Flower basket quilling picture

I started making this flower basket last winter. Since it turned out extremely time-consuming, I had to make a break at some point, then resumed working on it, and eventually got enough time to finish it. For this project I used hand-cut 1/8-inch wide (3 mm) paper strips. The basket is made of white strips with gilded edges created using a metallic gold marker.

In this work for the first time I've used a fabric background. To do this, I cut out a square of thick cardboard to match the size of the picture. Then I prepared a fabric square, each side of which is about two inches (5 cm) longer than a side of the cardboard. Then I wrapped the fabric around the edges of the cardboard and glued it down on the reverse side of the picture using a hot glue gun. That is, a one-inch wide margin of fabric goes along each side of the square. When the base was ready, I carefully mounted the picture elements on it. The amount of adhesive must allow comfortable gluing even after being absorbed by the fabric on one hand, and not leave ugly stains on the other hand. Glue stains on fabric are usually clearly visible, much more than on paper. I used white craft glue and another, acrylic one.

You might have noticed that there's a new specimen in my collection of quilled insects  — a small yellow praying mantis. It's about 3/4 inches in length (1.8 cm) and made of 1/16-inch strips (1.5 mm). I also made a new bee, which can be seen in the top right corner of the picture. The new design utilizes the principles of three-dimensional quilling. The finished picture is framed in a 9x9" white shadowbox (23x23 cm).