The Challange .............. Learning to Quill.

So, Quilling.................aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I had never done it before and all of a sudden it is part of  my demos. What was I to do.........yep......INTERNET. I spent a very peaceful few hours on line whilst drinking lots of coffee and oh boy oh boy did I find some absolute gems. There are great sites out there and as I had never quilled before I thought the best form of flattery is to copy, copy, copy........lol.

Its been a few years since I have been in the position of having to copy a project but I honestly hadn't a clue what I was doing!  I started off by learning the basic shapes

Then it was time to jump head first into giving it a go. 5 Billion paper coils later I was finally ready to try making a card. Here are some of the samples.

 I saw these little baby feet on http://www.quilledcreations.com and fell in love with them. Lots of playing later and voila. I used the XCut nesting dies to create the frame

 Nikki Smith showed me her quilled snowflakes so off I went in search for one to make. I looked up Quilled Snowflake in Google images and there were loads of snowflake examples. You can just pick one you like and give it a go.

I love this card below. Now I wish I could say I thought it up myself but sadly no. This believe it or not was the first card I decided to tackle when it came to learning to quill. I reckoned the bigger the project the better I would be at quilling by the end of it. I love how it turned out. The original can be found here: http://www.kanchongshop.com/gen1-1-1.html

Now this card is all me, well at least my design! I found all the shapes on .....you guessed it.........the internet. LOL. My absolute favorite shape of all are the roses. I just love them and there is a great tutorial for them on You Tube, just look up "How to fold a paper rose" it is by Paper6262. I also used her videos to learn the basic shapes I need to know to make all these cards. Very talented lady. I used the new stepper cards from DoCrafts, I adore these cards there are just so many ways to work with them (samples will be coming soon!).

This ornament below was based on a fold shown in the DoCrafts Magazine November/December Issue as shown by Jo Austin. 

I enjoyed making these projects so much more than I thought. Quilling had never interested me but wow I am totally hooked on it now. Every year at Christmas when I have some time off I pick something to do with my spare time and this year its going to be quilling. I envision January to be filled with loads of paper roses and little quilling items on my cards!

Do Crafts have brought out a Quilling Kit but sadly due to age mis-labeling on the kit they have had to recall it from the shops. Once the labeling is fixed and the shops get it back in stock it is well worth getting your hands on it and starting up a new section in your cardmaking. Some of the shops are still selling the separate pack of quilling papers and with them you can make the paper roses shown above and the ornament, just use the needle on your pokey tool instead.

Well I hope you like the cards and if you haven't given quilling a try maybe now is the time to give it a go. It leaves you with a lovely feeling of quiet satisfaction when you produce your shapes and turn them into designs on cards.