A New Found Love for Paper Quilling

When I started exploring this crafty side of me I happened to visit the craft store and found these quilling supplies and decided to try it out. So this post is my experience with the art of paper quilling. I had first gotten a kit which had all the tools for a beginner. With this kit I started out by making some basic designs and greeting cards.

Most of the above is pretty basic. I was mainly experimenting with the shapes and tools and such. To get a better idea on the basics (I am not going to get into it) you can google for the paper quilling techniques and you will get plenty of links from which I also learnt.

Some of the tools I got along with the initial quilling kit. But most of the other tools I have collected since then during my regular trips to the craft shop.

Each of the above tools are required for some or the other process of quilling. The slotted quilling tool is the absolute must. It helps to coil the quilling paper strips (not in picture) into coils for various purposes. With the quilling tool you normally end up with a tight coil. If you use the ring coil tool you will end up with a hollow kind of coil, the size of which depends on the part of the tool chosen to coil around. The quilling board helps in loosening the tighter coils into required sizes. This is especially helpful if you need uniform sizes of coils. The crimping tool gives a zig zag kind of texture to the quilling paper which adds on to the look when required. And the combing tool can be used to make leaves or such. The quilling moulds come in handy when domes are required. The main purpose of the tweezers is to handle the delicate pieces better.

For the rest of the post I would love to share some of the work I have done with the quilling techniques. I have made both 2D figures as well as some 3D objects. And this is just the beginning. I am going to add on to these and will keep updating the post whenever I do or write other posts if I have plenty of more designs in the future. So here I will discuss the 2D ones first.

2 Dimensional Quilled Objects

Peacock:

There are so many different shapes in this picture that it would be a long list to explain individually. To summarize it all I made the head first with the tight coils of yellow, white and black and then a loose blue coil around it. Then the curls on top of the head with 3 tiny tight coils of blue paper. The beak is made with a black strip coiled and then shaped into a triangle like structure with a curve on two of the sides. For the body of the peacock I have used a few different shades of blue with different shapes. Some of the shapes are tear drops, marquis, crescent and triangle shapes. The main part of the peacock which requires a lot of patience is the feathers. I have used four different colours of strips, two of which are coiled tightly and two of the others are loosely shaped into tear drops and marquis shapes around these. To finish off I made the legs with some light yellow shade of paper. I have used 10 mm strips for the peacock.

Fish:

I used 10 mm quilling strips for the fish as well. I first made the eyes with tight coils of black and white. I then kept this aside until I finished the face. I made two tear drops with the cream colour and stuck these together to form a heart shaped structure. To the top teardrop I stuck the eye in the centre. I then made the rest of the face with different shapes and shades of cream. I attached the lips in a red shade. I used a yellow-green shade of colour and made loose circular coils. I stuck four of these around one side of the face. To this I covered with the dark green crescent shapes. I made several layers of these to fill the shape of the fish body. Since I found the central parts empty I filled this with tight coils made with yellow and orange. For the back fins I made some tight coils with two different shades in each coil. I made the boundary with red crescent shapes. For the top and bottom side fins I used crescent and S shapes of few different sizes with red and yellow colours and stuck these together.

Basically from the above two descriptions, you can summarize that I basically had particular shapes of the parts in mind and filled these shapes with different quilling techniques. I would also like to note that I had images from the internet as reference. I made two more things, an owl and a butterfly. Pictures below

 
3 Dimensional Quilled Objects

Motorbikes

I found this image of the quilled bike on Pinterest. And I tried to model mine along the same lines. The picture was not too clear but somehow I managed to make two of these. Though both are slightly different. I made the yellow and red one first. But when I finished that I felt that maybe I had mixed up a bit so re- did another one with the blue theme. Basically, you start from the wheels. That’s quite a lot of white strips and a few dark blue strips tightly coiled together. The guard (I’m not sure about the correct bike vocabulary sorry) is made with a light blue crescent shaped coil. From here you just keep building the structure with each part stuck to the previous one, the seat is stuck to the back wheel, the front part another teardrop shape stuck to this. Then I added the pieces below the seat with different shapes such that the part right in front is stuck to the front wheel. I then added the tight coils to the sides of the wheels and the front part and stuck the handle bar to them. It is a bit difficult to explain with respect to each part. But since I followed a picture from pinterest (which was a really bad quality picture) I am sure my fellow quillers reading this post will be able to shape their bikes from this image. And considering that I am a beginner, experienced quillers might do a much better job at this.

Cycle:

Again, I modelled this on the image I found on Pinterest. This one is a bit difficult because the original post was not too clear. So as I went on making these I realized that something or the other had gone wrong. Mainly, the wheels had to be bigger. This one looks more like an exercise cycle with wheels. If not for the wheels being bigger, maybe I could have used one less vertical white coil near the handle bar. The front part of the cycle is more or less correct. For the back another idea is to make two bottom rungs of the triangular part and stick it such that one is on each side of the back wheel. My stand is also wrong because I did not have the bottom rung on the two sides of the wheel. Because of this the chain at the back is stuck to the stand (which would be physically impossible to ride in a real cycle). However, mistakes aside, I am still very proud of my cute little cycle. You will need lots and lots of tubes for the same and it is a very delicate structure. The cycle can stand on its own but at the same time it sways with the fan and falls down. So its better kept against something. I have used 5 mm strips for this model.

Minion:

I got this idea from a youtube tutorial. Although mine is a bit different. The original had tight coils put one on top of the other. Perhaps that would have been more solid but mine is more hollow inside. I wanted to save paper to be honest. And I feel the ultimate result is pretty awesome either way.

I used the ring coil tool for the different layers, and I used the coil size uniform to all of these. I made 3 such coils for the yellow and two for the blue (The second blue coil was a 2.5 mm size and all others used 5 mm strips). For the final layers of both colours I used the slotted quilling tool and made a tight coil until it was the same size as the hollow coils. I then used the quilling moulds to form the slight dome like structure. The yellow piece has a bigger dome than the blue. I then stuck these pieces together as shown in the picture. A tip I learnt for the first time was then to brush a layer of fevicol in the inner side of these yellow and blue structures. This way it holds its form and then I could stick the yellow and blue pieces together. I then made the eye part. I used black strip to coil around to make the glasses. And for the front portion I made a tight coil with black, brown, white and grey colours. I then stuck the overalls with blue strips. To highlight the layers of the overalls I drew a boundary for each part with a black sketch pen and also made a smile for the minion with this. For the hands I used the slotted quilling tool to coil yellow strips. As I was coiling I was moving the strips upwards to form the hands. I flattened this and stuck it to the sides of the main part of the minion. To the other end of the hand I stuck a tightly coiled black strip. For the legs, I used two blue tight coils and for the shoes a darker blue coil stuck horizontally.

 
Cake:

This was the easiest of all the 3 D designs in this blog. I cut white paper into strips of 3 different sizes (random sizes, not measured). I then made tight coils with these to form the 3 layers of cake. I then used the orange and red strips of paper to decorate the sides and the top. You can get creative with this and use any way to design the sides. You could also use craft papers of different colours instead of white if you have that handy.

 
Rose flower pot:

I used 10 mm strips for this design. To make the rose I used the pink strip and the slotted quilling tool. As I was coiling the paper, I kept folding the paper in 90 degrees to make the petals of the rose till I reached the end of the paper. You can find youtube tutorials for this like I did. I made a five sided green leafy structure to stick below this. I used individual strips and stuck it together. You can also use a big green paper and cut out the shape.

For the stalk I used an opened paper clip and wrapped this with green paper. For the pot I used brown paper and made a tight coil. I then pushed it out to form a pot and applied glue inside till it dries so it holds form. I wrapped a white strip on the top of the pot just as a design. I made a loose coil with brown paper which would just fit inside the pot and stuck it inside. I stuck the rose inside of this between the coils. I made small strips of green and coiled them differently and stuck them to the brown coil (like the soil).

So that’s about it for this post. I know I have not been too detailed in explaining. But since I followed pictures and tried to mimic them I find it a bit difficult in explaining the method using proper jargon. But I hope you like my post and the quilled stuff I made. Do let me know which was your favourite of all. Also, if you have a suggestion for any 3D image you would like me to try quilling do let me know and I can try it out (if possible). Cheers!

Fridge Magnets

This time I had thought I would showcase my work only on my facebook page. But then I realized that there are a lot of people who may not be on facebook. So I decided to write this post as well.

I would like to note that most of the post is only going to be pictures with some minor descriptions of the method where needed.

So the fevicryl hobby ideas group sell this clay called shilpkar. It is basically a white m-seal with 2 parts (resin base and hardener). The idea is to combine equal parts of the two by halving and rolling it again and again until it turns into a smooth uniform coloured mixture. Then you can shape it as you please. Although the box says that its non sticky, since I was using it for the first time I found it pretty sticky. I also bought some plastic tools in their shop to work with the clay. To roll the clay I used an old deo bottle (since I didn't want to use the chapati roller). I covered the deo bottle and the wooden base I was using with some parchment paper so that it would not stick to the clay and this worked. For the magnetic part, in some of the magnets I used regular small round magnets while in most of the others I used cut out bits from an adhesive magnetic sheet. Both of these I bought online on Amazon.

 

1. Warli art magnets

 

I have been fascinated with warli art off late. And decided to give an ode to that with magnets. I have used a square cut out of adhesive magnetic sheet which I have topped with a think layer of clay. For the border, I have attached thin tubes of clay and made a small groove in them at specific intervals. I have then painted it with fevicryl pearl and acrylic colours. 

2. Minion magnets

 

This one is of the minion in a girl disguise. If you have seen the movie Despicable Me (part 2), this cute one has been picked up from there. I drew this figure on the magnetic sheet, cut it, topped with a thin layer of clay and painted it.

My take on Humpty Dumpty meets a minion. It is a similar procedure but added a thicker layer of clay and to give it a semi 3D kind of effect added hands and feet too. The rest is just painted on.

The method of this is similar to the girl in pigtails. Only a different figure drawn and cut out on the adhesive sheet and painted differently.

This is another semi 3D magnet. 

Here though, to a thin layer of clay I have carefully added the bits of clay to form the hands and shoes, overalls, pockets and the glasses.

In hind sight I should have added a layer to form the face and topped that with glasses. 

3. Camera:

  

This was a fathers day gift to my father in law. Having lost my father seven years ago, this was a special fathers day for me. I got married end of December last year and hence was celebrating fathers day after seven whole years with my father in law. And since he is such a gem of a person, I wanted to make something special for him. This was around the time I was making all these magnets so decided to make a couple for him. He is a very passionate photographer. Those who know him will know that on holidays and whenever he is relaxed, he will always have his precious camera around his neck. So decided to try to model it out for him.

Its difficult to explain the procedure for this. I used a small rectangle of the magnetic sheet. I kept topping it with little bits of clay to achieve the different parts of the camera. I painted it also based off an image on the internet. The only difference was that I used glass colours to paint the lens to give it the glassy effect. I was a bit clumsy though while writing the model and company of the camera. 

4. Stethoscope:

 

This was also for fathers day since my father in law is a Doctor. To an oval piece of clay, I added thin tubular bits of clay to make it look like a stethoscope. 

5. Purse magnet:

 

Since I was making the magnets for my father in law I decided to make this purse magnet for my mother in law. I cut out the figure of the purse from the magnetic sheet. I topped this with a thin layer of clay. Added another layer of clay for the flap and a small round bit for the clasp.

6. Some cute creatures:

 

For the main part of the snail, I added a thin layer of the clay to the cut of from the magnet sheet. For a slight 3D effect for the shell, I topped smaller oval pieces of clay to the main part. I also added a small round bit for the eye.

The central portion and head of the butterfly is 3D. But the rest is just a thin layer of clay. I have however made round depressions in the wings before painting them.

7. Food magnets:

 

 

Fries anyone? Have shaped pouch like thing with clay and after it was dry I added the back portion. To the back portion while wet I added the round magnets. This saves effort to stick the magnet after it is dry. Also, the magnet does not jut out. The fries are just small rectangular tubes shaped like fries and painted so.

 Donut love. I cut out a donut shape from the adhesive sheet. To this, I added a thick round tube of clay. After this was dry, I topped it with a thin donut shaped layer to form the chocolate sauce. 

Simple 2D tomato magnet. The only addition to this was the stalk I added on top. 

Watermelon slice. Simple 2D magnet. Cut out a thick semicircular piece of clay and painted it so.

8. Flower magnets:

 

Rose. I have used a round magnet covered on 3 sides with a piece of clay (one flat side should be open). To this I have added the petal layers of clay. I have then shaped out leaves and stuck it to the sides.

 To a small round bit of magnetic sheet, I have covered the periphery with little balls of clay. I have then made a groove in the ball with a clay tool and then added another flattened ball of clay in the centre. I have used a sharp tool to make dots in the central part just to give it a nice effect. I have added leaves to top it off at the side making sure the magnet is not covered. 

Do let me know in a comment which was your favourite magnet. Since I am new at this some of them might not be too clean. But if you like my work do follow my blog.

Photo Moments Wall Hanging

Having recently gotten married I wanted to display some of our best photographs. At the same time, I did not want huge photo frames lying all around the house and taking over my home décor. So I had to think of a way to make something different. In this post I will share the procedure for a fun way to display precious photographs in your house. But before I go on with the procedure, I would like to mention that I have substituted photos with some pictures due to privacy issues and not wanting my precious photos to be shared publically. In my video I have shown one way of making the wall hanging. Here, I will elaborate on that procedure as well as share a second way of making it.

Method 1:

For this I have mainly used squares of 6 cm length and width along with string in addition to the usual glue, scissors, paints etc. I agree that this is a very small size for displaying photographs, but since I was making the video on the procedure it made my life simpler. Therefore, to properly display photographs, you might need to use cardboard cut outs for a reasonably bigger size. This would be totally up to your discretion.

First I poked a hole into all four corners of the square. Following this, I widened the hole with a toothpick. Then I inserted a string into the hole with the help of the same toothpick. I pulled out the string from the adjacent hole of a second square and tied both ends. I repeated this procedure on both sides.

The next step is to repeat procedure until you are satisfied with the length of the wall hanging. A note here also that for the square which comes at the extreme lowest position only poke two holes since there would be no connection from the lower side. And for the top holes of the topmost square, I loop a string between the holes in order to make it a hanging. Personally I would have been happier with a longer length of the same. But for the sake of my video and blog I have used a six square length. I have attached some string to the top two holes of the topmost square in order to make a loop from which it can be hung. And finally I have stuck similar squares on the back end of the wall hanging. This is to give it a neater appearance and not show the threads more than needed.

I then painted the whole thing blue with the strings painted pink. I used acrylic colours for the same. Once the paint was dry I applied a few coats of varnish so that the stickiness of the paint disappears. Now all that was left to do was decorate it. I had initially planned to give a border with quilled paper so that it would look like a frame. But since the size of the wall hanging was small as it is, I chose to use some glass paints to decorate the borders. And so as to not leave the whole thing empty I made some small warli drawings on paper and stuck it to the centre of each square. To be honest, for this version of my wall hanging I quite prefer having the warli drawings rather than sticking photos since that would end up being super tiny. And the warli drawings really look nice and smart and brighten up my room.

P.S. At present I have hung the wall hanging on my fan regulator

Method 2:

For the second method, I used slightly bigger sized rectangular shaped cardboard cut outs. And since the size of the cardboard was bigger, I had to think of a better idea for the string. This is because it will be difficult for a simple string to hold the weight of the wall hanging. So I used three equal pieces of string and plaited them together. I used these to stick two pieces of the cardboard at both sides. Here I did not struggle to make any holes in the cardboard.

I built up on this until I was happy with the length. For the top hanging portion I used a longer length of plait and made a semi-oval like structure and stuck it to the top. Similar to the other design, I used some cardboard cut outs to stick to the back part so that the end product would not look messy.

Again, I used glass paints to decorate the borders. For this particular wall hanging I fully intend to get photos printed and stuck to it. For a project a few years back I had gotten labels printed in a Printo (I don’t know if they have a branch here in Mumbai, this was in Bangalore) shop. I plan on trying something similar. I can choose my pictures and edit it to the correct size and request them to print it out on label paper. This makes my life simpler to attach the photo to the wall hanging.

For purely representational purposes because my husband thought I should not leave the space empty while I blog about it, I have drawn some cute animal pictures and placed them on the empty spaces. Since I plan on using photo labels, I have not stuck these to the wall hanging.

 

So there you go, that’s two ways of making a photo moments wall hanging. Personally, I like the second version better especially because I will actually get to stick some photos on to this. But for a regular wall hanging I quite liked my last minute idea of making the warli drawings. I think I am going to make longer ones with warli drawings to hang at the edges of our windows when I have more time on hand.

I hope you liked this post and if you have any comments please feel free to let me know. If you have yet to watch my video, please do so on the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYGPhAk-3-A. Do subscribe to my youtube channel for more fun ideas.

Multipurpose Newspaper Box

I have found myself having a lot of time on my hands at the time being and so have chosen to dabble in some arts and crafts and DIY projects as a hobby. And since I have time at present I am enjoying the process of blogging about this journey. I don’t claim to be an expert on arts and crafts (I’m pretty much a novice).

I realize that my video may be self-explanatory. However, considering that I have watched it a million times while editing I might feel so. Someone who wants to follow my procedure might feel I went too fast or did not explain the process completely. This post is mainly for those people. If you enjoy reading about my process then do let me know.

So getting to my process in making the newspaper box

The biggest task in the whole thing was to prepare the strips of paper I used. Like I mentioned in my video, I cut the conventional single side of the newspaper into eight equal pieces each (roughly). I didn’t bother much about the exact measures. I was always going for a rustic image. And furthermore when you coiled pieces of newspaper I didn’t observe it to make too much of a difference.

As you can see in the above picture, I fold the newspaper into half 3 times to divide the sheet into 8 pieces. I then cut it against the folds. I make several of these strips.

Following this I mentioned how I fold these strips further into different sizes

1. For the base of the coil I fold it into 1/4^thsize (each strip is folded twice)- Strips A

2. For the border I fold it into ½ size (each strip is folded only once)- Strips B

3. For the coil in the lid I fold each into 1/6^thsize (I first divide the strip in 3 parts and then in half again)- Strips C

These are the choices for size that I have chosen. If you choose to recreate you need not necessarily do the same. I have purposely folded and stuck each strip and not further cut them into smaller pieces. This is because when you fold and then coil the thickness would also be there.

After I have all my strips ready I build up the base by coiling the strip A using the paper quilling tool. I keep building on this coil until I get the desired size for the base. Now I stick the base onto the cardboard base. I had originally cut the cardboard into 8cm x 8cm size square and covered it with a plain white paper. However when I stuck the coil onto the base even though I did make it into a squarish looking shape I still felt it would be better to have a circular base. Otherwise when I would stick the border it would have some empty spots.

Once I was done with the base, I coiled the strip B with the paper quilling tool into pellet like shapes. These coils were slightly thinner and taller. I stuck these in a concentric pattern around the base coil. Now since I wanted a certain depth I chose to add a second layer. A tip here is that if instead of a box you want to make a penstand you can continue to add layers of these pellets till it becomes taller and then exclude making the lid.

To make the lid I make a similar coil like I did for the base. I made it to the size that just about fit in between the borders. Once I was done with that I wanted to make a locking mechanism so I made some coils with the strip C. For this I used the ring coil tool for paper quilling and chose the size I wanted from the tool. I then coiled the strip C and stuck the edges. Once I had two of these I used a small folded piece of paper (not too particular about the size) and coiled it locking the two bigger coils. When I had enough of these I stuck these on the top of the lid and thus my lid was complete.

I then painted it and was done with the box. Now I know that there are a lot of newspaper boxes on the internet. This is just my version of it and I feel this is a very sturdy box especially if you need to store some heavier trinkets.

If you have not seen my video on the making then I do recommend you watch that for better clarity. The link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HrVMxS4Yfk&feature=youtu.be. Further if you enjoy it do subscribe. I will try to come up with some new diy craft as soon as possible.