In the Studio with Charles Young
Meet the paper cutting artist behind the Liberty Beauty Advent Calendar’s 2026 launch campaign.
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In the Studio with Charles Young
Meet the paper cutting artist behind the Liberty Beauty Advent Calendar’s 2026 launch campaign.
By: Team Liberty
Now that the sun is blazing in the sky and we’ve ticked off the third heatwave of the summer, it’s only natural (in Liberty’s world at least) that we’re thinking about Christmas. Or, more precisely, the upcoming launch of the Liberty Beauty Advent Calendar 2026.
And if you’ve spotted our latest calendar creations on site or on social, we’re sure you’ve been admiring the spectacular miniature worlds in which it appears. While the design of the calendar itself has illustrated by renowned artist Clym Evernden – these extraordinary worlds are the work of paper cutting artist Charles Young.
Entirely crafted by hand, each beach ball, ice cream, swan boat and deckchair is painstakingly constructed in Young’s Edinburgh studio, before being brought to life through stop motion animation.
For a glimpse into his process, and a sneak preview of what’s to come, Liberty visited Young during the creation of his Liberty scenes to find out what it takes to hand-craft his whimsical paper-cutting worlds.
How did you first get into paper cutting?
After studying architecture at university, I got into model making as a profession. Making models was a big part of working as an architecture student, and it was the thing I enjoyed most about what I was doing. After graduating, I was able to carry on doing that – making models more as a way of creating artworks rather than as a preparatory study for architecture projects.
What is it about model making that excites you so much?
I think it's nice being able to make something where you're fully in control of what you're doing. Making things at small scale is always nice because you have the opportunity to control everything in the project. It's a way of working where you're able to express yourself in a very clear way.
Making things at scale is a nice way of working because you're making a version of the real world, but in a kind of imaginary way, and it gives you more possibilities in how you work with it – having it at a strange scale, either too small or too big.
I think it is a kind of escapism, where you're creating something that is of the real world but also a kind of fantastical version of it. Working at scale gives you the possibility of creating things that are impossible otherwise, either through cost or time. It's a more free process, where you have endless possibilities.
Where do you think your motivation comes from? It must take a great deal of focus to sit there day after day doing such detailed work.
I think I'm quite a patient person, so I'm quite happy to spend a lot of time working on something. Developing the skills to make these kinds of scale models takes quite a long time, and it's this classic thing of the longer you spend working on something, the more you're able to develop your skills.
A lot of the models and designs come from the real world, but reinvented or reinterpreted in a new way. I'm always looking at real things, then working out ways I can make my own version of them – but in a more imaginative way.
Do you often find yourself walking down the street, looking at buildings, and thinking about how you might recreate them?
Quite often I'll see something on the street and store it in my memory as a shape or an idea, and then it comes up again, reinterpreted, in the work – particularly the architectural pieces. You might not be replicating something very accurately, but you have the overall idea of what it looks like. It's quite good, in a way, to half forget what something really looks like and find your own version of it. Copying something very closely tends to be more time-consuming and difficult, whereas a half-remembered version lets you express yourself a bit more.
Tell us about your process. Where do you start?
If I'm creating something from scratch, I'll start with maybe a small sketch of what I'm making, then go straight into the paper. I'll print a piece of paper with the colours I'm using and draw directly onto the back of it. I don't use a computer very much if I can avoid it – everything is cut out and drawn by hand. I'll most often use the computer as a reference, to find an image of something I want to copy, then make a sketch – a scaled version drawn out on paper – which I can scale down to whatever size I'm working with.
I draw out all the pieces I need and cut them out by hand, then glue along the edges so each piece is a separate part that comes together as a plane of the surface. Everything you're making is essentially a series of boxes – differently shaped and sized boxes that come together, and through addition over time, you form the shape you're looking for. It's all glued with ordinary PVA glue, which is surprisingly strong, and because you're using so little, it dries very quickly
At Liberty, our heritage is about arts and crafts and the beauty of hand craftsmanship. Tell us about your relationship with this, and why hand making is so important to you in a world that's leaning towards AI.
Making things by hand is really important to me because you have this direct connection to what you're doing. I do use the computer for designing things, but what I enjoy most is working with physical materials – that direct connection from your hand to the thing you're making. Quite often, when you're on a computer, there's this secondary filter between the hand and the object, and what I like is being physically involved in the materials.
The ideas behind arts and crafts – moving away from automation and back towards things made by hand – are really interesting to me. There's a connection between the maker and the object; you're very directly involved in it. Something I like is that it's just me, from start to finish. It's my idea, and it's my hand that goes all the way through.
There are limits to that, of course – there's only so much I can make, and only such a large scale I can work at, because it's just me involved in the making. But I'm quite content with that. It's quite nice to have limitations on what you're able to do; without any limits, it's difficult to actually focus on something.
Tell us about this project you've done for Liberty.
For the Liberty Beauty Advent Calendar campaign, I've been able to make three different mini worlds that show the advent calendar in different situations over the summer. I think it's fun that it's launching so early in the year, because you're able to have summery scenes for something that's more associated with Christmas.
I've made a beach scene, featuring a stripy deck chair and a parasol, a lake scene with boats and pedalos, and a street scene showing the advent calendar arriving at the Liberty store. It's fun making these different kinds of objects – building a little world for each scene, and adding in extra details that make it feel more real.
Which elements have you enjoyed making the most?
It's fun making real versions of the products, because you have very specific things to get right – recreating the colours and shapes accurately. But it's also really nice to just invent something, like my own version of the beach huts, or designing my own pedalos and swan boats for the lake – details I could develop from my own imagination rather than copying something closely. The combination of both – very specific products that need to be recognisable, alongside scenes that are more freely imagined – is a nice mix.
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