Quilling by ManuK

Hello Ladies!

I am back after a long break, and hopefully this time I am here to stay!

Today is Mărțișor (Romanian pronunciation: [mərtsiʃor]),  an old Romanian celebration at the beginning of spring. People offer each other a little talisman tied with a red and white string. Symbolically, it is correlated to women and to fertility as a means of life and continuity. The tradition is authentic in Romania, Moldova, and all territories inhabited by Romanians and Aromanians. Alike, though not identical, customs can be found in Bulgaria (see Martenitsa), while similar ones exist in Albania, Greece and Italy.  If you would like to learn more about this celebration, you can find an interesting article on Wikipedia: Mărțișor.

I will keep this post short and show you some of my ‘Mărțișoare‘. For the past few days I’ve been “swimming” in dozens of red and white flower petals, trying to get back on quilling and I must admit it was strange after a few months break. Here is the final result:

 

 

And here with the red and white string:

 

 

For the flowers I’ve used 160g/sm paper, hand cut into 1.5mm paper strips. To achieve a glossy look, I coated them with water based varnish.

 

P.S. I really missed quilling and this blog! But most of all, the wonderful people I got to meet here!

 

Happy Quilling!

 

I know this is a site dedicated to quilling, but I decided to take a little break from rolling paper strips due to my total lack of inspiration.  But since I can’t stay away from paper, I diverted my attention to another paper craft: origami and modular origami, or kusudama.

This particular modular origami is a Kusudama ‘Diamond’ (authors: Katrin and Yurii Shumakov). I call it ‘festive’ because I used gift wrapping paper with a nice pattern with some gold and silver shades in it. Now call me silly, but I didn’t know (or simply forgot) that this type of paper is very thin, so folding all the pieces became time consuming. This kusudama is probably the most easy and fast to make, consisting of only 6 modules. So anyone who is new to this art can venture in and make one in less than 30 minutes (with proper paper!).

 

 

I think they would look great as table centerpieces! Or simply add a string and they can become Christmas tree decorations, or even better, connect a few of different sizes and colors and make a nice mobile so you can keep it all year around. Your choice, either way, the kusudama is very beautiful and eye catching.

 

 

Hope I’ve given you some ideas for decorating your home for Christmas (and not only!)

Happy Crafting everyone!

 

 

I am so happy that I finally managed to finish this project! These past weeks found me procrastinating and going through a very long artistic block, which unfortunately is not over yet. So looking at this framed piece makes me feel a little better.

I started working on it in the beggining of this Summer and because back then I didn’t have all the materials I needed to finish, I had to put it on hold.

My goal was to make the ‘forget me nots’ look as close as possible to the real ones. In order to do that I had to use wire for the flowers’ stems and green flower tape to conceal it. Once I got these mats I started to assembly the plant which turned out to be very challenging because of  all those little flowers which have to stay very close to each other and being the first time I had to work with floral tape… well… you can imagine! My first attempts were very messy, but once I got the hang of it, things moved a little faster. Yay!

 

 

My mom loves these blue, cute flowers, so this is a present for her. Shame on me it took me so much time to finish it, but my obsession with details took the best of me.

The finished framed picture is 23cm * 23cm. For the flowers I used 1mm – 1.5mm paper strips hand cut from 120g/sm sheet of paper.

For those of you who have your imagination with you: ‘Happy crafting!’ and for the unlucky ones like me: ‘Hope the artistic block will be over soon!’