Graduated paper

I found some great pre-cut strips with graduated color. They are absolutely fabulous. I thought the bells will look really great with the paper. So, I started making the bells (or buds) I thought it should be easy to roll a coil and push it out at the center, but only when I started doing it I realized it was quite difficult to do it in a uniform way. Then I made some petals with eccentric coils.
The oval is cut out from handmade paper which has natural petals/leaves in it.
I think the bee ended up a tad bigger than it should be, however the end result looks decent, or so I think. Would love to hear comments/suggestions for improvement on this one.

Tools!

I got my first few quilling tools when I was on a vacation to Singapore!  I am really excited to have them. Since I have had them, it has been almost an obsession to quill. The slotted needle makes it really easy to roll paper which I used to earlier attempt with a thin paint brush.
I have not used the needle tool a whole lot other than using it to rearrange the coils for eccentric coils. I found the circle template very useful to make uniform sized petals and leaves.

Here are the tools I have now.

One thing I am probably missing is a craft knife to cut the paper. I now mark with scale and pencil and cut it with scissors. However, they are not perfect and sometimes the variation does show up.
Is there any other way to do it without a craft knife?

p.s: for people who want to know where I bought the tools in Singapore, I got the slotted tool and the needle at "Golden Dragon' art and craft store which is in the People Park mall at China Town. I got the circle template and a good variety of paper from 'Art Friends' which is located at the Takashimaya mall on Orchard road.

Quilling - my first few experiments.

            My friend who has taken to quilling in a big way, sent me a link to her blog. I saw it a couple of times and admired it,  but did not go further.

           Just recently I had to go to a birthday party and wanted to make a card for the little boy. I had really liked a little boy's birthday card my friend had made (http://papercraftss.blogspot.com/2010/09/quilled-birthday-card.html) and decided to try my hands at it. That is when I took a closer look at what she had done and it opened doors to a new world of quilling. I had made cards using rubber stamps but I was totally new to quilling. I saw some links and tutorials my friend had sent and watched some videos on youtube. It was very fascinating to see how a technique of rolling paper resulted in dramatic effects. All the pictures and videos posted had such beautiful patterns and colors, it was hard to resist the temptation to start rolling paper!

           With just a few sheets of color paper, I started rolling them, first with my hand and then found that the handle of a thin paintbrush was working well. You will see from my friend's blog that she does a lot of techniques like combing without the actual tool. I really liked quilling because you can try it out without really having to buy anything expensive.

            I am very new to the art of quilling and still experimenting how the paper behaves, how much tension is required in rolling the paper and messing around with glue (when I first tried to glue a shape onto a card, I was almost like a kindergartner with glue all over the place). I am yet to figure out which is a good quality paper to use, difference between a needle and slotted tool (i dont have any of them yet), but I cant seem to stop quilling.. i made three cards already.

Here is my friend's blog which had me started on quilling.

http://papercraftss.blogspot.com/

My first attempt at rolling paper!

This is my first one. All I wanted to do is to get a hang of quilling. Just rolled paper without too much tension in the rolling. I made a few shapes, I just wanted to glue all of them together to make a pattern, so did just that. I had a lot of tough time gluing the long stem like shapes on the card.

As you can see the coils are wound very loose.

Boys b'day card

I wanted to make a boys birthday card and I had specially liked one technique which I saw in one of the youtube videos. In that they cut out the central part of the card and tied it later with a nice ribbon. So, I cut out a circle in middle of the card and quilled a cake on that, I cut some pieces of different colored papers and glued them on the main card for confetti. Then I punched  a hole on the circle which had the cake and tied it to the main card with curling ribbon.

Baby girl card

I had seen a pattern of quilled ducks on my friend's website, http://papercraftss.blogspot.com/2010/07/white.html  I thought they were adorable and wanted to try making them. So, I made four ducks and then I was wondering what to do with them. Then I just realized that a neighbor had given birth to a baby girl and I decided these ducks would do great with a combination of baby pink on a card. That is how my third card was made!