trip to the Deep (an aquarium in Hull) where we spent a long time watching the gentoo penguins. Recently I’ve made papercut portraits of my children.
8. What have been the joys and challenges of balancing making with motherhood?
The joy has been finding something that I feel I am good at during a time when my working confidence has been quite low. I thought I’d run out of ideas very quickly but I’ve actually found that the more drawing and papercutting I do, the more I think of. It has also been a joy that people buy my papercuts! Especially when they tell me they have bought them for their son or daughter or a grandchild, it’s lovely to think my work is a part of their lives which they see on their wall each day. The challenge has been finding the time to do it. You often see mums on Instagram busy building a small business whilst their children are napping but mine much preferred to nap on the move not in bed!
9. Is there any advice you’d give to other parents trying to find time for creativity in the midst of family life?
Don’t feel guilty for the time you spend being creative! As a mum with very little ones you get told so often to ‘make the most of it’ or ‘it goes so quickly’ and it’s very unhelpful because whilst you do of course want to spend as much time with them as possible, they also don’t need a parent that is exhausted. So, don’t feel bad when you need some time apart from your children because you need to look after yourself too. I also think its good for little ones to see something you are passionate about. Now my daughter talks about her ‘crafting’ and she spends a lot of time junk modelling and drawing, and she takes it very seriously because she has seen me crafting.
10. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your journey as a maker and a mum?
Yes, my husband Peter is a wonderful, encouraging man who puts up with a huge amount of creative mess from both me and the children on the kitchen table all the time! And it’s probably only going to get worse! So I would like to say thank you to him for being an incredible husband and Dad.
Hannah’s experience celebrates the importance of taking time for yourself, modelling creative joy for your children, and allowing something small – like a piece of paper and a scalpel – to grow into something meaningful, sustaining and entirely your own when you’re in the depths of mothering young children.
