Papel picado Basic

How it goes together

One banner or a garland. With one you get a single sign to hang; with more, a garland where each banner carries one line of the text, in order. An empty line leaves that banner without text, all motifs, which is how they alternate at fiestas.

Nothing can fall out, and that rules the design. A hole inside another leaves an island that goes with the cut. The flowers, stars, diamonds and hearts are made to have none: every petal is a separate hole, kept from its neighbour by a bridge. If anything still came loose — the middle of an “O” with a typeface that is not stencil, a detail of a figure — the template counts it and tells you before you cut.

The letters are cut out, hollow, as on fiesta papel picado. With the stencil typeface, the default, no letter loses its middle; with another one, the middle of an “O” or an “A” can come loose, and the template tells you.

The minimum bridge is what changes between paper and wood. It is the thinnest the material is left between two holes, and every gap follows from that number. On card half a millimetre is enough and the cutting can be very fine; on 3 mm MDF use 2.5 or more, or it snaps when you lift the piece out of the sheet.

The bottom edge can be big lobes — with a little cut-out flower in each, if you like —, small scallops, points or straight. And the outline can carry small scallops along the sides and the top.

The figures are drawn by hand. They go in the folder src/adornos/papelpicado/, and what is drawn is cut out: if the file has strokes inside, the strokes are cut; if it is only a silhouette, the silhouette is cut. Best drawn with nothing enclosed inside a stroke, which is what would fall out.