To Quill or not to Quill…

…that’s not really the question is it? Not if you’ve acquired a passion for quilling. I’ve been hooked ever since I discovered this amazing method of manipulating paper to create anything from cards to 3D miniature figures. I had entered a card making contest early this year and was researching ideas for making cards – and yes Mr. G. (Google) is good for that J and in my search for pop up cards I came across the term ‘quilling’. Being naturally curious about all things crafty I checked up Mr. G. again and voila – thus began my journey into quilling!

I am by no means an expert. I have had to learn as I went along. I picked up lots of tips from people’s blogs and YouTube videos – sorry I didn’t keep track of the links at the time, but thank you all for your help and inspiration. When I started I didn’t want to invest too much into it as I already had a huge box full of craft materials. One blogger  had a tutorial on home-made quilling paper so I tried my hand at cutting up printing paper from hubby’s stash…shhh. I used these to practice the various twirls and coils. After struggling a little I got the hang of it and liked the results so much that I decided it was time to invest. My first lot of quilling paper was called ‘summer shades’ and consisted of a number of bright colours – I bought those off ebay btw. Since then I’ve been buying them from shops online – they’re cheaper and have a better variety.

Here is a pix of my very first quilled card. It’s simple and not very neat but I was pleased that I’d understood the concept.

As you can see it looks a bit plain, so I added a border and a little petal type thingy (not sure what it was supposed to be!) in the corner and this is my finished project:

It’s not as tidy as I would have liked, but hey! It was my first attempt!

I will be posting some of the tips and techniques that I've learnt and used and, more importantly, my mistakes. Yes, looking back now I can see that I started my projects with more inspiration than knowledge and there are so many areas that I could have done better in – but I’m still learning and I hope that you too can learn from my mistakes. I would love to hear about how you too learned from mistakes/experiences and perhaps, together, we can laugh and learn at the same time.

Oh I did win the card-making contest! Yayyyy!