TSTR WEEK 95: TIME FLIES – MY QUILLING PROJECT

I don’t usually have more than one post for any challenge, but this week I have 2 submissions for The Shabby Tea Room.  And this one is not a card. Instead, it is a quilled floral project that I completed and had framed in a shadowbox.  This is what I did for the first 2 weeks after I broke my ankle since I could not get around very well.  I hope you like it!!

This is the full picture including the frame and it was way to big for my light box, so I just had to make do as best I could in taking the pictures.

Now for some close-ups:

The project is made using the technique called quilling. The butterfly was stamped using EK Tools Butterfly stamp. The size of the actual design is approximately 10 x 7”.  A lot of people have asked me what quilling is so I thought I would just give a brief description. 

Quilling started in 14th or 15th-century Europe with Italian and French nuns and monks incorporating gorgeous quilled designs into book covers and religious items. Their quilled works resembled ironwork of their day and was cheaper to produce than ironwork.  It spread to England and eventually became a pastime for “ladies of leisure”.  Quilling arrived in America with the colonists, but lost favor once paper became so readily available.  Today there are many new papers and techniques that are available, bringing added interest to this art. Once again, this old art form is taking root and becoming a popular craft of our time.

Quilling is the art of rolling strips of paper around a quilling tool and then forming a circle from that coil of paper. The circles are glued and then pressed with fingers to make it into different shapes which are then used to form designs.

Additional tools are used as well, In this picture you can see the effects achieved by using a fringing tool.  The paper strip is fringed all along the edge and then rolled around the quilling tool to give the flower the ruffled effect that you see in the purple flowers and buds above and the purple flowers below. 

Punches are also used as evident in the picture above. A small circle punch was used to make the little white 4-petal flowers. Lastly, the fringed white flowers are made using a punch and scissors to create a fluffy fringed flower.

Now for The Shabby Tea Room! Isn’t this week’s inspiration photo adorable?  I just love the colors in it and the butterflies caught my attention.

This week we are supposed to create a card or project inspired by the above photo and USE SOMETHING WITH WINGS!  My quilled project picks up on the pretty spring colors and the inspiring butterflies!

I hope you enjoyed seeing my project and reading more about quilling.  Thank you for stopping by my blog today. Please be sure to leave me comments so I know you stopped by and also let me know what you think about quilling!

hugs,

Ellen