Back Into Blogging With A New Craft Addiction: Quilling

Now that I have some unlimited time on my hands, I'm excited to get back into sharing some of my creations. Not that I had stopped making things but the past couple of years have been hit or miss on consistency and time to post regularly. I'm excited to share a new love I've discovered, thanks to one of my oldest and best friends: Quilling. Really "Modern Quilling". Last year for my birthday, she surprised me with a book and box of supplies and I sat down last week to play with them. 

Quilling is thought to go back to the 15th century and started by English, French, and Italian nun and monks. Traditionally, quilling, similar to embroidery, recreated images of nature etc. Modern quilling still does that but can also be more fluid and abstract. This appealed to me. As is my nature, I looked at the basic process and then just kind of went where I went with it. 

I had several embroidery hoops in my stash so they came to mind when I wanted to start my first project (shown above).  Stayed w/ my often used colors of black, grey, and white. 

Supplies: 

• Embroidery Hoop
• Lightweight Chipboard
• Quilling Tool ( available at craft stores or online)
• Tweezers
• Glue. I just used Elmers but PVA glue is recommended.  I had this package of precision tip glue pens in my stash which worked great! 
• Quilling strips

I traced the shape of the embroidery hoop onto the chipboard, cut out, and glued together w/ hot glue. As that set, I made a bunch of shapes. Pinterest and You Tube have great tutorials to show the basics!

I made a collection of loose coils, tight coils, teardrops and the "eye" shaped ones as shown ( loose round coils w/ each end pinched). Once I thought I had enough to fill in my hoop, I started gluing them down to the chipboard base. 

Since I'm an intuitive crafter, I just started filling in space w/ the black, then moved to the gray and the white ( really cream). Where there were big, obvious spaces, I just rolled some tight but smaller coils and filled in. 

I had so much fun with it , I decided to play with some other color combinations. For the next one, I chose browns and purples. 

I found it was helpful to have something damp to store my glue tip in to help keep it clog free as I was working and also to clean off my fingertips which get sticky as you seal the ends of your shapes. I put a couple pieces of paper towel in a small jar and wet them and they actually stay wet for a few days. I didn't close the jar because I didn't want mold to have a chance and you can just re-dampen if it dries out. 

I repeated the same process with the embroidery hoop and a piece of cardstock, then made my shapes and glued down, again in no specific pattern, just as I went along. 

Once again I filled in some spaces w/ tighter coils but the intent wasn't to fill in completely which is why I went w/ a coordinating piece of cardstock as the base. 

For the first two, I used 6 inch hoops. I was having so much fun I wanted to do another one and play w/ some other colors and only had 8 inch hoops so went w/ that and trust me, that little increase in size makes a difference in the number of coils you need! Not a bad thing mind you. It goes pretty fast once you get the hang of using the quilling tool. Law & Order SVU marathons or music make the time fly by! 

I am hooked! I cannot wait to play some more. I want to do monograms, and cards and, and, and ...

I Crafted and I’m Telling. Elmer’s Craft and Tell Party With No Biggie

Kami over at No Biggie was lucky enough to be selected by Elmer’s to host a “Craft and Tell” party where she got to give away craft kits to some of her followers. I was lucky enough to win one of these! Thanks Kami and Elmer’s!

It was like Christmas. This is what arrived!

And Kami is so on top of things because look at her cute notecards! She also had the cutest matchbook cover mint holder.

I mentioned in the post where I shared my Mother’s Day printable that I was woefully behind on Mother’s Day and hadn’t made any cards. Printable+Elmers Craft and Tell to the rescue!

Reduced the printable down to 2x2.5 and printed several on white cardstock. Took one pair of the decorative scissors and trimmed the panels, then mounted on coordinating cardstock. Layered that using a floral print paper from KandCo and another striped paper and embellished with paper flowers, ribbon,  and self adhesive rhinestones.

This is my new best friend:

I love my big ATG tape gun but sometimes you need a little guy for the details. I’ve used other dot runners but this one worked the smoothest! I used it to apply the ribbons and paper flower in the lower right corner of my focal piece. Love it.

These were fast cards to make and the XActo Decorative Edge scissors and the Elmer’s Dot Runner were lifesavers! So thanks again Kami for hosting the giveaway and Elmer’s for sponsoring it!

Speaking of Mother's Day:

Thank you Mr. Chocolate and Chocolate Chip! This is my new camera that I barely know how to use. It's perfect for me...DSLR function and quality without having to know all the whatchamathingy terminology, and the ease of a point and shoot. Squee!!!!

PEACE

OK I'm a little out of control and Mr. Chocolate is afraid I'm going to hang a banner on him. But  since I was compelled to buy both packages of those Jolee's snowflake stickers I used for my Vintage-y Music-y ornaments, I couldn't just let them sit there right? 'Course not. So what surface wasn't yet adorned with a banner? A mirror in our bedroom! And since it came from the great Barn o Pottery, I decided to do a PB-esque banner.

To the craft cave! Oh did I mention I've been to Starbucks? Cut out the letters to spell PEACE on my Cricut using a metallic pewter cardstock. Cut out ovals using the same cart ( Plantin Schoolbook) from a vintage cream cardstock. Cut out slightly bigger ovals from white. Ran the white ovals through:

my 5" XYRON. This is a very versatile size XYRON if you're looking for something to put on your Christmas list. Glued the letters to the cream ovals using this which is part of the superfantabulous Elmer's/XACTO giveaway I won from Craft ENVy. It's a double sided glue pen with one side for wet bonding and the other for dry bonding! Oooh la la.

This allows better control of adhesive to things like letters because it works just like a pen. Some people go all squibbly over shoes or clothes. I go all squibbly over things like this. OK shoes and clothes too but I'm just sayin'.

Pulled the backing off the bigger ovals and stuck the smaller, lettered ovals on, then added one of the snowflake stickers to each letter:. You'll have a sticky edge left. I poured silver glitter on that, then attached to a cream ribbon using glue dots:

These stickers are REALLY detailed!

And here it is strung across our  mirror:

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