Feb 06 2010
Upcycled Valentine’s Day Quilling
Like most crafters these days, I am saving bottles, wrappers, and other packaging pieces for use in future craft projects. I was looking through my stash for Valentine’s Day inspiration and found a wonderful glass bottle that used to contain a marinade. I decided to dress it up and fill it with M&M’s (my husband’s favorite candy) for a great Valentine’s gift.I didn’t want the gift to look too frilly or girly, and was pleased when I found heart scrapbook paper in shades of beige, pink, and brown (American Craft’s Romance collection, In Love, #34582). I cut a band of the scrapbook paper to fit the bottle like a wrapper and grunged it up with brown blending chalk. I kept the quilling embellishment to a minimum, using simple light pink, red, and brown, quilled hearts, inspired by the scrapbook paper, glued down the center.
To make a quilled heart, roll two teardrop coils the same size. Glue the sides together, starting at the tip and ending just before the curve of the teardrop. If you are new to quilling, learn how to make a teardrop coil here.
Quilled Heart
Additional quilling instructions, hints, and information can be found in the Beginner’s Corner. The quilled hearts used on the scrapbook paper bottle wrapper were made using 8″ strips of 1/8″ paper for the teardrop coils.
The tag is a collage made from a dictionary page, a February calendar, and more quilled hearts.
Abbie at The Vintage Moth has been kind enough to post free antique and vintage images for mixed media artists. I found her post containing several pages scanned from a vintage dictionary. 
The word “love” was on one of the pages, so I copied the graphic into a photo editing software program, cropped the section I wanted, enlarged it a bit to fit a standard small white tag (3-1/4″ x 1-5/8″) and printed it out on white paper. I glued it to the tag, trimmed the edges and punched out the tag hole. The graphic already had a nice aged patina, so I just grunged the edges with brown blending chalk. Next, I found a free calendar page for February courtesy of homemadecalendars.blogspot.com. Again I copied the graphic, resized it, and printed it on white paper. I cut it out and glued it on an angle to the tag, trimming the edges, and highlighted the calendar with light pink blending chalk. I glued a 3mm flat-backed red crystal on top of the “14″ of the calendar to mark the date. I then quilled three small hearts, one each light pink, red, and brown (teardrop coils made from 3″ strips of 1/8″ paper), and glued them randomly on the tag. Red fiber string was used to tie the tag onto the bottle.
The word “love” was on one of the pages, so I copied the graphic into a photo editing software program, cropped the section I wanted, enlarged it a bit to fit a standard small white tag (3-1/4″ x 1-5/8″) and printed it out on white paper. I glued it to the tag, trimmed the edges and punched out the tag hole. The graphic already had a nice aged patina, so I just grunged the edges with brown blending chalk. Next, I found a free calendar page for February courtesy of homemadecalendars.blogspot.com. Again I copied the graphic, resized it, and printed it on white paper. I cut it out and glued it on an angle to the tag, trimming the edges, and highlighted the calendar with light pink blending chalk. I glued a 3mm flat-backed red crystal on top of the “14″ of the calendar to mark the date. I then quilled three small hearts, one each light pink, red, and brown (teardrop coils made from 3″ strips of 1/8″ paper), and glued them randomly on the tag. Red fiber string was used to tie the tag onto the bottle.…
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Quilling Tip: Use the same graphics and quilled hearts to create a fun ATC for your sweetheart, or use the tag as an embellishment for a Valentine’s Day card.
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