Think Spring!

 I don’t know about you, but I am SO done with this winter . . .  so I am thinking butterflies. I like to make realistc looking butterflies. I don’t use a pattern for those, I just look at the pictures in the Audubon book and try to duplicate the look with quilling,, but I also make “fun’ butterflies.

This is a very simple quilled butterfly made with ring coils. You can make a ring coil by wrapping a strip several times around anything round (ballpoint pen, the handle of a wooden spoon etc.) or you can use one of the many quilling templates  available. There is also a cute little item called a circle sizer which serves the same purpose as a template (it’s just smaller.) Once you’ve made your ring coils, pinch them into the shapes you want for the wings. Make a 6” marquis for the body, a 11/2” tight roll (squeezed into an oval shape) for the head, and a 2” open heart for the antenna. I used a new Fiskars butterfly border punch  on the card and glued the little “fall” butterflies around the ring coil butterfly. On the inside of the card I glued a strip of 1/8” quilling paper and a wider strip of colored paper which I also punched. 

The next card is made using a different technique. It is called alternate side looping. I used three strips for the wing and back half of the butterfly. The body is a 6” marquise. The head is a 1 ½” tight roll. The antenna is a 1” strip folded in half and both ends curled in the same direction. The daisy has a 3” tight roll for a center, flattened into an oval. The Petals are 6” teardrops. The stem is just a 2” strip finger curled with 3’ open coils on either side. Enjoy!

Another Quilled Heart

Have you made your Valentine cards yet? No? Well, here is one more Valentine pattern for you. Once again, I started with a lightly pencil drawn heart outline to follow. I then arranged 5” open S scrolls around the outline to be sure I could get the “fit” right. After gluing the S scrolls down, I added 2” tight rolls on both sides where the S scrolls meet. I added a 5” teardrop at the bottom of the heart. To finish the card, I used a heart border punch on both sides of the card and backed it with a contrasting color. I decided to do this card in pastels rather than the traditional red, I think it is too pretty to use just for Valentines Day. Enjoy!

FYI Heart border punches (the one shown as well as the circle heart punch and the heart corner/border punch) are on sale until February 11th)

A Special Quilled Heart

I promised you a different kind of heart this week. This couldn’t be any more “out of the box” than our typical quilled hearts.This week I’d like to introduce you to Sarah Yakawonis. She contacted me after seeing the picture of the 3-D quilled scull that Kim Wallace sent me that was posted on this blog. Sarah said that she had done a two dimensional scull and would like to try a 3-D scull. I checked out her blog (http://yakawonis.blogspot.com/ )and was amazed at her anatomical quilling. I asked her permission to feature her here and share her work with you. She graciously accepted.

Sarah is a graduate of the Maine College of Art and works as a graphic artist in a publication design studio in Portland, Maine. “We make books, it's really fulfilling because I love everything about books.”

I asked her how she learned to quill. “, I learned quilling on my own. But I used the skills like flawless glue work from school. My teachers were really hard about stuff like glue showing, it taught me to hold everything I make up to a level of scrutiny I would have never know existed if I hadn't gone to art school. . . . I fell in love with quilling early last summer and played around with a lot of the traditional quilling motifs. While I did learn the techniques of quilling by doing this, none of the traditional themes held my interest for very long. I was looking for a subject that would. I guess I was looking for a something that was more macabre than the traditional flowers and letterforms. I came up with the idea of anatomical quilling while in the wilderness of Maine; it just kind of came to me like being hit by a lightning bolt of inspiration! I did a few pieces and knew I'd do a lot more. I really love repetitive tasks, and I enjoy how long each one takes. For example my quilled heart took about 33 hours to complete. Each part of the body is so complex! I love figuring out how to take the illustration I work from and translate it into quilling! It's so much fun and so satisfying to see the finished work!”

I asked Sarah if she planned to “market” her work, she replied,” I'm trying to figure out how to get my work into galleries. I'm preparing to approach galleries in Portland and nation wide, First Friday is a big art day in Portland so I'm waiting for gallery Curators to be a little less busy when I approach them. I hope it's a fruitful endeavor!

I may start selling them online, I'm looking for the best platform to showcase my work. I also have to figure out how to price my work, no small task when there is nothing out there to compare it to.

Be sure to stop by Sarah's blog to see some great close ups of her work. Good luck Sarah! I’m happy to have made your acquaintance.!