DIY Quilling tools

An artist's delight are her tools. Whenever I enter a craft shop, I tell my family to go and do whatever errands they want to do at the mall so that I can enjoy browsing through all the wares at the shop. I would always end up spending most of my time at the tools section. But quilling is such a new art for so many craft shops, that I hardly found the things that I was looking for in the shops in Sweden.

After coming to Dubai, I have been searching on the net to find places where I can find quilling paper, quilling comb, paper crimpler, and so many other tools but have not been successful till now. Well that doesn't really stop an artist, does it? So I have been a bit creative and here are the results.

This is my very own paper crimpler and it gives beautiful results just like a professional paper crimpler. And all it took was 9 pieces from my son's Logo box!
I am so proud of myself!

Soon I will be posting the results of using my brand new tool.






Quilling needs glue but you need to maintain a fine balance. Too much glue will smudge your fine delicate work and ruin it. I had always looked at special glue bottles on the net but never found them in Sweden. So this is what I had created a few months back. It has served me loyally and helped me in so many of my projects giving me control over how much glue I want.

I made the glue bottle with a used hair coloring bottle. I cut the tip slightly and capped it with a 0.5mm lead pencil head.

And I seal the bottle with a pearl head pin and keep it inverted so that it is always ready to dispense just that tiny droplet to make neat projects.









 Here's another slotted quilling tool that I have made with the only difference that it does not have a slot!

Its just a fine needle inserted into the tip of a lead pencil and VIOLA, I have a quilling tool ready!










It was fun sharing my creative tools.! Hope you enjoyed reading and also found the tips useful.
Thanks for visiting!

Something Fishy!!!

Finally after a long long time, I am back in action. Its been almost 3 months now since we moved to Dubai and about a couple of weeks ago we finally shifted from the hotel apartment to a house that we have made into our home. And I have organized my tools and paper and am ready to begin posting.

After moving to Dubai I have only made one quilling card which was for my son's Birthday in September. Every evening after coming back from school, he would go to the pool for a swim and then come back and ring the doorbell with his swimming glasses on and a grin that made him look just like goldfish. So for his B'day, I made him this card.

I specially like the weaving for the water affect.

The fishes are quite simple but the quilled eyes give them a character.

 

Thanks for visiting!

Some more gift tags

We will be moving to Dubai in 10 days. After a settling down phase, I hope to have time to do lots of quilling and keep my blog updated more regularly. Looking forward to that!

Here are the remaining gift tags. Thanks for visiting!

No Party without balloons!

                                      

A heart for you!











2 little ducks go quack quack quack!

Time to study!

 Little feet fill homes with joy and laughter!

Its your big day so here's a little present for you! The boys are so pretty!










And here's another gift!

Presents are always welcome!








I love the colors!

Flower Gift Tags

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have not had the time to do justice to my blog. But finally I have taken pictures of the gift tags I had made a month ago and am presenting them here for you. Here are the flower gift tags. Thanks for visiting!

The flower is made with many tiny quilled swirls just glued on randomly. The base is a pretty vase.

 My son thought these little flowers looked like flog eyes!

 Flowers and a border!

 Different color!

 On a different base.

The border is complimenting the flower!

 Flower or ice-cream scoops in a bowl?

A bouquet?

Looks Christmas y!

Simple but pretty!

Fruity Gift Tags

I am posting after quite a while. A lot has been going on at home front. We are moving to yet another new country and to new adventures. So life has been a crazy whirlwind of activities for the past month. Winding up here in Sweden where we have been living for the past 8 years and securing school admissions, housing and all the other nitty gritty needed for our move to Dubai. Just before the move was finalized, I had gone on 2 days of 'just quilling and nothing else' spree and made a couple dozen of gift tags that I have been wanting to share.  I tried some fruits, some flowers and some other designs. So finally here they are. Hope you enjoy viewing them. Thanks for your visit!

A fresh juicy slice of orange!

An apple a day keeps the doctor away!

So why not have another apple too?

Nothing quenches the thirst as a fresh and juicy pear. Hmm..yummy!

 Care for some cherries?

Here's another pair from the garden!

New born baby card

Here is the card that I made for our friend's new born baby. It was amazing to see a 2 week old baby. She was so tiny and beautiful, it was a pleasure to hold her in my arms. I don't remember my 2 sons ever being so small. How time flies!

Here's a pram for the little baby!

Modern art Birthday card

I made this card for a sweet teenage girl turning 14.

I thought this card was simple and looked artistic.

Homecoming card

My husband and younger son were away for a couple of weeks and here is a card that I made to welcome them home.

Here I used a mixture of paper cutting and quilling techniques to make the card.

I came up with the technique for making the house myself which I will present as a tutorial in a later post.

Birthday card

It was my husband's B'day in June and I had to make a quilling card that was radically different from all my previous work. I started looking for ideas and found my inspiration from Suzana's work. This is my best work so far and the card looks much more stunning than the pictures.

 Here I folded an A4 paper into thirds and decorated the front with cutting out the paper. I used the heart shape that I have described in my previous post and inserted it in the heart shape that I had cut out from the card.

In this closeup of the top part, the open coils just follow the contour of the card and I love the pink circles supporting these open coils adding transparency to the card. The three brightly colored fringed flowers add a very beautiful touch.

The bottom part is finished with a increasing fan fold quilled strip and two open coils.

Some random quilling

I like to try out different quilling techniques and just make random quilling shapes when I have time. Here are snaps of a few of my experimental quilled pieces.

I tried this technique using the tutorial for rosettes posted by Suganthi here.
For this piece, I used a double sided colored paper and folded the paper less than half lengthwise to show the two colors.

  Then I continued with the fan fold and pinching at the centre to create the rosette. Please excuse the lack of neatness as this was just the trial for technique.

 Trying out some lettered quilling!

I am very fond of Suganthi's blog and follow the updates reqularly. Here are some experiments with the combing technique  demonstrated here.

 Converted the pieces made using the combing technique into flowers. The 2 flowers in the centre are made using the looping method.

I like crimped strip quilling as it gives a very stunning effect. But since I lack a crimping tool, I zigzag folded the strips to create the crimped effect.

Some experimental quilling with open loops. Open loops are so simple to make and produce such a beautiful few flowing effect!

A heart made using the open loops/coil quilling.

Spiral Card

I wanted to try something new. So I took 8 strips of different colors and glued them together at one end and rolled them together basically with a toothpick as the slot of the quilling tool was not appropriate for so many strips together. I let the other ends of the strips fan out and finished the ends by quilling open loops. Now for the assembly on a card. Here I used some checked gift wrapping paper for the border and stuck 4 double colored fringed flowers. I use self cut strips for all my work and for this piece, I have also colored the strips myself.

Flowers with a butterfly card

It was our friend's daughter's B'day and I needed to prepare a card for her at a very short notice, basically I had 10 minutes. I had some flowers lying around that I had made using the twisted loop technique demonstrated by the very talented quiller Suganthi. Her tutorial for this technique can be found here.


I had a butterfly also lying around that I had quilled some time ago. So basically in 10 minutes I assembled this card.

An engagement card

In my first post, I had posted food labels for a dear friend's son's engagement party. Here is the card that I had made for the engaged couple.

This is one of my favorite cards. The border with alternating colors quilling strips adds a very professional touch to the card. The theme for the party for black and pink with the couple dressed in these colors. The card here follows the same color theme.

The golden rings in the middle highlight the exchanging of rings.