Quilled Rose Tutoriial

Browsing on Facebook, I saw a question from Nandini on a Quilling group that what size quilling strip is suitable for making a quilled rose. My response to this was it really depends on what size you want for your finished rose. And then I remembered that I had pictures of roses that I had made with 3 mm strips and also one that I had made with a 2 inch or in other words close to 50 mm wide strip. So I uploaded them promptly on the group and that started a string of comments with a request for a video on making roses with 3 mm strip.

So here is a tutorial for making quilled roses with 3 mm strips. It is practically my first video tutorial. So thanks to Pratima for this request which helped me break the video making inhibition.

Here are the rose pictures that I took 2 years ago with the 3 mm and 50 mm strips. Notice the rose size difference between the 2 different sized strips. The red rose with 50 mm size strip is the size of my hand. The size difference is clearly visible in the 4th picture.

 

And here is the link to the video tutorial for making the rose with 3 mm strip. I tried compressing the video but it is still too large for me to be upload it here directly. So follow the YouTube link below to see the video.

Quilling Rose Tutorial Link

Here is the rose size comparison that I showed in the video.

You can view a finished card with 3 mm roses in one of my old Valentine cards post here.

If you find my work inspiring and create something similar, please quote my work and blog in your post. I would also appreciate if you leave a comment. All artists do need a pat on the back! Thanks for visiting!

Paper Bead Tutorial : Bead shapes

I have been experimenting with paper beads and would like to share what I have learnt. I am working my way with writing tutorials so if you find gaps in my explanation, please ask me questions and I will try to answer them.

My intention is to have 2 parts to the bead making tutorial. The first part will focus on bead shapes and how you can get different shapes. The second part will show how to get the patterns and designs on beads. I will additionally discuss about hardening the bead and making it water resistant.

It is possible to make paper beads of varied shapes and the factors impacting the shape are

• the shape of the paper strip
• the width of the paper
• the length of the paper strip
• the thickness of the paper

The basic principle is that the shorter or thinner the paper, the slimmer the bead from the core (cylindrical) and the longer or thicker the paper, the fatter the bead is from the core (rounder or saucer shaped). The width of the paper strip in addition to the above factors, impacts the shape of the bead. 

If I have confused you enough and you are on the verge of leaving the page, just hang on because I am going to explain with pictures what I mean by the above statements.

Here are some basic shaped beads.

Fig. 1: Basic shapes

Fig. 2: Round Beads and Dumble Beads

Round Beads and Dumble Beads.

The two beads on the top row and right and the small bead on top row left are circular beads. The white blue and purple bead in the top row is cylindrical but looks round as the hole in the bead is very thick.

The dumble shaped beads look like two similar shaped beads joined together.

Fig. 3: Cylinder Beads

Cylindrical Beads. 

These are made with rectangular paper. The tiny blue cylinder on the right is the regular tight coil made with a quilling strip.

Fig. 4: Conical Beads

Conical beads.

The blue white and multi coloured beads here are conical beads. These taper down as a cone.

Fig. 5: Long beads and Saucer beads

Long Beads and Saucer Beads.

The three beads on the right bottom are long beads with the thickness of the bead less than its length. The green and purple bead on the left is a saucer bead. Here the thickness of the bead outwards from the centre is larger than the width of the bead.

Now on to the details of how these varied shapes can be made.

Fig. 6: Paper marked for cutting

Here I have taken a used A4 paper and I first drew parallel lines along the longer edge of the paper making long rectangles. On this paper you can see rectangles of width 2 cm, 1 cm and 1/2 cm from left to right. Next I drew diagonal lines across each rectangle dividing the rectangle into triangles. You can see that a few of the rectangles on the right still don't have the diagonal line drawn.

Fig. 7: The cut triangles

Next I cut out the triangles using scissors. I used scissors for this tutorial but normally I just use my paper cutter and the scale on it to directly cut out the triangles. That saves me the previous step.

Here you can see the triangles of three different widths and same lengths.

Fig. 8: Bead rolling tool

I use a home made bead rolling tool for rolling the beads. It is basically a grill stick with a rolled paper in the centre to make a handle. I have slit the stick at one end to make a slot but I tend to use the side with out the slot using it as a needle tool.

I some times also use a tooth pick for making the beads but I find  the hole size made with a grill stick more appropriate.

Fig. 9: Bead shapes comparision

Here you can see the different shapes of beads made with different widths of paper. 

On the left, the beads are made with 2 cm thick strips. The ones in the centre are made with 1 cm thick strips and the ones on the right are made with 1/2 cm thick strips.

Since we used the same paper for all the beads, we have paper strips of same thickness. To make different shaped beads using this paper, I have stacked multiple papers increasing the thickness of the paper and have used that for making the different beads.

Fig. 10: Beads with 2 cm wide paper

Here you can see that the beads are getting fatter from bottom to top tending from a long shaped bead to a more rounder shaped bead.

The bead on the bottom is made with a single strip of paper. The one above it with 2 strips piled together and rolled. the next one is with 3 strips together and the top one with 4 strips. 

Note that you cannot join the strips end to end as in quilling as the shape of the paper is not rectangular. So you will have to pile them together. 

The length of the paper used is about 30 cm. We would have got a bead of similar thickness as the second bead from bottom had we used a paper strip that was 2 cm wide and 60 cm long. The only difference would be that the layers would be more closer and giving a neater effect. But getting hold of a longer paper and cutting the longer paper is more effort. So the choice is yours if you prefer a longer paper of pile more shorter papers.

I think we would get a perfectly round bead with 6 or 7 strips piled together. It is always a good idea to experiment with the paper you are going to use for your project and when you get the perfect shape you want, you make the rest of the beads using the same number of strips.

Fig. 11: Beads with 1 cm wide paper

Here again the beads are getting thicker to bottom to top. I have used one strip for the bottom bead, 2 for the middle one and 4 for the top one. 

You can see that since the width of the paper is 1 cm, we get a rounder bead with lesser number of strips compared to the strip that was 2 cm wide. 

Here we would have got a perfectly round bead with 3 strips. The top one with 4 strips is beginning to get flatter.

Fig. 12: Beads with 1/2 cm wide paper

Here the beads are made with 1/2 cm wide strips. Again the bottom most bead is made with 1 strip and progressing to 4 strips at the top.

Here we see that because the width of the paper is only 1/2 cm, we get a flatter bead with even a single strip. The beads here are tinier than the beads with a wider strip and it is easier to make a saucer bead with a narrower strip.

Fig. 13: Five beads with 1/2 cm wide paper

Here we have a 5th bead in addition to the previous 4 beads in Fig 12. Here you can see the four beads again from a different angle and scale.

The left most bead here is made with 9 strips of paper and is a nice saucer. 

Just to give a perspective the green and purple bead in fig 5 is made with 40 strips of 1/2 cm width.

Fig. 14: Some saucer beads

The saucer beads in my previous post are made with 1/2 cm wide and 45 cm long paper and this was a thicker paper so I could get saucer beads of same size with just 2 strips that I got with 9 strips in the previous figure.

Fig 15: Dumble Bead strip 

To make a dumble bead as in Fig 2, use the pattern in this figure. Changing the length, the width and thickness of the paper, you can come up with different shaped beads.

Fig 16: Paper Beads set

Fig 17: Paper bead set

This is a set that I have made with paper beads. I have used pages from an old magazine to make this.

I have used 32 paper beads for this set and used a total of 243 strips of paper that were 2 cm wide at the base of the triangles.

Fig 18: Paper bead necklace

The necklace is made of 21 paper beads of increasing size with the smallest beads made with 3 strips each and the largest one made with 24 strips.

Fig 19: Paper bead earrings

The earrings beads are made with 3 strips each. 

Fig 20: Paper bead Bracelet

The bracelet is made with 9 beads of 3 strips each.

Fig 21: Bracelet

The snug sitting bracelet.

After making the beads, I coat the beads with a PVA glue to harden the bead. After this dries up, the bead is again coated with either varnish or transparent nail polish to make give it a gloss and make it water resistant. 

Hope the tutorial was helpful. I would love to hear how you found the tutorial, things you found lacking and questions if I have missed something. 

The next tutorial will talk about giving colour to the beads and how different pattern paper give a different effect to the beads.

If you find my work inspiring and create something similar, please quote my work and blog in your post. I would also appreciate if you leave a comment. All budding artists do need a pat on the back! Thanks for visiting!

New life in a pond - with tutorial

The Homyachok scrap challenge about spring in a circle was at the back of my mind when I started with this project yesterday. Halfway through my project when I looked again at the challenge requirements, I realized that the challenge had expired and the next one, 'NEST' was on. So I modified a bit and here is the result. 

I am so happy and thrilled with the result as it has come out better than I had thought. This is a centerpiece representing a pond with a lotus flower and leaves. The clever duck has made its nest on the edge between some long grass. The  mother duck is with three little ducklings that have just hatched with two in the water and one still in the nest. There are broken egg shells in the nest and one whole egg that is ready to hatch any moment! The mother duck is taking its newborn ducklings for a first swim in the pond.

I am linking this project to

1. Craft Room - In the garden
2. Artistic Inspirations - Challenge 34, Fantasy
3. Fussy and Fancy - Spring Days
4. Pin and Tack - Spark your creativity
5. Creative Craft Challenges 2 - For the kids
6. Milk Coffee Challenge - Anything but square
7. Unstampabelles Challenges - #22 Anything but a card
8. Through the Craft Room Door - April 2-8 TTCRD Challenge
9. Homyachok-scrap-challenge : Nest and In a Circle

                

                

This time while making the project I took an extra effort to take snaps of the steps. So here is the tutorial of the project. As I was looking at images of real ducklings and ducks, I had to do hit and trial to come up to the correct dimensions for each part. 

I have used self cut paper using the hand shredder.

Pond Frame

Blue strips (3 mm) - 40 strips of 30 cm each

Pink strips (3 mm) - 40 strips of 30 cm each

I started with rolling the strips into loose coil. Then I pinched these into teardrops and joined them in a chain. These I then connected and this formed the frame of the pond.

    

Duckling 

    Supplies for 1 duckling

Yellow strips (3 mm) - 2 strips of 30 cm each

Yellow strips (1.5 mm) - 2 strips of 15 cm each

    Orange strips (1.5 mm) - 2 strips of 8 cm each

    Yellow strip (6 mm)  - 1 strip of 15 cm, fringed very finely

    Small black beads - 2

Start with rolling the yellow strips into tight coils and the orange strip into a slightly loose tight coil (just release the tight coil slightly without letting it loosen out completely)

 

    Now using the 3D dome (or any spherical shape) to shape the tight coils into hemispheres. Do this for one larger yellow coil and 2 smaller yellow coils.

Note that the dome should be smaller than the tight coil. In this picture as the dome C is larger than the tight coil, I have used the smaller dome B as shown in the picture above.

With the remaining larger yellow coil, shape it into a cone using a conical shape as a pencil. 

Now push one end of the tip to one side so you get a shape as a horn. Be careful while doing this because it is easy to pull too hard and let the inner coils escape out. If this happens the best is to start again with a new strip.

Always apply glue to the inside surface of any dimensioned shape so that it well keep its shape when the glue dries.

For the beak, shape the orange coils into a heart shape and give it some dimension with your nails. 

Join together the 2 bigger pieces (body)  and the 2 smaller pieces (head).

Now start wrapping the fringed tip on the body of the duckling starting from the narrow tip end.

Continue wrapping till the complete piece is covered with the fringed strip.

Now glue together the body, head and the beak. For the beak, first stick together the two heart shaped pieces at the wide end so that the narrower triangular side forms an open beak.

Now glue the beads and the duckling is ready.

Duck

Supplies for the duck

While strip (3 mm) - 1 strip of 150 cm (I joined together 5 strips of 30 cm each)

While strip (7 mm) - 1 strip of 150 cm (I joined together 5 strips of 30 cm each)

    While strip (1.5 mm) - 2 strips of 30 cm each

    While strip (1.5 mm) - 2 strips of 60 cm each

    Orange strips (1.5 mm) - 2 strips of 15 cm each

    White strip (3 mm)  - 1 strip of 30 cm

    Small black beads - 2

Make tight coils with the 2 long (150 cm) strips, the two narrow 30 cm strips and the one 30 cm strip. Make a very loose coil with the two 60 cm strips. Make slightly loose coils with the orange strips and shaping them into heart shape, make the beak as described in the steps for the duckling.

(In the picture here the two larger coils are both of 3 mm width. but I had to later replace one of them with the 7 mm strip)

And this is the reason why! Because the strips were too narrow, I was not able to shape them properly into a conical shape. So I had to start again with a wider strip.

The remaining steps for making the body and the head are the same as that for the duckling. The only difference here is that I inserted a tight coil between the head and the body. For the wings, create shaped teardrops with the 2 loose coils.

And assemble the beak and the wings on the duck like this. Glue on the two black beads for eyes.

Nest

Supplies for the nest and its content

Brown strips - Random size and number

While strips (1.5 mm) - 8 strips of 15 cam each

    Yellow strips (3 mm) - 2 strips of 30 cm each

    Yellow strip (6 mm) - 1 strip of 10 cm fringed very finely

    Orange strips (1.5 mm) - 2 strips of 8 cm each

    

For creating the nest randomly stick together brown strips on dome shape creating a nest. Create tight coils with the while strips to form the egg halves. Stick two halves to make one egg and let the other halves remain as halves. Shape the yellow strips into tight coils and create domes and stick together forming a ball. Cover it with the fringed strip. Make beaks from the orange strips and glue it to the yellow fringe covered ball. Glue the egg halves, the one full egg and the duckling hatch-ling in one half of the egg randomly in the nest.

Water

For the water effect, cut out a yellow circle that is slightly larger than the inner gap in the frame. I have used a normal office ink pad and sponge to give on water effect on the circle.

Lotus flower and leaves

For the lotus leaves, I created triangles from 1.5 mm green strips and joined them together to make a circle. I also husked a circle but forgot to take any pictures :( 

For the lotus flower, I used 1.5 mm pink and while strips. The top two layers are made with 7.5 cm long strips for each petal and the bottom layer is made with 15 cm long strips for each petal. I have made the teardrops by coiling together a pink and white strip to give a shaded effect.  A cone is placed inside the top layer petals.

Assembly

I first glued the circular paper (the water body) inside the frame.

To make the duck and ducklings stand erect, I stuck tiny circles under their bodies. The nest is stuck on the border of the pond on the frame. I inserted and glued some green diagonal cut strips on the pink and blue pieces of the frame surrounding the nest. The two tiny ducklings are close to the nest and the mother duck is further away all in swimming in a line. The lotus leaves are on one side of the pond along with the lotus flower.

Hope you enjoyed reading it. I enjoyed making it!

If you find my work inspiring and create something similar, please quote my work and blog in your post. I would also appreciate if you leave a comment. All budding artists do need a pat on the back! Thanks for visiting!