A floral fantasy in quilling

First of all, I'd like to say a really big "thank you" to everyone who has so kindly commented on my last two posts about the quilled pictures that I entered into the 2012 Guild competitions. I have been surprised and delighted by the favourable response to these two pieces! For those of you who have email addresses registered on Blogger, I have tried to send you a reply direct. In other cases, I've done my best to contact people via their blogs. For anyone I may have missed, however, please know that I appreciate your comments very much.

It's been a hectic few days for me, putting up photos of the recent Quilling Guild meeting and Shared Ideas Day on Facebook, and responding to the huge number of comments that were posted as a result. There has been an enormous amount of interest shown in the event by quillers right around the world, for whom sight of the photos definitely seems to have been "the next best thing to being there". For those of you who would love to have attended this fabulous quilling event in the UK, I've got some good news: plans for next year's event are already well underway, giving you plenty of advance notice if you would like to join us in 2013. So make a note in your 2013 diary for 10th and 11th August, when the Quilling Guild's 30th Anniversary Celebration of Quilling will be held at Liverpool University in the north of England.  This will be the Guild's 5th International Festival of Quilling, and detailed information will be published in a few weeks' time ... believe me, you won't want to miss it!

Meanwhile, I'm coming back down to earth now with a picture of my third competition entry for 2012 which was made for the Freestanding Quilling category at the Guild's recent display. No prizes for me here, but I was quite pleased with this little 'floral fantasy' piece which is mounted on a self-supporting stand made from two extra-wide 'P' coils. I used some open filigree coils and huskings for the green sections, plus a cut eccentric coil for the central bloom, whose spiky pink and purple petals are twisted in various different ways. I added a 'white mist' of unsupported 'beehive twists' in the background too, plus some classic folded roses to decorate the stand. The blue zig-zag decoration on the front is just a strip of blue gift wrap cut with pinking shears!

It looks big in the photo, but the whole piece is actually just 12cm tall.

For anyone planning a freestanding design, I think the large 'P' coil supports (made from strips cut from card) offer quite a bit of potential as a stable base for quilling, and they look quite elegant too!