Back to reality!

Well, enough of all these 'scribbles' - although they certainly do seem to have got everyone's imagination working overtime ... and I'm happy about the favourable comments they have received.

Digital background courtesy of Laura Boetto at Papers and Pixels

Now it's back to reality for me with a more conventional design. This card was made for my daughter-in-law's birthday earlier in the week, and I'm glad to say she was very pleased with it. I made the flower petals using ring coils which were pressed into a teardrop shape and then embellished with contrasting S coils inside.

Apparently, open rings were very popular in Victorian times among English quillers who practised their art using a commercial kit called 'Mosaicon'. Many of the basic shapes we know today were created from open rings and then decorated inside as I've done here. I formed my rings by winding strips around the circular shaft of a rubber stamp. It makes a change from the familiar closed loose coils that we use so often these days, and I like the potential for embellishing the inside space. I'm sure that modern quillers could draw a lot of inspiration from these old techniques. Meanwhile, of course, I couldn't resist adding a 21st century element by placing my quilling on a printed digital background!