Quilled Snowflake Part 2

8) Coil one of the two inch pieces into a tight circle, let it spring loose and glue down the end, then pinch twice to get a pinched elipse. Repeat with the other five pieces.

9) Now take two of the legs and dip the smaller, less curly ends gently in the glue. Press against the large circle so they lay opposite one another.

10) Glue the other four legs around the circle in the same manner.

 11) Now take out your little hearts. Gently glue them into the center of the curlicues between  the snowflake legs, as shown.

12) Now you're going to need to work around the circle, gluing the side of the heart to the leg piece a total of 12 times. Work one leg at a time, applying glue about half an inch up the leg on either side, then press the heart against it.

13) Now you need to take out you teardrops. Apply some glue to either edge and press it into the middle of your heart shape. If the curlicues on your heart are really far away from one another, you may need to unroll the curled bits a little to get them close enough to press together. Do this in the center of every heart.

14) Now, in the center of each snowflake leg glue your pinched elipsi. (elipsies? I have no idea.)

15) If you want, you can coat the whole thing finely in glitter glue, or use spray adhesive and powdered glitter. Then hang on a bit of monofilament or thread. You're done!

Quilled Snowflake Tutorial: Part 1

Since my ceiling is approaching saturation with this little guys, I thought I'd pay the favor forward to anyone else who might want one.

Supplies

• Glue (something thick, like tacky glue)
• Slotted quilling tool (or you can make do with a toothpick or needle)
• Quilling paper, or regular printer paper cut into 1/8" strips

1. Tear your paper into

• 7 six inch pieces
• 18 three inch pieces
• 6 two inch pieces

Tearing makes for a softer edge when you glue shapes together, and also spares me having to find my scissors.
You may find it helpful to make a pile of 12 and 6 three inch pieces, as I did.


2.Make your center by coiling one of the 6 inch pieces into a tight circle. Let it spring loose and then gently glue down the end. Set aside.

3.To begin making the snowflake's legs, coil one and half times at one end of a three inch piece. Then lay the piece atop a ruler and coil from the other end until the total length is 1.5 inches. Both times coil on the same side, so the swirls face each other, like in the picture. Repeat this 11 more times so you have 12 little legs.

4. Now pair up your legs from step three, with the coils facing away from each other as shown. Pour a tiny bit of glue into a shallow bowl and use a pin to apply dots along one inner edge of a leg: press the two pieces together to make a completed leg. Repeat 5 more times, for a total of 6 legs.

5.Now fold each of the remaining 6 six inch pieces in half so you get a visible crease. Unfold and coil each side in to the center, as shown.

6. When you finish on either side, you can use your fingers to gently uncoil a bit to force the shape into a more rounded heart. Repeat 5 more times, trying to get 6 uniform hearts.


7.Coil the remaining 6 three inch pieces into circles. Let the circles spring out, glue end down, and  gently pinch one end between two fingers to form a tear drop shape.

To be continued...

The Inaugural Post-- And a Tutorial!

I had big ambitions when I started this blog about sharing my various craft projects, but unfortunately time got away from me, and here I am writing the first post months after I created it… but here I am. I’m a soon-to-be college junior, studying textile and apparel management, with aspirations of someday going into costume design. I love crafting with children, and in my spare time at school I help lead a Sewing Club at an after school program, and during the summer I work as the arts and crafts director at a girl scout camp near my house-- thus the rationale for creating the following project.

Flower Photo Holder Tutorial

You will need:

• Cardstock (for flowers)
• Chopsticks, wooden skewers, pencils… anything stem like
• A disposable cup (or, if you have a nicely shaped one, a bottle)
• Glue(I used a glue gun and tacky glue and a glue stick, but most glues could be adapted for any of my purposes)
• Yarn
• Paper clips
• Rice, clay, salt dough, or some other substrate to weight down your vase and hold the flowers up

1. Create some flowers! I just pieced mine pretty simply out of card-stock… they can be as elaborate or as simple as you want/have time for. You want to use some sturdy card-stock, though, so they can hold up to the end use.

2. Paint your stems green. I hoard chopsticks from the dining hall at my school all year long so campers can use them, but I ended up sawing them both because they were a bit high and too uniform for my liking. Feel free to add leaves, or not.

3. Glue the stick onto the back of the flower, not allowing the stick to cover more than half of it. (you need room for a paperclip on there.)
4. I missed photographing this, but this is really a pretty simple project so it’s probably unnecessary. Glue a paperclip above the stem. This will hold the photograph. I was thinking later that a teeny clothespin might do a better job (the paperclip might distort a photo) but I don’t have any, and paper clips are cheaper for a camp budget anyway.

5. You could decorate your pot/vase any way you wanted to, but I opted to wrap variegated yarn all around it. You could achieve a neat striped effect by using two colors of yarn at once, which I intended to do but opted not to when I found the variegated.
6. Place a substrate in your vase. At camp, I would probably have the kids help me whip up a batch of salt dough, but I didn’t feel motivated at home (and I would have had a lot left over) so I just poured some rice in. A little messier, but it does the job. I might replace it with dough at camp, but it really doesn’t matter.
7. Place in photos and voila! A beautiful, customized photo-holder. (note the completely camp appropriate photos, necessary for any camp prototype.)