Now I've got the cuttle bug!!

Guess what I got for my birthday? A Cuttlebug embossing and die-cutting machine! So now I'm off on a new creative tack, and I've definitely got the 'cuttle bug' big time!!

Over the past few months I've noticed quite a few quillers producing some beautiful work on embossed backgrounds, so now I'm trying it for myself.

Here's my first attempt: an embossed butterfly on an oval cut-out, complemented by some quilling and mounted on a card with an embossed edge pattern. Once I'd processed the butterfly shape in the Cuttlebug, I found it quite easy to colour it in using brush marker pens. I decided to quill the flower using 1.5mm strips for two reasons: firstly to complement the delicacy of the embossed side pattern, and secondly to restrict the overall thickness of the finished card since I'd already had to glue on the cut-out oval as an extra layer. (Here in the UK, we have to pay more in postal charges if a card is more than 5mm thick, so every extra millimetre counts!) The vertical purple line is a 3mm quilling strip.







For the second card, I embossed a cut-out oval with a different pattern, coloured it very roughly with a few strokes of a brush marker (just to catch the raised sections) and attached it to a printed card base. The quilling was again done with 1.5mm strips. I have a friend who ONLY quills in this width, and every time I see her work I am struck by the beauty and delicacy of the motifs she creates. It makes 3mm work appear quite chunky in comparison.

Here's a close-up of the quilling on the embossed background. I think I am going to have fun with this ...