The Little Mermaid (Andersen, 1837)

Andersen's 1837 sea-tragedy rebuilt as a folded-paper theatre. Andersen was himself a compulsive papercutter, snipping swans and castles while telling a tale aloud, and this system takes that literal craft as its grammar: every motif is a flat cut shape floated over deep Øresund water, no gradient inside a silhouette, only the crisp negative edge where scissors left the sheet. The palette is all cold harbour water — sea teal, surf cyan, sea-foam white — with one warm coral bruise for the mermaid's mute longing and the sun over the spires. It feels like a shadow-theatre bill pinned to a wet dock: kelp-fringed borders, wave scallops, a fish-tail curl, and a mermaid dissolving into foam at the top edge.