Quilled Guitar

Valentine's Day is here and what better gift for a loved one than a lovingly quilled item. Hubby loves music so I decided to quill a miniature guitar for him. Here's what I did:

I'm not an artist so I took the roundabout way ;) 

I found a google image that I liked and drew it on a piece of paper - ok I cheated and held the paper against the screen of my laptop and copied the image. I do that often as I said ^^ I'm really not a good artist :) 

I cut out the paper image and used it as a template to make another template on card stock. Then used the card stock template to make the actual model. Got it? If you're an artist you could probably just draw your picture straight on to the card you're going to use.  

For the actual model I chose a stiff brown card with gold print on it which I thought would be nice for this project. 

The card was one-sided with a white backing so I cut out two mirror images and stuck them back to back.   

I applied glue to the sides of the shape and attached a 3 mm strip all around. (I chose maroon, but any colour will do) This gave me the outer shell. 

I filled in the top using the beehive technique.  

The strings were made using fine florist wire. The keys are small tight coils using 2 mm cream pearlised strips. I added tiny roses for the knobs and buttons. (For my tutorial on two methods for making quilled roses check here)

And there you have it. A cute little 3 1/2 inch guitar!  Hubby loved it and put it right next to his real guitar :) 

For more examples of my work please visit my Facebook page Quilling Away If you have any questions please feel free to ask and I'll try to help. If you do use any of my tutorials or ideas please do add a link/refer to my blog or facebook page. Thanks. 

Updated 04/03/2015: Hubby wanted to have it in a more public place so I cut out the shape on magnetic paper, stuck it on and now we have a cute fridge magnet!