With the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) being celebrated this week, and the New Year of the Gregorian calendar about three months away, I thought it would be a good idea to share my quilling-decorated calendars. A beautifully embellished, handmade, one-of-a-kind calendar can be a wonderful present for just anybody, and is relatively easy to make. You can start with a printed calendar and add quilling to it, or find calendars to print on the internet.
Love quilling? Want to help Japan to recover from the 2011 earthquake? Then the charity activity called "Love Quilling" is for you. All you need to do is make little quilled flowers, as many as you can, and send them to Japan. For details please contact Motoko Nakatani on Facebook.
On my Facebook page I promised to write a blog post dedicated to cards of a new, at least to me, type. So, here we go.
This post is about this year's costumes I prepared for my girls. I know, it's too late for Purim and too early for Halloween, but I decided to show them now anyway. My elder daughter wanted to dress up as an owl, and I thought of the idea of a quilled mask right away. The mask is built on a cardboard base. First, I made the inner rim of the eyes using yellow and black strips 1/8 inches wide (about 3 mm). Then I cut wide brown and beige paper strips and used the fringed flowers technique to create the "feathers" around the eyes. When they were ready, I cut the rest of the brown and beige paper into 1/8"-wide strips (3 mm), used them to roll "eye" shapes, and glued the shapes onto the base, at the sides of the mask. The beak is made of plain and corrugated, 1/4"-wide (6 mm) brown strips. A brown skirt and a sweater with simple wings attached to the arms complete the costume.
As I already wrote, I sometimes teach paper quilling workshops in a craft store. There is a variety of projects to make, each aimed at a specific level (beginners or advanced), and focuses on specific quilling techniques. One of the workshops is dedicated to quilled jewelry, when the students learn to create a jewelry set — a pendant, a pair of earrings and a greeting card that matches them. The card is made so that it can hold the earrings or be used stand-alone.
When I was making my first quilled egg, I wanted to build it so that it can be opened. Unfortunately, I faced some unexpected difficulties back then. So later I decided to make another Easter egg, and this time it came out just as I wanted. This is how my turquoise egg was created, and it can open! And now some details.
I count myself fortunate that all of my friends and family members like and appreciate quilled greeting cards I create for them (or at least say so :). Let me show you some of the most recent ones, a "Thank you" card and a card with pink bell-flowers.
