Quilling 1

On a recent short break, I went to a beginners quilling class with a friend. I had learned the basics of quilling some 20 years or so ago but just went along to keep her company. However, it rekindled my interest in quilling and with the internet having literally exploded with craft sites, I discovered that quilling has come a long way in those intervening years. Of course I had to have another go at it and this is my first attempt.

The design is a bit disjointed, but it was literally thrown together using all the bits and pieces I’d been trying out. Me being me, I couldn’t find the colours I wanted in quilling paper at my local stores and not being one with much patience with waiting, I didn’t want to order on line. So I tried cutting my own strips. Yes you can cut them using a guillotine or as I tried, on my cutterpillar. They cut very nicely BUT you try cutting 3mm strips absolutely accurately every time! I ended up with a whole load of shredded paper that wasn’t all exactly the same width. Yes fractions of a mm do notice! So then I thought I might try a paper shredder but that cuts 6mm wide strips. A search of the internet shows people using hand powered shredders that cut to 3mm. Of course the only one I could source was from Hong Kong..a 6 week wait – sheer agony for someone like me. It has been ordered, but that still left me in a hurry to play with my quilling tool and new found eagerness. I found a quilling die at my local store – cuts the strips too short and 4mm wide (too wide in my opinion) and takes forever to cut enough strips to work with. Final solution: my hand powered pasta machine! The spaghetti setting cuts the strips just a tad under 2mm wide which is really a bit thin and hard to work with, but it will do until the hand shredder arrives. (Note: the shredder arrived and although it cuts reasonably well, the edges of the strips are a bit ragged. I've since bought a linguini attachment for a pasta machine that cuts the strips much more neatly).

This card was made using strips cut on the pasta machine and a little frustration as I ruined a few bits due to the delicate nature of such narrow strips. What didn’t help was the sturdy parchment, which turned out to be sturdy as it is 2 pieces glued together and came apart at times, especially on the curves. It also springs open badly, making it hard to push inside rolled petals. I won’t be using that paper again any time soon for quilling!
The one thing I do like about cutting on the pasta machine is that you can make a mountain of strips (over 100) from one sheet of A4 paper. I’ve barely made a dent in the paper I cut for this project and I only cut one sheet of each.

For those wanting to know details, the card is a standard 5×7 card. The bottom layer is gold cardstock – a pre-folded purchased card. On this I mounted a matting layer of the parchment and then an off white pearlised embossed board which I distressed and edged with with dark gold ink. The bits and pieces were made from ideas I found on the net, and the fringed flowers from memory plus trial and error. There is a tutorial somewhere on the net for the large flower but I found the 2mm wide strips to delicate to make on a comb so I did it by hand, eyeballing the sizes. I actually made the insides and wrapped them after, but it is very hard to get even sized petals this way. Making the wrapping first (as the tutorials recommend) and squeezing the contents in afterwards makes even sized flowers, but is a lot more fiddly, especially with 2mm wide strips.

Having grasped the basics, it is now time to master neatness….something I’m definitely not good at, so that is going to be a challenge…..