It's been hard to get into a groove with my work. Moving to a new place was challenging, stressful, and in the beginning felt very isolated. I was out of my comfort zone and element all the time. Now that we have a home and our things, I've been able to start exploring.

School was all-consuming for the past four years. Assignments guided my output, clients guided the evolution of my style and I left college without any idea of what my voice was. This isn't to say that I didn't learn anything - I just don't know what Lillie looks like on paper, yet.

So what do you do when you have complete freedom of time and boundaries? Nothing. You stare at the paper. You look for guidance. You wonder how others do it. You wonder if you're supposed to be doing this at all.

Or you go back to the thing you loved doing the most. For me that was cut paper. I love cutting, snipping, gliding through paper to form new shapes from one literally blank page. There's something beautiful about taking disparate pieces and working them together into one.

I wanted to create a piece for our new home. Drawing inspiration from the patterns and colors that we've decorated with, it needed to surmise our home and style in one pass.

Painting the shapes with acrylic means more control over the final results than a standard collage. I enjoy the flexibility of moving the pieces around while constructing. It's very non-committal.

I love working into the cut paper with painted detail. But sometimes I can get carried away. I tend to pile everything on and then retract until it's just right. Case in point.

The green background worked in digital color comps but didn't provide enough distinction from the foreground in execution. The stripes and dots were just too busy. The solution? Simple. Unify it with color and let the textures dance in monochrome.