Yu County paper-cut has a long history. The characteristics of Yu County paper-cut are represented mainly by its 30% knife craft and 70% dyeing craft.
Its craft process has a unique style, the first step is “figure-smoking", that is, to put the draft note of original pattern or design in a piece of blank paper, and then light a candle to smoke it until the draft leaves a clear “black figure” in the white paper. " Now this set of process has been replaced by bluepringting.
The second step is "muffling" ,that is to cut the rice paper into window frame size , and then water it and press it to a whole formation ,because, 30 to 50 layers paper is suitable to do paper-cut.
The third step is to cut. The tool shall altered from scissors to knife to get higher output, the most important of all, knife can exhibit the thinking of artists better, for they can use it as they please, and with diversified methods. There three kind of knives, single, triangle, and round mouth . When in creation ,the main method is Yin cut, sometimes mingles with Yang cut, it makes the production glittering and translucent, structured clearly.
The fourth step is coloring, jargon in artists circle called it “spot colored “. Before coloring, artists mingled dye with alcohol. Because the material of paper-cut making is rice paper, dye mingled with alcohol could make the color soak into it uniformly, not infiltration , this can get a perfect effect in color, full of transparency and third dimension. So there is a saying that “30 % knife craft and 70% dyeing craft makes Yu county paper-cut.”