One of my favorite things about making paper art is almost every piece requires new techniques to pull off the effects I want to. I love using nontraditional materials to create more magical characters - clear plastics, mixing textured and smooth papers, metallics, and even glitter nail polish.

I decided to make witches for a couple of reasons. First, I knew the dynamic designs and characterization would be fun. Their outfits, their personality, and their magic powers would be especially exciting to create in this medium. But more importantly, I wanted to create witches specifically to give a spotlight to women in horror. To me, witches represent a powerful image of female empowerment, comradery, and authority that I don’t think is always represented in the horror genre.

Making witches presented challenges in designs, materials, and execution but I’m incredibly proud of how they each turned out. One of the biggest obstacles with this series in particular was the magical nature of the characters. With elements of smoke, levitation, flying, mirrors, books, potions, specific textures, and even invisibility, this one was going to be especially fun and difficult. To overcome some of these challenges, I did a lot of experimenting with other tools, like using vellum for translucent elements, plastic with nail polish to make a glittering effect, and even attempting my first three-dimensional piece. I also played with a mix of textured papers to simulate more design in clothing.

To get in the spooky headspace I usually start with making a calendar and planning out which witch would be shared for each day. I will do content research to find a vast array of references to draw inspiration from. And of course, I binge as many Halloween movies as I can while creating.