Feb
21
2010
Top ‘o the morning to you! I missed
Mardi Gras and the Chinese New Year, but my Scots-Irish heritage
wouldn‘t let me skip St. Paddy’s Day without a
quilled project or two.
In the United States, St. Patrick’s Day has become a celebration of everything Irish — and what could be more Irish than shamrocks and a leprechaun’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? I combined these traditional Irish symbols into a fun quilling design sure to bring the luck of the Emerald Isle to all those who quill it or are lucky enough to receive it.
I dressed the quilling up with green glitter on the shamrocks and filled the pot with flat-back crystals for the gold. A piece of variegated ribbon stapled in place finishes the tag.
You’ll find the free quilling pattern for this lucky design, along with instructions for creating the tag and the card I put it on, in the next newsletter. So, if you haven’t already subscribed to “The Art of Quilling News,” be sure to sign up today. (You’ll find the enrollment form in the upper right-hand corner.)
I leave you with this traditional Irish blessing:
For each petal on the shamrock
This brings a wish your way-
Good health, good luck, and happiness
For today and every day.
.
Feb
06
2010
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.…
…
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.
…
…
