May 28, 2014

Quilled Poppy in Progress (5) and Custom Cut Paper



I've mentioned my love for paper from Daiso, a Japanese $2 dollar store. I've used it for many craft projects in the past. I wish they had more colors, because they offer a great range of shades in soft colors.



Here are their "warm" and "cold" color packs. They don't list the thickness/weight but it's heavier than standard quilling strips because I find it holds the curve or shape I want over a greater distance, yet is flexible enough for me to make my tight coils without splitting, as thicker stock does.


I use my Silhouette die cutter to cut lines in the paper, just shy of the ends so they stay in behaving sheets. Here are the 3 colors I've chosen to use in my poppy. I worried the dark one was too salmon, but it didn't look too bad when in place after all.


I would make my general outlines with the darker strips first.


Then I would start filling in with the medium pink.


Finally I would add the lightest strips.


I think the light strips were my favorite because some were practically slivers and I enjoy that organic shape rather than always have a straight edge on top.


To make them, I would hand cut the slivers from a cut strip, turn the strip over, and continue cutting slivers. After making a pile, I'd be ready to sprinkle them throughout.


When adding an end to an existing strip, I would tear the end and dip not only the edge, but that tail into glue. After setting it in place, I'd follow up the join with a good squeeze from my tweezers. It may seem overkill, but I find this makes the join much less noticeable than a cut end.


Besides the light slivers, I've been anticipating the light green grass the most. I trimmed these down using a ruler after figuring out the length. My eyes have always gone to that subtle detail in the photo.


I thought I was restraining myself during the process, but now that I'm done, I wish I had held back more. I thought the outline would continue to stand out, but now that it's filled, I'm losing it amongst the busyness. Oh well, can't remove it now.

So now that the base layer is done, I'll be working on the stamens next.

May 25, 2014

Quilled Poppy in Progress (4) & New Glue Love


I'm in love with a new glue for quilling! Although the esteemed Ann Martin vouched for Martha Stewart's All-Purpose Gel Adhesive, at the time I was on a mission to find a thick, quick drying glue – so I think I pre-judged before giving it a proper chance, fearing it too wet for my liking. Now I plan to use several glues per project. Just look how thinly it spreads on my yogurt lid!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BTUGTS/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B002BTUGTS&linkCode=as2&tag=crafting0d2-20&linkId=3KR2L2VFEMIPAUY7


I dipped, dipped, and re-dipped far more times than would have been possible with my other white glues. When skin develops on my white glue, my frugal fingers yearn to quickly dip one last time, only to berate myself as I find skin scabs clinging to my strip – doh!


When skin is without a doubt going to prevent any more dipping in a particularly deep puddle of glue, I will sometimes even poke it like an urgent pimple, pumping the dregs to add that last tiny dab needed in some obscure spot – I guess I'm too impatient to uncork my glue bottle?


With this gel, it gets thicker as it dries, but without skin (just like Ann said). I tried to take a shot here to show you how I scraped the gel remnants and was still able to use it! This would have been impossible to do with the white glue.


Look how little glue shows on the edge.


And here's where I'm at today. Not as far as last time, more of an mini-update because I really needed to make a quick addendum to the glue posting.


Here's another thing I'm noticing about what I'm doing. I kind of outline with the darkest strips first to give myself a visual guide. Then I fill in with the medium and light strips. However, when I'm not consciously thinking, I notice my filling happens in the middle. So I deliberately make some strips closer to each other and not quite so parallel to give it a more random pattern.


Another example where I place some strips deliberately closer rather than in the middle.

Thanks for opening my eyes yet again Ann!

May 24, 2014

Quilled Poppy in Progress (3) & Gluing Tips



In my previous post I showed an example of a partly glued strip. It either didn't get enough glue or wasn't pressed down to the surface, and as a result is floating loosely in the air.


I have a simple solution that I've never expressed before because I just did it without thinking. After comments came in about my yogurt lid method, I thought I would show it in case it may help others as well. I just take a spare strip and spread a thin thread of glue.


Using tweezers, lift the loose strip and slide the glued strip below. Lower the strip into the glue, dab, and move along until the loose area is coated. Remove the glue-coated strip and glue the floating edge in place.


For those who are curious, here's my cut yogurt lid. I round the corner to make it easier to handle. The rim makes a great handle.


Besides using a yogurt lid, I quite like using this plastic division separator. It came with my $6 fishing tackle box which I use for quilling paper storage. If you look closely between this surface and the yogurt lid, you'll see the glue does not pull together and bead on the blue divider, as it does with the yogurt lid. Not sure why it does this – I guess it's the type of plastic?

I prefer the divider because I like dipping my glue in as flat a glue puddle as possible because I can still see dry glue that has ridden up the sides if I were to inspect closely. When I dip into the yogurt lid, the height is just slightly more noticeable, even though I am squiggling back and forth the same way and releasing the same amount of glue. Can you see how thin I can make it on the blue divider? You can practically see how I've drawn with the glue. The yogurt lid has the benefit of being flatter to slide under items. Both are great for re-using by peeling off dried glue "skin".

If you're looking for other storage ideas, here's my binder method of storing left over bits of quilling strips.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0033M0SRW/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0033M0SRW&linkCode=as2&tag=crafticreatu-20


I'm so grateful to comments on my "Quilling Glue" post, because I that's how I discovered Aleene's Tacky Glue. It is super thick and dries fast. I have some quilling friends who kept being polite and denying my offers of using my glue. I finally took matters into my own hands, dumped out their glue, and poured mine into their bottle. Next thing I know, they are sending me photos fast and furious because their quilling time was sped up - you simply don't need to hold down the end to the coil as long. I still enjoy using Lineco glue for gluing larger pieces at one time. I smear it thinly first before dipping, and since it's not as thick, gives me more time for dipping and less surface tension, which means less tornadoes as you pull your piece from the glue puddle.



Here is where my poppy is today. I'm using the darkest strip to make this petal part more dense. Somehow I can show it better from an angle though.



Does anyone else have other gluing tips to add? For my next post, I'll go into more details about the paper I'm using for this and why. If there's more info you'd like to know about, please let me know in the comments!

May 21, 2014

Quilled Poppy in Progress (2)


I have now filled in a large portion of a petal. Leaving your chair to rest your back and hands is a good practice to do every hour. Leaving your work a full day helps you view it in new eyes. When I now look at the lines, I wish I had made my lines a bit more wrinkly. I think it won't matter overall when I'm done, but I think the crinkly bits makes it more fluid and realistic, less rigid – you can see I've done that as I worked my way outward.


I hand cut all the ends because I think the tapered trimming makes it look lighter in those areas. To be efficient and save glue, I amass a few strips at a time until it starts to get confusing, then glue at one time.


Although I cut my strips 1/8" with my Silhouette die cutter, I deliberately hand trimmed some to be less in height to make it appear to be fading into the light.


Here's a close up to show how the 3 shades are working with one another. I'll go into my paper and custom cutting in another post.


For the strips that touch the outline, I dip the length in glue, then turn it on its side to dip the short end at the same time. This way I adhere it to my surface and my outline at the same time. Tweezers are a good thing here.

Uh oh! Do you see what I see? One end didn't get pressed while the glue was wet and now it's loosey-goosey. Since I had some comments about my gluing techniques, in my next post I'll show how I fix problems like this - quite easy actually!

Quilling Letters for Mother's Day by Carrie Finson


I received a FaceBook message from Carrie Finson the other day and was just blown away:

I stumbled across your blog a couple months ago and am in awe. A few years ago, I got a quilling kit at Hobby Lobby and did a few of the tutorials in the booklet provided. Other than that, I hadn't done any quilling. But your blog inspired me to do a special project for my mom. My mom loved it. She kept staring at it and saying how pretty it was. Now, it's nowhere close to your level of work, but I'm pretty proud of it and am looking forward to more projects. Just don't look too closely. Also, apologies for the poor quality of the photo... I took it at my light table and with my phone. Thanks for the lovely, inspirational work you do and for sharing it with the rest of us. 

Carrie


Isn't Carrie amazing??? I wasn't able to do something like this after a couple of tutorials and I certainly didn't dare do something so large! Can you imagine her next few projects? Thank you so much Carrie, for letting me showcase your work and message. It's what I've always wanted my blog to do - inspire others to give quilling a try. You've given me such a wonderful feeling to carry around!

May 14, 2014

Quilled Poppy in Progress (1)


The instant I saw this pink poppy on Pinterest a couple years ago, I wanted to quill it. I'm not sure how to go about it, but plan to show you the progress as I learn.

First I printed the photo at 11x11 inches to fit a square Ikea frame. Placing tracing paper on top of the photo, I quickly traced the outline and deepest lines. Then I placed 80lb text weight white paper on top of the tracing paper so I could shine a light from below, using my DIY Tracing Light Table method.


Using my nephews' Lego, I crimped my quilling strip (my first attempt of random crumpling didn't work well). On the right end of the strip, you can see I've semi-straightened some areas to make the uniform waves more irregular. I tried my best to "trace" the print out with my strip.


Pinching a few of the curves made the evenly crimped strip a completely different animal. I also trimmed all the ends to make the petal appear to be fading away when viewed from the sides.


Here is the outline completed. To glue such a long wiggly strip can be a challenge unless you are an octopus and have 8 arms - OR you can glue it an inch at a time. I cut a plastic yogurt lid into quarters and after smearing glue on the lid, I slid it under the next section to be glued, enabling me to have full control of every inch during placement.

If you give any of these methods a try, I'd love to hear about it!

May 9, 2014

Quilled Cupcake by Anna



My greatest fear while writing my quilling instructions is whether I'm explaining my instructions enough, because my designs tend to be made from non-standard shapes and methods. So when I received these photos from Anna, I was over the moon. I like her festive color choices and that icing swirl looks so pro! It makes me walk on air knowing the fact that I've inspired someone across the globe - and I didn't have to be there to explain it.


Anna saw my work from Manuk's preview of my book and proceeded to try designs from my book and store. She needed to decorate a box of chocolates for a birthday gift and wrote to tell me how fast she was able to put it together. In fact, she can't decide which design she likes most in my book, and is therefore making two cards at a time. She had this to say about the book, "I really like that it is so easy to follow everything and it takes minimum time to create a card!"

Thank you for letting me showcase your work on my blog, Anna. I was so happy to see a reader's masterpiece!

Cecelia

May 2, 2014

Die Cut Elephant Card


When I am imagining a project, I am often surprised it turns out how I see it in my head because I don't feel that way about my illustrations. When it works, it feels like the planets have aligned and it just feels good. This isn't one of those times. I hope posting this will help others learn from it anyway.


Since I had such success with making my own paper flocking, I wanted to do it again for a birthday card for our nephew. I used a double-sided adhesive sheet. You can see here how I'm peeling away the two sides to access the sticky inner sheet.


After cutting the elephant, I removed the bottom sheet and unwanted sticky areas, then applied to my card background.


Next came the fun flocking making and the start of my disappointment.


Although the adhesive sheet grabbed onto the paper fuzz, it was in such a patchy fashion, it made my elephant appear to have some kind of skin problem. Plus you can see just at his feet there, that it was kind of see-through, which is not what I had wanted.

I also thought I left a great leeway for the letter and saddle details to show through, by keeping it quite simple and large. However, I didn't like how I can't see the serifs and subtle skewing of the letter.


I use Adobe Illustrator to create my designs. Here are the settings I used to skew the letter to make it appear like it was really draping along the saddle. I know it's not that big a deal, but for me, these subtle details make a project sing.


Since I ran out of time and couldn't make another plain paper version, I had to buy a card {gasp!}. Why does my brain only kick into high gear when I have just 2 hours to go? Now that I look back on this project with calm eyes, I could have simply crumpled the blue elephant to mimic the elephant's skin and saved myself time. Oh well, next year!

Has anyone been working with paper flocking?