New Quilling Technique Tutorial - Quilled Pine Cones

As promised, here is a new technique quilling tutorial for making quilled pine cones to be used as Christmas decor or Christmas table decor. I have not seen a tutorial for making quilled pine cones so this is probably the only one on the net at this point of time.

Why quill pine cones?? Well, I think real ones are too heavy and bulky to be used for quilled decor . It is also a challenge to quill  nature, and what is Christmas without pine cones!!

Step 1

 

 Make 32  isosceles triangles using 5.5 to 6', 3mm strips and curve the top as shown above. You can use whatever number is appropriate for the size you are aiming at.

Step 2

 

 Tear 6, 1/2 inch 3mm strips,

 8, 3/4'  3mm strips

8,  1'  3mm strips

6,  1 1/4'  3mm strips

and 4,   1 1/2 ' 3mm strips

You may vary the lengths to suite your requirement.

Step 3

 

 Glue the isosceles triangles to the strips as shown above

Step 4

 

Curl the strips by scoring the nail of your thumb against the side of the strip. Note the direction of the curl

Step 5

 Now paste the petals as shown above so that it curls inwards, to make a flower.  You should make about 5 flowers as per the strips you tore in step 2's instructions.

Step 6

 Place each flower on a semi soft surface ( I used foam) face downs as shown.

Step 7

 Now using the end of a brush, rub in circular motion so that it curls up and outwards as shown, leaving a small center.

Step 8

 Repeat for all flowers which should look like the above once completed. Note that the whole triangle is visible from the outside.

Step 9

Now apply glue to an 8 petalled flower as shown and glue it inside a 6 petalled flower which has the shortest petals. Note that the flowers should be glued in the order of increasing petal lengths, so that each set of petals peak out over the previous set. When you glue, it should be glued so the petals come out like a cone. You may need only to apply glue to the side of the strips.

Step 10

Make sure it looks like this, with the inner flower's petals peaking from between the outer flower's petals.

Step 11

Continue to glue till you get a nice cone shape as shown above making sure the number of petals reduce for the top layers and your done.

Quilled Pine Cones Quilled Pine Leaves Quilled Bell- Quilled Christmas Decor

 As promised, quilled pine cones, bells and pine leaves, all made from paper strips. I like the way the pine cones turned out, so a tutorial will be my next post as promised.

I made the bell by covering a small bell with cling film and quilling on top of it starting from the top. Made tiny coils and pasted one to the other. Make sure that you glue only the sides of each coil and paste it to the adjacent coils without getting the glue onto the bottom or top of the coils. From time to time press into shape and hold for a while or put a rubber band around so the shape is held tight against the mold while it dries. If you see space between coils apply glue and get them stuck  or add a new coil in between. More uniform coils make better quilled molded shapes.

Allow to dry well before slipping it off the mold.

The leaves are simple. just made use of the Christmas tree fold I did for the poinsettias veins and pasted each to another strip to make a half leaf, then pasted 4 together to make one 3d pine leaf.

Those who think the pine cones are cool,he tutorial is here. Tutorial for quilling molded bells is  here.

Thanks for visiting / following my blog.

New Quilling Technique Tutorial - Filigree Christmas Poinsettias

Here goes!! A new quilling technique tutorial on making filigree  flowers, Christmas Poinsettias, using the much loved beehive quilling technique. There is no encircling to spoil the lacey look.

 There  are 5 main steps to making this flower.

1. Make the veins for the petals. (The petal is really a red leaf in the poinsettia).
2. Make the beehive quills to paste onto the veins.
3. Paste the two halves to make the petals.
4. Assemble the petals and make the flower.
5. Make the stamen and glue it.

Beehive Quilling with a Difference

For this flower you need to be familiar with beehive quilling since you are going to do the beehive quilling slightly different, so it does not unwind too much.

Christmas Tree Fold

What I call christmas tree fold (green)is slightly different from the fan fold (red) which are both done by folding the strip up, then down then up again and so on till you reach the end of the strip in zig-zag fashion. In the fan fold, the length of the upward portion and the downward portion, that is both sides of the V are equal. In the chrismas tree fold, one side of the V is folded longer so the fan is elongated downwards.
 Take a strip and fold upwards at 1cm then fold downwards at 1.3cm then up again at 1cm and downwards at 1.3cm and continue to the end. You should end up with something that looks like the green one.

 Making the Veins

1. Take 2, dark red  strips ( length depends on how big you want the petal) and make a christmas tree folds using the whole strip.(pic 1)
2. Shape it to look like pic 2 to form the veins of one side of the petal and glue the 2 sides  of each V together to form veins.
3. Since one  side of the v is  a little longer than the other, this difference will form the vertical distance between 2 horizontal veins. (Pic 3)
4. Now fold the unglued portions so thay stand vertical to the veins (which run horizontal) as shown in pic 3 and shape it like a leaf as in pic 4.

(Please note that I have not pasted all the veins in pic 3  in order to highlight the glued part and the christmas tree like fold.)

Making the Beehive Quills - Variation

 You are going to quill the beehive with a slight variation to make it more stable  as shown in the pic above. You can see the difference in the pic. Please note that the pics below show regular beehive as I discovered the variation when I was making the second petal.
 

In a normal beehive you ( See tutorial) you quill the sub-coils, clockwise. Here, you alternate clockwise turns and anti-clockwise turns for consecutive coils,  ( that is quill one coil using clockwise turns and the next coil using anti-clockwise turns and so on) so that you get the above paired sub-coils which are more stable.

1. You will make the leaf bottom up by gluing coil sets on both sides of the vein.
2. Make a 3 sub-coils set for the outside of the bottom vein (see pic 1) and several 4 sub-coils sets for the mid veins and again 3 and 2 for the tapering, top portion.
3. Glue the starting and ending sub-coils shut, after quilling the beehive variation and letting it unwinds a bit.
4. Glue the 3 sub-coil set, as shown in the pic below, to the bottom and a 4 sub-coil set to the inside of the bottom most vein. (Note that your veins would have been stuck together unlike this pic). 
5. Then glue the next vein to the top of the 2nd set of sub-coils, that is the one with the 4 sub-coils.
6. Then glue another set of sub-coils  on the vein and keep alternately gluing till you reach the top of the petal, where you would have glued shorter sub-coil sets with 3 and 2 sub-coils to achieve the taper . If your veins are longer cut them off.

Once done, your half petal should look like the pic below. For those who are confused by the instructions, just try to get the shape below by gluing sub-coil sets of beehive quills to the veins. This method only requires you to make veins and shape it like a tapering leaf and then fleshing it out by gluing beehive coils between the veins.

Now paste a strip to form the vertical center vein and loop it and glue to form the petal tip at the top.

Complete another half petal, (  you will not need a center vein for this) and paste the two halves together. Shape the petal and pinch the sub- coils at the edge of the petal  if you want a sharper, lobed look. 

Viola! you got your lacey petal.
 

Assembling the Petals

Make 5 or 6 petals.
You will now arrange the petals as shown in the pic above. Half the petal should be on top of the adjoining petal on one side while the other half should be below the adjoining petal on the other side. Glue them fast. You may have a bit of space in the center if you wish.

 Making the Stamens

1. Take 5,  1inch  5 mm strips of yellow and 1 inch dark red 3mm strips. Cut the yellow as shown above to form fringed petals and glue them together red to yellow.
2. Starting with the red, make 5  tiny fringed flowers and open them out slightly to form the flower like stamens.
3.  Now glue each flower at the center, just where one petal goes below the other.

 

Phew!! That's it folks!! I hope I did not flummox you too much!!

 For more christmas decor check out my pine cones tutorials.

Christmas- Quilling-Felligree-Flower-Christmas Poinsettia

Quilled Christmas decorations and quilled table decor adds to the levity of Christmas, so in the spirit of the occassion, I thought I must post a tutorial with something unique and these are the results of my efforts. Filigree petaled Christmas poinsettias. I think they look rather nice.

I have used beehive technique, which I have fallen in love with and for which I never fail to mentally thank Susan of susanquilling.

I was a bit bored with the beehive being encircled , like the leaf above, all the time. I thought this did not allow the delicate lace like look to be enhanced, so I was determined to devise a method to retain the filigree outline and by gad, I did it. Of course it needs a bit of gluing to retain the shape.

Tutorial is posted here.

Quilled-Flower-Frame- Bleeding Heart

This is a  quilled flower frame using 3d quilled flowers and comb-husked leaves. I have chosen bleeding hearts as they were 3 petaled and a challenge to make. I used beehive technique for the petals. To describe how the flowers were constructed would require another  long tutorial, but they look like the real flower with stem and all.

For the red flower centers I used a tear drop punch and there are 4 petals. the flowers are in various stages of maturity just like a real bunch.

Here is a closer look so that you can figure it out how the flower is done.