It started with a punch ...

Regular followers of Quilliance will know that that I'm really at my happiest when making up designs as I go along. Sometimes there's the basic seed of an idea in my head, but it doesn't really gather momentum until I get started, after which one thing simply leads me right on to another!

Well, it was the same with the card I'm going to show you today. Looking at it now, I'm thinking that it's actually a bit of a crazy, 'off the wall' design - but maybe that simply reflects the inner workings of my mind!

Anyway, as the title of this post suggests, it started with a punch. This was actually a very clever little border punch manufactured by Tonic Studios, which I purchased at a craft show last weekend. These punches have a special gearing mechanism which makes them almost effortless to use, and they don't get jammed up either! What's more, they are designed so that you can see exactly where to position your card when punching sequentially to make a border - and you can use them as corner punches, too. Well, you know what it's like - I just had to have one! And then, of course, I just had to use it!

So, as I say, it started with a punch. I created a punched border along the front right-hand edge of the card, and decided it would look good with a colour showing through it. A yellow iris-folding strip seemed perfect for this, pasted on the inside of the card. I was pleased with the yellow, as it reminded me of spring flowers - and I thought that some bright magenta features would look great with it. This led me on to punching out some shapes in magenta paper, and adding some random experimental quilling using speciality strips that I had recently purchased from JJ Quilling Design.

The quilled shape at the bottom right is another of my 'cut eccentric coils' made from a 'sandwich' of gold-edged gold, lime green and silver-edged sliver 3mm strips. The combination of silver and gold edging created a very glitzy top surface with just hint of green showing through.

Above that is a row of three vortex coil shapes, bordered by another cut eccentric coil made from silver and gold strips glued together. (Oh, and just for fun, I had cut these strips down to 1.5mm width for extra delicacy.)

Finally, for the top-most magenta shape, I made an asymmetric 'S' coil and squished the largest coil into a vortex - well, sometimes you just have to try these things ...

I wonder what a psychologist would make of this design?!