Saturday 29 January 2011

Life is sweet for my Valentine

Hi and welcome to Quilliance! If you've arrived here from Handmade by Regina on the Life Is Sweet blog hop, then you're in the right place!

Valentine's Day is nearly upon us, so I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to post a Valentine card design. And what could be a sweeter background for the card than these gorgeous chocolates which I received as a treat on February 14th last year? Before eating the chocolates, I arranged them into a pattern and took a photograph, thinking that it would make an ideal subject for romantic cards. I have printed a section of the photo directly on to cardstock for this project, but you could easily cut out and glue down a similar picture and add some hand lettering if you wanted to copy this design manually.

The quilling is all quite simple. First, I made two hearts by joining pairs of teardrops, using deep red strips that I had run through my crimping machine. The crimping gives extra body to quilled coils: they tend to retain their tension when you remove them from your coiling tool, and because of that they are quite easy to shape into matching pairs. I used two half-length strips to make the teardrops for the smaller heart, and two full-length ones for the big heart.

Then I looked for some different colour strips to use for the filigree work. I ended up choosing brown and cream to echo the 'chocolates' theme. The filigree strips are all just 'S' shaped coils, with the ends coiled in opposite directions. For the brown one, I coiled more at one end than the other to give an asymmetric effect. Then I made two smaller S's from shorter lengths of cream strips, gluing them on to the centre of the brown strip opposite each other so that they form another small heart shape in the design. So there you have it: two ways of making quilled hearts in one pattern!




If you are a first-time visitor to Quilliance, do have a look around while you are here - I'd be delighted to welcome you as a Follower.

Then, when you are ready, hop off to the next Life Is Sweet destination at Suzana's Quilling With Fun blogspot.

In case you've got lost along the way, here's the complete list of sweet hopping blogs for today's event:





North American Quillers:






South American Quiller:

European Quillers:


Asian Quillers:


African Quiller:

Australian Quiller:

33 comments:

  1. Phillippa!!! Those hearts are adorable!!!! You had a great idea!! Thanks a lot for sharing!!!
    Have a marvellous weekend!!
    Hugs
    Regina

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  2. Great job Phillippa. So glad I stopped by on my way around the world.
    Hugs, antonella :-)

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  3. good thing about blog hop is that we get to have many ideas .. and now I'm thinking book marks after seeing your adorable quilled hearts ..
    so gonna copy your idea if you allow me ..
    thank you so much .. oh yeah i don't know many quillers from Europe so thanks for this chance :)

    Best Wishes
    Amna

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  4. that is a very cute card!
    cheers from Brazil!

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  5. Phillippa! Those hearts are adorable! Love ur work.
    Smiles,
    Shruti

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  6. Beautiful work...I love it. Thank You for sharing your creation!
    quilt 4 fun 2 at hot mail dot com

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  7. I see your signature trick of using photographs with quilling =) perfect for the season!

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  8. Phillippa,beautiful card. How neat that you took the photo last year to be used for this cute project. Love it!!

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  9. Congratulations! Your card is so beatufil! I love quilling!
    Hugs, Luciana.

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  10. Very nice work on all your cards!
    I am so happy to have found this blog hop!
    Thank you for sharing.
    I am now a follower.
    Cricut Matriarch@yahoo.com

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  11. Lovely quilling thanks for sharing.
    Debbie
    http://craftywizard.blogspot.com
    debbie_craine at hotmail dot com

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  12. lovely card, your cards are always inspiring!
    Paula

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  13. Cute card! Love the hearts =) The quilling adds some magic to the card, it really does! Have a great weekend!

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  14. Lovely work Phillippa! I am so glad you were part of this Hop. I now have more inspirational blogs to stalk when my creative juices are asleep...lol
    Quilly Hugs,
    Linda

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  15. Philippa. I really though I posted a comment this morning (but I was still half asleep). I love how you managed to meld two of my favorite hobbies: photography and quilling. Thank you SO much for being part of this blog hop. Have a SWEET day!!!

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  16. Philippa,

    What a great idea to use a picture of the chocolates (I love the effect of printing it directly onto the card stock)!!! :) And your quilled hearts & scrolls are divine!

    Thank you so much for sharing,

    Jennifer
    partridgelu at yahoo dot com

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  17. Wonderful card. I have silently hopped over your blog a few times before. I am glad that this blog hop gave me the opportunity to my appreciation of your work in words.

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  18. That is a great card, I love the heart motif. I'm so behind on my visits today and I really wanted to check out all the sites for this blog hop, I'll have to save it for later though.

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  19. Philippa,

    Love the way you bring in another medium with your quilling. Really "sweet".

    Jocelyn

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  20. Your quilled heart flowers are marvelous. I'm so amazed that this art form. TFS and the chance to win.

    Christel (Scrappin' Sista)
    http://onescrappinsista.blogspot.com
    askscrappinsista (at) hotmail (dot) com

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  21. priceless.... love your work, I see the watches you have on here, AMAZING!
    I am a new follower of your blog.
    TFS
    Bonnie C
    http://ascrapabove.blogspot.com
    ascrapabove(at)aol(dot)com

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  22. Your card is beautiful!
    Thank you for sharing!!
    hugs
    http://marcia-cartoes.blogspot.com/ - (from Brazil)

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  23. I love your style...combining photography and quilling. Beautiful and inspiring !!!

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  24. Nice work philippa. Love your card.

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  25. Wow, 26 comments and counting! Thanks EVERYONE for your visits and saying such great things - I really appreciate you all.

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  26. Wow, I can see that you're a very diligent and talented quiller! Love your designs and keep up the lovely work :)

    Jolene, Malaysia <3

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  27. Simply beautiful!!! I love the heart! TFS

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  28. This is a very sweet card for valentine. Your quilling is so neat. Thanks for participating in the hop as well.

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  29. Hi Philippa
    I did stop by your blog this weekend but never managed to leave you a comment. I love your hearts and crimping them before hand...I might try this too if you don't mind.

    I also wanted to thank you for following my blog...your site is one of the top 3 referrals to my site so I wanted to give you a shout out.

    Thanks
    Cheryl

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  30. What a perfect Valentine. I love it.

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  31. Your combinations are wonderful!It was a great tour! I'm glad you were in it!
    Suzana

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