The joys of quilling in black and white

Over the past week or so, I've been fascinated by the idea of using black and white photos as backgrounds, with just a small section of colour picked out.

So I've created these two cards as an experiment. I used the iPhoto software on my Mac to convert two of my own photos to monochrome. Then, using the Pages word processing software, I pulled the images into pre-defined shapes before printing them on to the front of the cards. I used brush marker pens to colour in a single section of each picture, before adding some small quilled details (hooray - I'm back to quilling again!!)

I think this technique has potential to create some unusual and eye-catching cards. It could be used for framed pictures, too, so I'm glad that I gave it a try.

Also today, I finally decided to make use of a quilled butterfly that's been lying around on my table for ages. I had originally used light green and purple strips to make the wings (inspired by the colours of a sea anemone!), but I thought the end result was actually a little bit dull on the brown body. So today, I 'gilded' the whole butterfly with metallic and glitter gel pens, which brightened it up quite well.  And I found just the right background to mount it on, in order to create this card. So my butterfly has a home at last!