A quilled engagement card

I love using photos on my quilled cards, as you know, but I often have to remind myself that simpler plain backgrounds can sometimes look just as good if not better! For this engagement card, I just printed a plain purple heart and added some quilling! I'm pleased with the effect of the red quilled hearts and mauve/purple filigree against the purple background. I've also used a small section from one of my favourite copper metallic strips for the ring.

I spent all day yesterday preparing a presentation on quilling which I have been asked to give to my local Women's Institute group next month. I'm going to talk a little bit about the history of quilling, and then discuss tools and the various quilling shapes. I've decided to prepare a lot of closed loose coils in advance so that people can try pinching them into teardrops, marquises, bunny ears etc, and then I will take the shapes they have made and assemble them into a butterfly and a flower. After that, I will show them how to roll their own coils and hopefully produce quilled flowers to mount on to gift tags which they can take away. I'm looking forward to doing this presentation, as a lot of people have already said they are interested and I think it will be fun to do a bit of teaching. I'll let you know how I get on!