Quilled Paper Flowers

Pattern/Technique: Modern Paper Quilling Workshop by Zahra Ammar

Materials: (Used kit materials)

Paper strips are 1/4" in width (except for anemone fringe, which is 3/4" wide). Light/med/dark pink strips are 11" long. Peach, black, green, cream, brown strips are 20" long (Fabriano Tiziano 160gsm paper)

Note: all circle sizes based on Quilled Creations Circle Sizer

Cherry blossoms

• Center: 1/8 brown strip (for fringed center, used 1/4 dark pink strip)

• Petals: 1/2 light pink strip released into #3 hole

Dogwood centers

• Center: 1/12 green strip (cut in half, then half again, then into 3rds)

• Petals: med pink strip glued to long cream strip, released into #0 hole

Leaves

• Large: 1/3 green strip

• Medium: 1/4 green strip

• Small: 1/5 green strip

• Release into holes #3, #4, #5

Anemone

• Center: 2 black strips glued together for center, surrounded by fringed 3/4" black strip

• Petals: 1/2 peach strip, glued in layers of 2/3/4 strips

New skills: Paper quilling

Lessons: When it comes to glue, less is always more.

Having a degree of randomness / imperfection in placement of flower petals & centers is an important part of something looking “natural.” Nature rarely creates perfect symmetry.

What I'd do differently: Nothing

Care: n/a

Oak Leaf Wreath

This Christmas I tried my hand at making a wreath of paper oak leaves for my mom. While I've made a fair few leaves from crepe paper, I'm an absolute beginner to wreaths. Cue research, experimentation, and a healthy dose of winging it. In the process I also learned a valuable lesson about handmade gifting: I'm no stranger to frantically finishing handmade gifts, but this year was particularly crunchy and I finally decided to cut my losses and gift it in "kit" form. That gift to myself paid dividends - one less thing to do in the pre-holiday rush, and an excuse to spend a few quiet hours crafting with one of the most important people in my life. The result: a beautiful FO imbued with the memory of quality time well spent.

Technique: Leaves were made using techniques learned in Lynn Dolan's workshops using Carte Fini metallic gold crepe paper. I freeform cut the lobes on the leaves to get more variation so the leaves would be more natural-looking. Each leaf was glued to 20ga floral wire cut into 4-5inch lengths (I purchased floral wire from Save on Crafts and cut each wire into thirds). To make the wreath, I affixed the leaves to a 12" macrame hoop (h/t to Lia Griffiths' Metallic Paper Wreath tutorial for the idea) by wrapping the stems with gold crepe and then wrapping them to the wreath form.

New skills: Mounting leaves to a wreath form. Working with metallic crepe paper.

Lessons: The metallic coating causes glue to take much longer to dry, and is more susceptible to tearing while wrapping. For the leaves, after I glued along the seam I let them set overnight to give the glue more time to adhere.

I ended up using about double the number of leaves I estimated, luckily I'd planned on making 2 wreaths so I didn't run out.

What I'd do differently: Next time I'd like to try adding acorns, and maybe using fewer, larger leaves. I might also experiment with laminating gold and copper crepe using fusible webbing, although I'd proceed with caution given my challenges with glue and metallic crepe.