Quilled Hearts ~ Valentine's Day Cards

These are easy and fun to create. Quilled hearts (two teardrop shapes glued side-by-side) and a little bit of twine. I like to use eccentric loose rolls before shaping the larger hearts.

 

The teardrops are 4, 6 and 8 inch strips.

 8 and 24 inch teardrops

4 inch teardrops

I used free fonts from DaFont website.

My quilled hearts website page.

Have a great day!
-Molly

Tuesday Tip

I have been using this daisy background graphic for about six months for all occasion cards. I make the daisies while watching TV or when I am in a mood to quill. I like to use the 1/16" English paper strips I buy from Whimsiquills .. the strips are actually more narrow than the American 1/16" paper.

I embellished this with several shades of brown chalk, set it with a fixative and glued it on the card. The center tight roll is slightly convex. I covered the quilled daisy with two layers of tissue paper and mailed in a regular envelope, no bubble packaging.

TIP: If you make up a stack of all occasion cards ahead of time and use quilled motifs on your cards, try using 1/16" paper strips and mail one to yourself, first, to test how it turns out in regular mail.

Have a great day!
-Molly

Calm ..

I'm not quite ready to jump back into the realm of things, mainly blogging, but wanted to say a belated Happy New Year to my readers ... and I hope your week has started out fantastical! 

Glow-in-the-Dark Wall Art

I came across a blog project that made me think Holy Cow, WOW...  Lisa Fulmer is a marketing strategy and communications specialist, a mixed media artist, a crafter, a consultant for small businesses and a creative project designer. I personally know her talent as a professional demonstrator, a fantastic singer and actor (as Marilyn). She is one of the friendliest people I know that I haven't met in person. You may also know Lisa from the recent TLC show Craft Wars. She assisted her crafting friend Andrea Currie and they WON their episode - and a $10,000.00 prize!

Lisa used puffy paint™ from iLoveToCreate on a .... well, I will let you read and see for yourself, below.

Glow in the Dark Fabric Panels

click the link above 

and be sure to check out the other puffy paint projects at the end of Lisa's post

Of course my mind starting racing trying to think of how I could use the puffy paint™ (perhaps in a quilling glue bottle with a smaller tip) on pretty paper with a similar effect. After sleeping on it, I have decided to make a smaller paper, framed wall hanging for the kitchen. A coffee motif, with a touch of quilled-looking something, that I will see when the lights are out every night while skipping off to bed.

I will post it here soon.

Thank you, Lisa Fulmer, for letting me share your unique project.

Everyone have a great week!
-Molly

Easy Quilled Hat

One day while experimenting, I realized that I could make large quilled shapes if I used wider paper and crimping it before rolling. It was easier to work with and control the tension.

This is a photo of the first crimped quilling project I submitted that was published in a book (2003). They wanted an easy, framed quilled project that would take less than one hour to make.

You only need two loose coils. One shaped-half circle and a shaped-marquise. The instructions say I used a 1/4" wide by 68 inch  (.635 cm x 160 cm) crimped strip to make each shape. I made two circle templates with the same paper that I dropped the coils in to release. One 1.75" (4.45 cm) diameter for the top and 2.5" (6.35 cm) diameter for the brim.

I have also used this design to make red and purple hat motifs for cards, tags, scrapbooking (The Red Hat Society) and a wedding hat. The possibilities to embellish the hat (the fun part) are endless!

Thanks for looking.

Have a great day!

-Molly

Stepping Back in Time

Happy September!

A long time ago when I started quilling, I could only find kits by Quill It, Inc. (1974) owned by Barbara B. Maddox. They were sold at a Fort Worth, Ben Franklin Craft Store. From the information included in the kits, I could soon order via mail by catalog. Later in the 80s, the kits were sold at MJDesigns in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (the M stood for Michael, as in the Michaels Stores, Inc. started in Texas.)*

Most of the kits included printed card stock to cut out and use for leaves and other motifs. They also included a printed saying to use as the background. I bought as many kits as I could find and still have several unopened. I continue to collect and buy the original Quill It kits on eBay when I can find them.

As you can see, my mat cutting skills were horrendous! LOL I collected strawberries in my kitchen for about a year, but didn't like how the reds never matched and seemed to clash. The fact that I had bright yellow and brown (70s) wallpaper in the kitchen didn't help with the decor.

I cannot remember the reason for doing this, but I always covered the backs with coordinating paper, probably gift wrapping paper.

Bright colors have always been my favorite. I collected parrots in the 80s so this is one of my favorites. (I am a huge Jimmy Buffet fan, an original parakeet.) In today's quilling standards, I believe these cut-out leaves would be quilled, along with the beak. The same with the sun below.

You guessed it! I also collected rainbows. Back when these kits were sold you couldn't purchase individual packages of quilling paper. So I saved every piece quilling strip leftovers. I did break into other kits to use the paper when I started quilling my own little pieces. I regret that now.

These three projects are in poor shape from not being stored properly and kept in a hot Texas garage for all these years. I clean my old, dusty quilling pieces with a can of air and an old, soft shaving brush. I'd like to think some of the age spots show character :)

Thanks for going down memory lane with me.
Have fun quilling!

-Molly

*Michael's dad, James Dupey, bought the Ben Franklin craft stores. I taught quilling at MJDesigns in 2002. They filed for bankruptcy 10 days before Christmas and I never got paid for teaching the classes. I was devastated, but looking back I am glad for the experience (it gave me much needed confidence) and the teacher discount was nice.

Torn Bear Technique

Happy August!

I am so happy to be back blogging again. Where did June and July go? I was going stir-crazy while trying to get over pneumonia. My mind had a ton of ideas but my body said it wanted to sleep all day.  I started some torn bear appliques but never finished. This is still on my to do list!

If you have never tried the tear bear technique, all you need is:

Mulberry paper (its comes in all sizes and thicknesses)

shapes (I use wood shapes but you can use anything to draw around or freehand)

paint brush

water

Draw the desired shape around the template (or freehand) with a wet paint brush.

Carefully tear all around the wet area pulling inward.

The wet area will quickly dry.

Here are a few pieces I did about six years ago. Embellishing the pieces is the fun part. Sorry that the photos are so small, but you will get the idea :)

For twins!

I sprayed this tree with gold glitter. So pretty in person :)

I sold this holiday group on eBay.

Thanks for looking!

~Molly