I was recently asked to make a quilled letter for a birthday present. Something not very complex and not too large so that could fit on a desktop. The present was meant for a person whose first name started with "L". This is how my first illuminated quilled letter was created.
As you may know, I lived in Canada for a year, and this certainly influenced my creations. In Canada, you can see guard soldiers wearing a ceremonial red coat — a historic British military uniform, and a bearskin — a tall fur cap. That is because Canada is a federal parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy at the same time, with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. Traditionally, the bearskin was the headgear of grenadiers, and is still worn by grenadier and guards regiments in various armies. The outfit is really hard to miss, and I was inspired by Queen's Guard soldiers when I made this three-dimensional quilled miniature wearing a bearskin.
This year's last Easter egg is a birdcage. It is delicate, airy, intricate, and at the same time easy to make. This egg may look simple compared to the Emperor penguin or the super-complex egg with a surprise, but I like it no less than the others.
On an Easter note, I would like to show another quilled egg I made recently. This is an emperor penguin. Emperor penguins are the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and are endemic to Antarctica. In my opinion they are the most beautiful, too. Males and females are similar in plumage and size, so my penguin may be either a mom or a dad, whichever you like better :) And there's a surprise, too.
It's the end of March now, and with Easter around the corner — just the right time to begin making Easter eggs. Have you heard about a lost and found Faberge egg that was almost sold for scrap, by the way? Amazing story.
When I saw Cecelia's quilling work the first time a few years ago, I was stunned by its delicacy. It is amazing what she can do using a very limited number of airy curls. Her quilling is not just the traditional paper filigree we all are used to. It is particularly fine, intricate, expressive, and I would say "laconic". It is different. You can always recognize Cecelia's style when you come across a photograph of a piece made by her artistic hand. I have been wondering how she does it.
You must have already noticed my weakness for insects :-) I started thinking of making a mosquito out of paper when I was working on my praying mantis. I was in search of a gift idea at that time, focusing on insects for inspiration. Unlike the mantis, which have made a lovely gift for my art teacher, the mosquito stays with me. I'm somewhat reluctant to give it away.
November is a good time to start thinking Christmas. I'm living in Canada now, and my neighbors have already decorated their houses. I thought it would be nice to showcase some Christmas ornaments with quilling today.
Impressed with the work of Lisa Nilsson, I decided to try my hand at anatomical quilling, too. A few months ago my husband had a problem with his knee and I made a small gift for his orthopedist — this quilled knee cross-section.
Do you remember my 3-D quilled family of mice? They have the cone shape in their base, with some traditional 2-D shapes used for other elements. The same technique can be used to make various characters, including animals, fairies, etc. For example, something like this small squirrel I created some time ago.
In my quilling I often use tendrils (spirals). They are especially good for quilled tree trunks and branches, like in my Cherry blossom picture, for instance. They can be also used in cardmaking and scrapbooking for making intricate embellishments, like those on this Valentine's Day card or the pink Birthday greeting card. However, creating perfect tendrils for paper quilling is not as simple as it may look. Some of my readers asked me how I create tendrils for my quilling, so here we go, a tutorial on the subject :) In this short video I share my method of making tendrils using a needle tool and 1/16" & 1/8" strips. You can also use an awl, a thin knitting needle or even a toothpick. Don't be disappointed if you can't get it right right away, just keep practicing.
Dear readers! First off, I would like to thank you for all those emails of appreciation and encouragement I receive from you, as well as your comments on this blog. I read them all, without exception. And I value them a lot! Unfortunately, I not always have time to reply, so I want to apologize, too.
Now it's time to keep my promise (see Thermometers decorated with quilling) and show you two other thermometers.
Recently I came across my 3D quilled lion tutorial ripped off by a web site from a PDF (along with other tutorials), and shared on Pinterest. Can't help stumbling upon stolen images and tutorials here and there :( Anyways, I would like to remind that the tutorial is available in high resolution, with detailed instructions in English, and absolutely free of charge. It can be downloaded from the page Lion: 3D Quilling Project. Moreover, everybody is welcome to distribute the file or even host it on their website, legally.
Some thoughts for those of you who publish things on the Internet. In the past I released some quality content under a Creative Commons license, hoping to give people an opportunity to use it legally, while also benefiting from this myself a little bit. And here are my observations: for every legal use (if at all), I find tens of illegal ones, that is without even mentioning the source. It looks as though every image without a watermark just asks to be stolen. Sad :(
Today I would like to show you how a simple and ordinary object can be turned into a lovely gift — a wall thermometer like this one, for instance. I decorated it with a simple quilled pattern, and the only things I needed for this were a simple wooden room thermometer and a 12" x 12" (~30 x 30 cm) sheet of thick recycled paper.
With the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) being celebrated this week, and the New Year of the Gregorian calendar about three months away, I thought it would be a good idea to share my quilling-decorated calendars. A beautifully embellished, handmade, one-of-a-kind calendar can be a wonderful present for just anybody, and is relatively easy to make. You can start with a printed calendar and add quilling to it, or find calendars to print on the internet.
Love quilling? Want to help Japan to recover from the 2011 earthquake? Then the charity activity called "Love Quilling" is for you. All you need to do is make little quilled flowers, as many as you can, and send them to Japan. For details please contact Motoko Nakatani on Facebook.
On my Facebook page I promised to write a blog post dedicated to cards of a new, at least to me, type. So, here we go.
This post is about this year's costumes I prepared for my girls. I know, it's too late for Purim and too early for Halloween, but I decided to show them now anyway. My elder daughter wanted to dress up as an owl, and I thought of the idea of a quilled mask right away. The mask is built on a cardboard base. First, I made the inner rim of the eyes using yellow and black strips 1/8 inches wide (about 3 mm). Then I cut wide brown and beige paper strips and used the fringed flowers technique to create the "feathers" around the eyes. When they were ready, I cut the rest of the brown and beige paper into 1/8"-wide strips (3 mm), used them to roll "eye" shapes, and glued the shapes onto the base, at the sides of the mask. The beak is made of plain and corrugated, 1/4"-wide (6 mm) brown strips. A brown skirt and a sweater with simple wings attached to the arms complete the costume.
As I already wrote, I sometimes teach paper quilling workshops in a craft store. There is a variety of projects to make, each aimed at a specific level (beginners or advanced), and focuses on specific quilling techniques. One of the workshops is dedicated to quilled jewelry, when the students learn to create a jewelry set — a pendant, a pair of earrings and a greeting card that matches them. The card is made so that it can hold the earrings or be used stand-alone.