Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Quilling

The art of paper filigree is not a quick, mass-produced artform nor is it a simple craft, it is much more. I'm sor glad that more people are starting to learn the art of quilling which has surprisingly been around for hundreds of years! While it is not difficult to learn how to make quilled patterns, it does require a good eye for detail, time, and patience in order to make nice eye-pleasing designs! I'm sure once you learn how to do quilling you'll find it relaxing and fun but you must give it time when you first get started.

Surprisingly, quilling is not difficult to learn how to do but it does take some time and patience since you are working with intricate designs and small pieces of paper. You just need a few proper tools and the time to work on your quilling. The great thing about the art of paper quilling is that almost anyone at any age can learn how to quill paper after just a little bit of practice. You can work on your quilling creations for a few minutes or for many hours. It depends on how quickly you want to work; although many professional quillers will suggest that quilling does take quite some time. I’m pretty sure that once you get started quilling, you won’t want to stop. However, if you are just wanting to learn quilling to add a few designs to your scrapbook or card making, you can do that in very little time and find it fairly easy to master quickly. Quilling at its basic, is rolling a strip of paper around a tool then shaping it. Quilled paper shapes are then formed into a larger design and glued together. Once you learn the basic coils and scrolls, you’ll be able to create artwork and patterns in very little time.

I was relieved to find out that it does not take long to make beautiful quilled creations once you get the basic shapes learned since that is the foundation you can really begin to have fun making larger projects. If you wanted to, you could definitely spend many hours on larger and more intricate designs if you’d like to create masterpieces and stand alone art, instead of just small quilled patterns for cards and scrapbook pages. Large quilled patterns are usually works of art that can be framed for show and that is only one small part of the way that paper filigree is used. Most of the designs you’ll probably make at home with your paper filigree will be patterns to embellish other crafts you are doing so rest assured that it does not need to take all day just to make a few quilled flowers; although anyone that looks at your artwork might think you spent a whole lot more time on it than you really did! The great thing about quilling is that it looks a lot more difficult and time consuming than it actually is to do so you can make something really impressive to show off!

I typically refer to this art as quilling but this paper craft has a few other names it is known by as well that you might see me talk about. Maybe you have heard it called one of these names such as: paper filigree, rolled paper décor,paper rolling, or filigrana. They are really all the same thing, its just that this art form goes by a variety of names depending largely on what country you live in and where you have learned this paper art. Whatever you chose to call it, try quilling once and you’ll surely be hooked on a fun paper craft that can provide many hours of enjoyment for yourself and even children. Quilling makes gorgeous artwork to add as an embellishment to another craft you currently create, especially homemade greeting card making and scrapbooking pages. Whatever name you call it, paper quilling is a lot of fun and easy to do with step by step instructions geared for beginners.

Quilling paper allows you to be creative with the basic coils and scrolls you’ll learn how to make as a beginner. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the variety of quilling patterns you can create with just a few different types of quilled basics. Just remember again that you do need to have a bit of patience (especially as a beginner quiller) since you are working with small tools and small pieces of paper, so take time and do not rush your patterns or else they will be uneven and unprofessional. Each small coil or scroll will be just one tiny portion of the overall design so you want every piece of your pattern to look nice before adding it to your final design. Remember to have fun and make your designs as detailed and intricate as you’d like. Take time for some trial and error as you learn and you’ll soon be amazed at how quickly you are able to make some really cool quilled designs.

Many advanced quilling patterns will require that you spend hours and days or even weeks and months to create a very involved and intricate design. There is really something for all ability levels with paper filigree; some of the quilled creations I've seen are even 3 dimensional which is really neat but of course takes quite a bit more time to be so detailed and intricate.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Quilling for Beginners

The art of paper quilling has been around for centuries and certainly regained a new appreciation as a great form of art lately. Quilling uses long strips of paper to create coils and shapes, with a quilling tool, which are then formed together to create beautiful patterns such as quilled flowers. This paper art is also known as paper filigree which comes from the way that the paper is rolled.

If you are looking to learn how to do quilling, it can be really simple. For beginners, you can use strips of paper cut on a paper cutter (if you cannot find quilling strips in your local craft store). Just be sure that you do not use a thick paper like cardstock since it is very difficult to coil nicely. Then you will need to roll the strips around a toothpick for example (if you do not yet have a quilling tool to make it easiest). You will find that although you can use some of these cheap alternatives for quilling, the best way to create professional looking and easy to make quilling designs is to invest a few dollars into quilling paper strips and a few proper quilling tools. The basic tools and supplies you need for quilling can be purchased for under $20 so it really is an inexpensive art or craft compared to most.

Practice making your coils into a variety of shapes like squares, teardrops, marquises, and triangles. There are many more basic shapes you can also make to create an amazing and intricate completed pattern, but these are some of the basics.

Remember that quiling is a 3D art form so you can create layers of quilled shapes and not just lay them flat in a single level on your card. Quilling is a beautiful form of art that will certainly amaze and inspire many when they see your beautiful creation. And don’t forget that quilling is also a great craft for children since they can coil paper and create designs as well.

If you need some ideas on what to create with your quilling paper, just look around your house at some of your favorite items and begin to form those shapes with your paper strips until you have a complete pattern. If you are a beginner this will take some time, so for now just continue to practice the basic quilled coils and shapes so you can make larger designs in the future.

Quilling is a beautiful way to express your creativity with paper and a few simple tools. Remember to use a variety of colors and shapes and have fun creating quilled designs. If you need some lesson and want some patterns to follow, check out www.LearnQuilling.com for free quilling instructions and a fun quilling pattern for beginners.

Friday, February 5, 2010

An Introduction to Quilling, Paper Filigree, Quiling

Quilling (often called paper filigree or quiling) is a paper art form where you learn to coil, curl, twist, or fringe long strips of paper into a large variety of shapes, creating intricate, beautiful patterns and pieces of artwork. Quilling takes some practice to get the hang of but is a much easier craft to do than it seems. You’ll certainly be complimented by many people when they see your quilled creations since this is a paper craft that looks very detailed and time consuming. However, you will find with simple to follow step-by-step instructions, the basics of quilling are easy to master. Then you can start to make your own patterns and designs with ease!

The history of quilling dates back hundreds of years but is recently gaining a renewed popularity since quilled paper art is a great way to embellish scrapbooks, invitations, announcements, and home-made cards. Besides that, the cost to get started with quilling is comparatively lower than almost any other craft you could do! Although this craft has been around for quite some time, it is not very popular in craft stores so you may have a hard time finding supplies unless you know where to look.

Often people wonder what types of designs they can create with quilling paper. The majority of work you will see is probably flowers since quilled flowers are a lot of fun to make and are very popular. Beyond flowers, you’ll find that you can quill almost any design you can think of! Everything from animals to letters to fire engines are great items you can learn to quill with paper! You will have a lot of fun experimenting and trying new ideas with quilling even if you don’t have a pattern to follow (although it definitely helps for beginners).

Quilling is a fun and easy craft to learn but as a beginner you’ll certainly need to have some patience as you learn the basics to quilling and start making cool quilling designs. The tools you’ll need are easy to find once you know where to look and they are inexpensive. You can spend as much time as you want quilling; it can take just a few minutes or a few days to created a quilled design, depending on how detailed and intricate you would like to make it. Quilling is a craft but also an art form so don’t be discouraged if your quilling does not look exactly like the pattern you used or the design you anticipated. Your work of art will be unique and beautiful if you take the time to learn the basics and understand the proper tools and supplies to use.

I will say that if you’re good at learning something new just by seeing a photo and being able to replicate it, then grab a quilling book from your local craft store (if you can even find it…they aren’t available in most stores but you can sometimes get them on the craft store’s website). However if you’d prefer to learn how to do quilling with step by step instructions, hundreds of color photos, and an instructional DVD that you can watch while you do your quilling craft at the same time, then you’ll want to get a beginner quilling course and learn how to make all the basic shapes and coils. Then you can learn how to put the shapes together to form larger patterns. After that, you’ll learn more advanced patterns and really make this a form of art that is unique to you and a beautiful way to decorate all sorts of crafts such as scrapbooking, card making, and other craft projects you’ve already created. Quilling does not have to be a stand alone art and instead it can really be something great that you can add to other projects you enjoy working on. Learning how to quill will give you an additional way to jazz up so many of your craft projects and can be learned by following step by step instructions.


Grab your free quilling lesson at: LEARNQUILLING.COM

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Saw a Cool Question on Quilling on Yahoo Answers

Quilling: What Is It?

Thought you'd enjoy reading the above Yahoo Answers post, if you want a good description of quilling to understand it a bit better.

Happy Quilling!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Quilling for Scrapbooking


If you are a scrapbooker (or scrapper as I've seen us called) then its time to take a look at a fun paper craft embellishment that is pretty unique to scrapbooking...QUILlING! :) Now although quilling has been around for hundreds and possibly thousands of years, its just becoming more popular because of scrapbookers and card makers. Start using quilling in your scrapbook page layouts now and jump in ahead of the gang before more people start finding out about this cool way to embellish pages with unique paper designs.

Don't quite understand Quilling? I didn't either at first! So to make it really simple for quilling beginners, I put together a free video tutorial with step by step instructions of me creating a quilled flower design. I want to share it with you at www.LearnQuilling.com - Enjoy!!