A summertime scene for the darkest days of winter

Summertime garden scene, a photo by Philippa Reid on Flickr.

Well, the shortest day of the year is nearly upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere - so I thought it was high time I posted this 'sunshine' card design to remind us all of the warmth of summer!

I made this card for the North American Quilling Guild competition in 2012, in which the theme was 'A backyard garden scene'. I decided to use an oval aperture card as a frame for my quilled picture, which is set on a solid background of vortex coils that form the sky and grass. I love working with square vortex shapes - they are so much more amenable than circular coils for filling up awkward spaces!

The sun is made from a crimped coil, and I have used the beehive technique for most of the foliage and flowers. I also couldn't resist adding a few 'twisted wheatear' shapes for some of the larger leaves. The fence panels are cut from plain gold quilling strips.

The result? An unusual image which was probably way too quirky to gain many votes in the competition. But I'm pleased with it, and I'm sharing it today as an antidote to the gloom of the winter solstice!

Quilling with the elderly

Christmas quilling project in an elderly care home, a photo by Philippa Reid on Flickr.

I'm so proud of the quilling done recently by my enthusiastic 'students' who live in an elderly care home! All aged in their 80s and 90s, and all suffering from varying degrees of dementia (plus some physical disabilities), they nevertheless managed to produce some lovely quilled snowflakes, baubles and stars to decorate these Christmas trees!

I love working with the elderly ... and they all absolutely love quilling! Because they find it rather difficult to manipulate coils, I generally take a lot of pre-rolled coils with me, in varying colours, so that all they have to do is press the coils into different shapes. Then I can help them with assembling things like snowflakes, and with gluing their quilled shapes down onto a background. Many of them have very clear ideas about where they want their quilled pieces to go ... and I think that, after this particular workshop, we ended up with some lovely Christmas designs!

Now we're already thinking ahead towards quilling some Easter chickens!!

Still here!

Quilled 'sport theme' card, a photo by Philippa Reid on Flickr.

Quilling workshops ... Christmas markets ... gearing up for the launch of the Quilling Guild's new members' blog ... well, those are just a few of my excuses for the lack of posts over the last couple of weeks.

I have been quilling - honestly! - but it's been work on another of those 'secret projects' that I'm going to have to keep under wraps for a little while yet.

So, because it really is high time I broke the silence, I'm going to share with you a card that I entered into the Guild's recent competitions for 2012. The theme for the Greetings Card Category this year was 'Sport', so I decided to adopt an Olympic theme with a row of medals (gold, silver and bronze), alongside the Olympic flame and a winner's laurel wreath.

As you can see, I used a cut and folded tent card for this design, and created the ribbons for the medals using two-tone 'beehive' twists and a coloured paper background. The medals themselves were made using crimped, solid-coil strips edged with shiny metallics.

More from Quilliance soon - I promise!