| Quilling Qualms? - Maybe This Will Help |
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Quilling Tips for Scrapbookers by Alison from the About Scrapbooking Forum Part I: Supplies Needed |
People are always asking me questions about quilling…how to do it, where I get ideas, whether I work from patterns or not, how I store and organize supplies, where I buy tools and paper, and so forth. I’m by no means an expert, but maybe I can offer some useful tips or insight for those of you new to quilling.
Supplies Needed
Quilling is very easy. It just takes some patience and practice, and, of
course, the right tools and supplies. So, what do you need to buy to get
started with quilling?
First, you need a quilling tool of some kind to roll the paper strips on. I prefer a slotted quilling needle for ease of use (costs about $3), but you can also use a regular quilling needle, a hat pin, or even a round toothpick.
Second, you need paper strips to work with. The most common width of paper to work with is 1/8”. You may want a small supply of wider strips for when you want a fringed look for certain flowers and other things, but other than that, you’ll probably never need wider strips than the standard 1/8”. Some people cut their own strips with a paper shredder (it has to be the kind that cuts 1/8” wide strips...most don't) or a paper trimmer, but I prefer to buy mine. I get mine for about $1.40-1.45 per 100-strip single-color package, and it’s worth it.
By using store-bought strips, I’m assured that my paper is always the perfect weight to curl correctly, a uniform width, and a good length for a variety of quilling needs, and there are dozens of colors to pick from for anything I may want to quill. Of course, there’s also the little matter of me being way too lazy to search for paper that’s the right size, weight, and color and then spend a lot of time cutting it perfectly. I’d rather spend that time actually quilling!
However, if you’re just starting out and don’t want to invest a lot of money in a craft you may not like, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to cut your own for your first few projects. If you choose to go that route, you should be aware that cardstock-weight paper is, in most cases, too heavy and stiff to work with. You’ll need to find solid-color lightweight papers to cut into strips. The paper will also need to have color on both the front and back as well as all the way through it. In other words, it can’t be colored only on the surface and have a white center, or it will essentially ruin the look of the quilling.
Third, you need glue. I recommend Scrappy Glue, which is about $5 a bottle, but lasts a very, very long time. It holds well, dries quickly, and is clear once it dries, which are all important qualities for quilling glue. When you are gluing your individual pieces or are gluing your design together, I recommend putting a small amount of glue on a piece of scrap paper and then dipping a flat toothpick in it. Then you can just use the toothpick to spread the glue where you need it. Simple!
To glue your finished design to paper, follow these easy steps:
1. Spread a fairly thin layer of glue on scrap paper, covering an area approximately the size of your quilled piece.
2. Place the quilled item on top of the glue and press down lightly to get an even coat of glue on the bottom of it.
3. Use a pair of tweezers to carefully pick the item up, then place it exactly where you want it. Don’t move it once it has touched the paper, because it will leave glue residue where you don’t want it.
4. Press down and hold the item for a few seconds until the glue is sufficiently dry.
Fourth, while not essential, I recommend buying a small piece of thick cork or a quilling board made of cork to work on. I have one that is about 5” X 10” in size, and I keep it on my lap as I work. I have a piece of wax paper pinned to it so that my items don’t stick to it if glue gets on the board. I mostly use this board for assembling my designs. I use straight pins with plastic heads on them to hold items in place while I arrange the pieces and then glue them together to make the finished design.
If you’re
wondering where I buy my supplies, these are three websites I have personally
purchased quilling supplies from in the past and have had a positive experience
with:
http://www.whimsiquills.com/index.htm
http://www.ericas.com/crafts/quilling/
http://www.quilledcreations.com/
Quilling Tips
Because there's already a wealth of information available about how to quill in
books and on the internet, I won’t be going in-depth on this topic. If you’re
reading this, chances are you already have a basic idea about how to quill.
I’ll offer a few tips based on my experience with quilling, and you can find
more information elsewhere. Just keep in mind that quilling isn’t something you
can really learn from a book or article. The best way to learn how to do it is
by…doing it! In other words, practice, practice, practice.
A few tips:
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Don’t use scissors to cut your strips of paper when you want them shorter. Instead, tear the paper. This leaves a softer edge that is easier to glue and blends in better so that the seams are less noticeable.
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Always make extra pieces for a design so that you can pick the best looking pieces to use. There always seems to be a few pieces (or more than a few!) that don’t turn out well.
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The insides of your quilled pieces should echo the outside edges in shape. For example, if you pinch a loose circle into a marquise shape, be sure to pinch it enough so that the inside of the piece is also marquise-shaped, not just the outer edges of the piece. This makes the finished design more uniform and pleasing to the eye.
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If you need a longer strip of paper than what you have, tear the ends of two strips and glue them together to make one long strip.
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Don’t worry about your designs getting smashed (for example, in a closed scrapbook or on a card you send through the mail). Quilling looks delicate, but it’s actually very strong, especially in a finished and mounted design. I have personally taken a quilled item, put it on the floor, and stood on it. It looked completely unharmed afterwards.
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Don’t expect perfection in your work, especially in the beginning. I’ve been quilling for a little over a year and am still regularly displeased with how my work turns out, sometimes to the point where I end up throwing out finished pieces and starting over. However, I’ve learned that even a less-than-perfect quilled piece seems to awe people. It’s a beautiful craft, even when it’s not executed “perfectly”.
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You need time and patience to quill. It’s not something you can just throw together in a hurry and have it look good. That’s not to say that it’s a difficult craft, but if you’re looking for something that doesn’t take a lot of time, this isn’t the right craft for you.
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The majority of quilling work you see will probably be floral in nature, but you need not be limited by this. There’s more to quilling than flowers. You can quill almost any subject you want to, from zoo animals to hot air balloons. Personally, though I think quilled flowers are beautiful, I’d be bored silly if that’s all I ever made. Make things you find interesting.
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Feel free to play and experiment, and let your style of quilling develop over time. Don’t feel that you have to do things exactly as others have done it before you.
Storage and Organization
When you first start quilling, it’s easy to keep your meager stash of quilling
supplies organized, but once you start collecting a variety of paper and other
items, it’s a much more difficult task. Here’s how I solved my storage and
organization woes. I’m sure there are other equally good ways to get organized,
but these ideas have worked well for me.
The very best tip I can give you for storing paper is to keep it in the packages they come in!!! All of the paper I buy comes in long plastic baggies with the tag stapled to the top of them. When I get a new package of paper, I tear the tag off and leave the paper in the baggie. The reason I so strongly recommend this is because if you remove the paper from the baggies and put them all together, they will get tangled up, smashed, and ruined after a while. In addition, it will be much more difficult to find a particular color of paper when you’re searching through the tangled mess. If you make your own paper, I would suggest you find a similar way of separating your strips.
Another thing I recommend is to label each baggie/package of paper with the color name (if it’s not already labeled or you’ve torn off the identifying tag). You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to mix up colors when you’re working. I once finished making a bunch of quilled penguins, only to discover that one of them had a pale lavender belly instead of a white one like the rest of his friends! It’s not hard to do, so when you’re done using a color of paper, put it back in its labeled package.
In order to keep my paper organized and easy to use, I store it in plastic shoeboxes that I bought at Walmart for 88⊄ each. When stored in their plastic baggies, the paper fits in the shoeboxes perfectly. I have three shoeboxes for paper—one for the first half of the rainbow (pinks, reds, oranges, yellows), one for the second half of the rainbow (greens, blues, and purples), and one for neutral colors (white, cream, black, browns, grays) and specialty papers (wider strips, sparkle papers, parchment papers, speckle papers, etc.). When I’m looking for a certain color or kind of paper, I know which box it will be in, and I’m able to locate it quickly. I prefer the rainbow method of sorting papers because some yellows are borderline orange, some blues are almost purple, and so on. I don’t have to make a definite determination about what color something is if it’s mixed with similar colors, but I also don’t end up with all my papers mixed together to where it’s difficult to find what I’m looking for.
I keep all of my other quilling supplies (tools, quilling board, small pair of scissors, toothpicks, and so on) in a fourth shoebox. I also bought a large Rubbermaid box in which to store the shoeboxes of paper and other supplies. This keeps all the supplies together in once place.
Ideas and Inspiration
Probably the most common question I’m asked about quilling is where I get my
patterns. Well, I don’t use patterns, or at least not in the traditional
sense. There are some patterns in books and other places that you place beneath
your work and quill on top of, but I have never used them. To tell you the
truth, I’m not all that fond of the idea in general, mostly because I feel it
stunts creativity and limits what can be made. I don’t recommend developing a
reliance on quilling patterns. I feel you’re better off experimenting and
letting your own style of quilling emerge.
So where do I get my ideas and inspiration, if not from patterns? I generally do one of three things when quilling—look at a photo, use a stencil as a guide, or sketch out my own design. I’m a visually-oriented person, so I need something to look at when quilling. I always put the photo, stencil, or sketch next to me as I work. I glance at it from time to time to give me an idea of what pieces I need to make, what steps I should be taking next, or how to assemble my design.
Most commonly, I work from photos of other people's work, at least as a starting point. I invented my own little system to collect ideas and keep them relatively organized and easy to find. When I started quilling and needed ideas, I searched all over the internet for photos of things other people had quilled. Each time I found something I liked, I saved the photo to a folder on my computer. Once I had collected a bunch of them, I used my photo program to arrange the pictures so that there would be several to a page. I then printed these pages out in draft mode on heavy/stiff white paper that I got cheaply at Staples. I still use this method for new photos I run across. It takes very little work, is easy to do, and doesn't cost much money. Most of the photos I've gathered have come from online stores that sell quilling supplies and quilling kits, but a few are from various other websites or from books I own. When I need ideas or inspiration, I just flip through the pages until I find something I like. I probably have about 40-50 pages (sized 8 ½” X 11”) of photos, with an average of 4-8 photos on each page, so I’m unlikely to run out of ideas any time soon.
Another way I come up with ideas is by looking through my massive collection of stencils. This is useful for getting ideas about what to quill, especially when I’m making a set of quilled items and want ideas for more items to go with the theme. It’s also helpful because it sometimes gives me a general idea of the shape and/or details of something I want to quill. Just to be clear, I don’t quill the items the same size as the stencils, because most stencils are too large for that. Rather, I use the stencils for ideas about what and how to quill an item.
If
there's something I want to make but have never seen done before, I make up my
own design, which is much easier than it sounds! I just sketch it out, drawing
each piece/shape I'll be using to build a picture. I'm no artist and can barely
draw anything, so if I can do it, anyone can! It's easy once you're familiar
with quilling in general and have an idea of what it takes to make a bunch of
individual quilled pieces into a picture of something recognizable. It's really
not much different than doing punch art, where you combine different shapes to
make a picture.
Quilling may seem a little complicated and confusing at first, but I guarantee
that if you play around with it a little bit, you'll catch on quickly. Happy
Quilling!
~Alison