Breaking the silence!

When Quilliance is silent for more than a couple of days, you know that my time is being taken up by something big.  Sure enough, my main focus for the past few days has been preparing for an art show which took place in our village this afternoon - and I was right there amongst the paintings and the pottery with my quilling!

I took my quilled jewellery and the biggest range of cards that I could muster ... and it was SO worthwhile!  Lots of sales, lots of friendly people, and the huge satisfaction that comes from taking part in a successful event on a sunny summer's day.

The show took place in a big marquee set along the edge of our local cricket green, and it attracted a great crowd of people.  I took along some quilling to do, and quickly gained an admiring audience making the usual comments along the lines of: "that looks so fiddly", and "I would never have the patience to do that"!  Some have signed up for my next demo in a few weeks time, and I'm so looking forward to proving them wrong!

Here's my display, in a picture taken just before the show opened:

The only trouble now is that I've got my regular market again on Friday ... and an awful lot of replacement quilling to do!

A new quilled watch

I've just finished decorating this craft watch which was the other part of my prize from the Creative Quilling Forum jewellery challenge (along with the 1.5mm quilling strips which I mentioned a few days ago). The very narrow strips are ideal for this application, as you can layer them up and still get the transparent watch cover to fit on over the top. It's a bit of a challenge finding a design to fit into the crescent-shaped working area of the watch, but I decided that half a Royal Flower would be just the thing! I have decorated watches with quilling before, but I particularly like the format of this one because the cover simply snaps into place on the watch face without requiring any glue around the edge. You can buy them from http://www.creativequilling.com.au/

A 'royal' dragonfly

Why should flower petals be the only recipients of the 'royal' treatment? I decided to create this dragonfly with wings made from huskings with twisted loops, using the technique that quillers around the world are now calling 'royal' after Asma's Royal Flower.

I used copper-edged strips for the borders of the wings, making a sparkly contrast to the rather dark and mysterious pond water that appears in the background photo. I thought the lily floating in this pond looked great against the darkness of the water, and hopefully my dragonfly does too!

Two more 'royal' huskings to complement some squares

I have always liked this four-square format for my cards, so I have returned to it while fulfilling a special order for a 'first anniversary' design. The couple who will receive it love nature, hence the flower and the butterfly. But I'm glad I left the other two squares plain, as they make the perfect backdrop for these huskings which have received the 'royal' treatment through twisting of the ends!




The 'Royal Flower' technique was invented by Asma Ahmad Bahari, and named on Facebook by Amna Al Fardh. Thanks, ladies - I could so easily sit and make these huskings all day long ...!

Quilling on through thick and thin!

Lauren over at the Creative Quilling Forum kindly sent me a multi-coloured pack of 1.5mm quilling strips as part of my prize for winning the Forum's recent quilled jewellery challenge. I was really looking forward to receiving this, as I normally always use 3mm strips, and I was keen to try using narrower ones for a different visual effect.

Having seen 1.5mm strips in use at the quilling workshop I went to recently, I knew that these ultra-thin strips would make it possible to create some very delicate motifs. In fact, the ladies I met on that occasion all said they would never go back to using 3mm strips again! Now, I'm not sure that I would go quite that far, but it does seem to me that the thin strips offer a lot of potential for use in combination with wider ones.

I quilled this card today, using a motif created with a standard width 3mm husking combined with some layered spirals and teardrops made using the 1.5mm strips. This approach makes it possible to layer quilling without adding to the overall depth, which is particularly important here in the UK where cards need to fit within a maximum 5mm width in order to avoid a mailing surcharge. I also like the way you can work within the background 3mm depth of the main husking to angle the narrower quillings that are layered.



Here are some close-ups to show you what I mean:

Quilling beneath the waves!

Here's another card design featuring a little quilled octopus, starfish, some weed and a rock!  I used the rainbow coloured background, because the graduating colours give the impression of water laying above a sandy sea bed. I think the sun is shining up above!

So now I have finished re-stocking my card rack (for the moment, at least ...!)

It's time to start working on something new...

Quilled cards on the production line!

I've sold a lot of my quilled cards lately, which is great! But of course it means that I need to stock up again, pronto, because I've got several sales events coming up between now and the end of the month. The first of these is a Women's Institute meeting on Thursday, where there's going to be announcement about my recent win in the WI craft competition. This has already caused quite a bit of excitement amongst my fellow WI committee members, so I really can't go along to the meeting with a half-empty card box!

On Sunday, I began printing out a load of card blanks with photographic backgrounds: some of my most popular designs, and several that I haven't used for quite a while and had almost forgotten about! I've been quilling them ever since, and although the pictures may have been used before, much of the quilling is quite new as I'm trying to make use of some newly-learned techniques. Here's a small selection ... and I'm hoping to have some totally new ideas to show you before too long!