A right royal struggle!

One of the Quilling Guild's competition categories for last year's Display Of Work was a quilled card to celebrate our Queen's Diamond Jubilee (60 years on the British throne) in 2012. I thought really hard about entering this competition, but just couldn't get my head around it. What would I quill? A diamond? A coat of arms? A crown? Inspiration simply would not come ... so I backed off, and did not enter anything.

But ... what goes around, comes around. Now that we're actually in the Jubilee year, the challenge has raised its head again! This time it's the Hampshire Federation of Women's Institutes holding a 'make a card for the Diamond Jubilee' competition - and my fellow WI members have INSISTED that I enter.

Oh dear - back to studying the Royal Crown again! The real thing is so ornate and intricate that I could easily spend the rest of my life quilling it. So I decided to create a simplified, stylised version representing just the central section which will - hopefully - look OK sitting flat on a card.

I have found this project to be a REAL challenge! I started with the base of the crown, using teardrops and tight coils to represent the ermine (white fur with black spots) that encircles it. Next, I created a section to represent three of the precious jewel clusters, surrounded by an infill of gold 'beehive' curls. Then comes some two-tone purple 'beehive' on a background of purple card, to represent the velvet centre of the crown. Then there are two crosses, each created using a set of four vortex coils squished into triangles. Oh yes, and an golden orb, plus a strip of gold paper up the middle which is mounted on card so that there's a slight ledge to hold the purple beehive in place ... do you know, I'm feeling tired just telling you about it!

I really don't know whether I'm pleased with this crown or not - but I've done it now, and I'm desperate to move on to something else!! So this is the design which is going to be mounted on to my card, which is unlikely ever to get sent to the Queen - but I'll let you know how I get on!