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Quilling Project - Photo Mats

I don't know if many of you have even heard of quilling. You take thin strips of paper and wrap it around a post to get a tight coil then you can either glue it down or let it unroll naturally for a loose coil, shape it then glue it. From the loose coil, you can make flower petals, leaf shapes, graceful scrolls and lots of other shapes.

I used to tear strips of paper and wrap them around my pencil while bored to death in middle and high schools listening to lectures on protozoa, balancing chemical equations and who knows what else. Guess I was quilling and didn't know it. I also used to doodle a lot in the margins of my papers while at work trapped in the hell of the 3 hour conference call and now its called Zentangle.

Needless to say, high school is a pretty distant memory now but I thought I'd try my hand at quilling once again. I've made some simple coils and designs and took a little help from some pre-made flowers, ribbon and sparklies from Joanns and decorated 2 corners on a photo mat.

It's a nice way to keep your hands busy in the evening and it's fairly simple and inexpensive to do. Glue and paper are fairly cheap. You can just sit and make pieces for a week and then when you want to decorate something then all your bits on are hand in a variety of colors.

I've bought several mats to practice on so here's the first one. I decorated opposite corners. I started with a pretty ribbon and made a bow shape. Next, I punched out some flower shapes out of different colored papers and glued little pearl/gold jewel type things to the centers. I also found some ribbon that looked like little white flowers. So I just cut the ribbon into individual flowers and glued those down.


I made some pink flowers, green leaves and curling vines out of quilling paper. It's a lot of individual pieces but it came together fairly quickly. Finally, I glued some little jewel like flowers and little sparkling things around.


Not bad for my first attempt. Just make sure you leave at least 1/4" from the edge or your bits may get squished or covered by a frame. The ribbon looks close but it can be lifted up but I should've left a little more room. And it looks like I almost completely covered the ribbon in the lower right corner. You can see a bit more ribbon in person than in the photo but it is fairly covered. It's also going to be hard to put it behind glass or acetate film since the quilling is about 1/2" tall. Might need more of a shadow box type thing or go without.




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