and speaking of papercut art & illustration ...

Image work of Renate Kalloch, available on stock.xchng: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/rknds

After posting the the link to Ben and Lexi's blog I started thinking about one of my favourite papercut artists, Jan Pienkowski.  Actually, Pienkowski's written and illustrated lots of books and he's known for more than the papercut style, but the work that I completely fell for was his silhouette style illustrated classics.  They're illustrations, but they look as if they could be paper or woodcuts and the effect is quite dramatic.

http://www.janpienkowski.com/books/silhouette/index.htm

Pienkowski has also written and illustrated pop-up books, which are a cutout engineering art and entertainment form.  However, my all time favourite pop up book -- the book I want to wander around inside and live in -- is Jane Ray's Snow White:  http://www.janeray.com/books/

Ray's book is at it absolute best when it's viewed from the open book position, on the tabletop.  The reader will have the best perspective of the three-dimensional scene and its many details when s/he sits back about an arm's length.  Sure there are pop-ups that are trickier from a cutout perspective, but the sheer elegance that Ray's illustrations bring to the three-dimensional stage setting of Snow White will undoubtedly make this book one of the most original and cherished books in the genre.