If you are looking for a fun and relaxing craft give quilling a shot! It is easy to get the hang of and the possibilities are endless!!
I am trying a new trick this week!! I have always thought quilling was cool but had never tried it before, recently I became very inspired and slightly obsessed with a quilling artist that I started following on Instagram. Her account is called Global Quilling (@globalquilling) and her work is AMAZING. So incredibly creative and well done. I found myself searching for her posts daily to see more, I then started doing some research about quilling. I think that the reason I hadn’t tried it is that it seems intimidating, lots of tools and techniques. After seeing a few more of @globalquilling posts I decided it was going to give it a shot!
I found this awesome kit (pictured right) on Amazon by Juya Crafts. It included a huge assortment of quilling gadgets, tools and paper. It’s really a great kit for the price, so many accessories and paper colors! Each of the tools were separately packaged, there weren’t directions for each tool but there were pictures. With a little YouTube research on some of the individual tools I was ready to rock. The basics start with the quilling tool and the quilling buddy. The quilling tool is essentially a needle with a slot to hold the paper while you spin it around it. The quilling buddy is a plastic oval disk with a hole for the quilling tool and a size guide. You place the quilling tool through the quilling buddy, insert the end of the paper in the tool and spin the paper, making a coil to the desired size. After you have your coil, you place it into a rounded size guide to open up a bit, then glue the end closed. Now you can take that coil to use in a picture and/or shape it into another shape (teardrop, heart etc.)
The kit included 2 post card sized picture guides for practice, so I started playing around and made the peacock sample piece. I made some basic circles and pinched one end to make a teardrop for some and used the quilling comb for others. The comb is kind of like paper weaving. Again, YouTube is your friend for figuring out all the tools but for my project I just used the board, quilling buddy and quilling tool. The peacock was good practice since I thought it still looked cool with the different colors, shapes and sizes as I practiced.
I couldn’t decide what to make MY actual project into. I really liked the look of the teardrop shape (and its easy wink-wink) so I decided to center an idea around that and then BOOM rainbow (duh) and BOOM adorable rainbow quote (of course) but I did hit a hiccup with the rainbow itself. I played around with making the actual U-shaped rainbow with the smaller circles but didn’t love it so I made my rainb-rella! I found it helpful to map out the picture on a different piece of paper first before I started gluing which was a good call since I wanted to add the quote. Overall, I am pretty pleased with my first go at this! And it’s pretty relaxing and fun!
What you need:
· Juya Paper Quilling Kit (or you can get a few supplies from your local craft store before committing to a kit)
What to do:
· Plan out your picture (search Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration!)
· Quill coils, glue and shape.
· Arrange onto paper, canvas or other.
