I am teaching a quilling** class today, and these are the gifts I made for the class attendees. They are bright and cheery monogrammed refrigerator magnets!
I did not feel comfortable enough creating the outline of the letters free hand, so I created a letter pattern to follow as a document in Word. Each letter was created using the very light gray text color using Lucida Fax font at size 225. The text color was dark enough to use as a pattern, but light enough to not show through the circles when complete. I printed the letters out on regular white card stock, then cut them down as needed to make the magnets.
**Quilling is the fine art of twirling and curling paper strips to create beautiful three-dimensional embellishments. Whether you want to embellish a card, picture frame or scrapbook, quilling is easier than it looks. A twist here and a pinch there; before you know it, your quilling has come to life. The possibilities of what you can create are only limited by your imagination!
Quilling takes only a few inexpensive supplies:
-quilling tool
-quilling paper
-glue
That’s it!
The quilling tool is about 2-3″ long and has a slot at the end for inserting and holding the end of a strip of quilling paper. From there, you twirl the paper on the quilling tool. Yes, you can use a toothpick or paper piercing tool, but they are not quite the right diameter and don’t have a slot to hold the paper in place while you twirl.
Quilling paper comes in various widths, but I find that I like the 1/8″ size the best. Yes, you can use regular card stock cut down to the correct width, but I say why? Quilling paper is slightly lighter in weight, comes in a wide variety of colors, is inexpensive, and is already cut into strips for you. Much less time-consuming and you have the correct kind of paper.
Use a liquid or water-based glue that dries clear. Avoid overly tacky glues that are hard to remove from your fingers and tools. These can slow you down and ruin the quilled shapes. You only need small dabs of glue to hold the coils together since you are gluing paper to paper. I squeeze a small amount of glue onto a scrap piece of paper and then use a toothpick to pick up a dab of glue and place it where I want it. This gives you more control and helps keep the glue off your fingers.
Optional Tools: Since all quilling starts with circles, I find that a circles template is very helpful. After removing the twirled paper from the quilling tool, you can place the paper in one of the circles on the template. The paper will open up to fill the template giving you a perfectly sized coil to work with!
I am a firm believer of having the correct tools for any project. There are numerous ways you can quill without “quilling tools”, but why not just use the tools that are made specifically for the craft? And they are not expensive at all. A quilling tool can be purchased for about 4.00. A pack of 80 pieces of 1/8″ width quilling paper is about 3.00. One pack of assorted colors is enough to complete several projects. There are numerous quilling supply stores found online, but I purchase my supplies at the Quilling Super Store. Prices are good, they don’t charge an arm and a leg for shipping, are quick to ship, and have great customer service. And with your first purchase, you will receive an assorted pack of quilling paper for FREE.
I am not a quilling expert by any means, but I was fortunate to learn quilling from Monica Bergeron, one of the premier paper quillers around! Be sure to visit her Giddy Greetings website for ideas and tutorials.
