Quilled Silhouette Self Portrait

My Quilling journey continues so apologies if you're tired of Quilling projects but I'm on a roll! Pun intended. 

I've been doing completely filled Quilling where you don't leave any (or not a lot of) open space and wanted to play with doing only a partial image quilled. I decided to do a "self portrait" which was a royalty free image I found online that was close enough to what a silhouette of me would look like. I googled "Black woman silhouette" and this one popped up. Since I usually wear my hair in a big pony or bun, it was perfect. I chose a palette of silver/grey , yellow and white. 

This is my new "favorite project ever" and my photography doesn't do it justice. I'm really happy with the project but not so much the photos. Sigh. 

Supplies: 

• Grey 12x12 Scrapbook Paper
• Yellow, White, Grey Quilling papers (Juya available on Amazon)
• Silver Vellum Paper (had in my stash and cut my own quilling strips)
• Black 12x12 Cardstock
• Quilling Tool
• Glue (Aleene's Turbo Tacky and Elmer's)
• Tweezers 
• 12x12 Shadow Box Frame (Michaels 2 for $29.99)

I uploaded the image into Cricut Design Space and cut it from black cardstock on my Cricut Explore Air 2. I wasn't originally going to offset it but once I cut it and it was sitting on my desk like that, once again...welcome to how my brain works! 

I set the negative aside, made a bunch of tight and loose coils ( just like my big hair!) and some teardrop shapes as shown. Then I just played with laying them out on the image until I had a plan. 

I laid it next to the negative again to make sure that's still what I wanted to do and it was. Glued down the negative to the grey background paper and then glued the Quilled image in place. 

I used the teardrop shapes as a kind of crown and the silver vellum coils as a kind of necklace. Finised with a swirled flourish using all the colors from the project. You can see I took pics before the glue dried, but it dries clear! 

To finish, I framed using a 12x12 display case frame (Michaels). 

Was able to get a little better picture outside before my canine assistant had a chance to topple it!