Testing out some textures ...

Well, I'm pleased to report that I sold quite a few quilled cards over the weekend at our market and village festival, so I'm busily re-stocking once again!

In addition to remaking some of my most popular designs (why change a successful formula?), I also decided it was high time I created something new ... and ended up revisiting a file of digital 'textured paper' graphics which I have had on my computer for ages but never actually used!  The images I've used as backgrounds in these two cards were actually freebies which came with one of the very first editions of the excellent Papers and Pixels e-zine, courtesy of their designer Laura Boetto.  They were originally intended for use in digital scrapbooking projects, but I processed them using my trusty Pages software to create some basic background panels - then added some quilling as you see here.

The method for making the flower on the first of these two cards needs no explanation, but I think it looks quite neat on top of that grainy, textured paper image.

The flower in the second card was created by making a two-tone eccentric coil using yellow and orange strips, then cutting and curling the ends of some of the outer loops. I also 'pinched' some of the remaining un-cut loops of the coil to give the flower centre a teardrop shape. The background 'texture' image is not quite so obvious in this picture (blame the bad light on this torrentially rainy English summer's day!), but it has a subtle chequerboard effect rather like a woven fabric.

Now I'm off to play with something else that's completely new!  Hope to share it soon ...