Paper Quilling

Quilling is based on patience.

It is very rewarding to see how it turns out.

There's always going to be a little room for error, nothing is going to be perfect, you just kind of have to run with it.

That's the best thing about art is it doesn't have to be perfect.

♪♪ ♪♪ I'm Hannah Gebhart of DinoCat Studio and I am a Des Moines based quilling artist.

Quilling is the art of taking strips of paper and then rolling them into different shapes to create designs.

I love quilling for several reasons.

I love the idea of accessible artwork in regards to what you have access to in your own home.

Quilling just has endless possibilities of what you're able to do with it.

♪♪ Hannah: Today we are going to work on making a quilled paper heart.

To make this piece, we use a variety of different tools.

Most of them are accessible.

You might have some at your home already.

The most important to me are the tweezers.

Basically it's your jack-of-all-trades tool.

I prefer small scissors like this, a needle tool or an awl.

And what you can do with this tool, you can curl pieces of paper, you can apply glue.

Another tool that does a very similar type of function is a slotted needle tool.

I just use a general PVA glue.

You can use this small kind of small needle glue bottle that you can do precise gluing.

I prefer and I just actually pour the glue, a dollop on this lid, and then I would dab my pieces of paper.

I use a variety of different papers.

This specific paper is 160 GSM, it has a little bit of weight to it.

It still curls really well.

And with the paper, you can get it at your local hobby stores, you can order it online, you kind of get a feel for what you like.

You can also order them actually from quilling stores and they will come precut, all ready to roll and you can just get right to your work.

Hannah: A really easy way that you can do this at home is just take a ruler, your X-ACTO blade and you just line it up and you just take your blade and cut like that.

And you just do this for as many quilling strips as you need.

♪♪ Hannah: And what we're going to start with is a blank white piece of paper.

Now, I have actually gone and I have printed just the outline of the heart.

There's a few other ways that you can do this.

You can just totally wing it and freehand it.

When I'm working on certain projects I like to do that.

For this specific project I do like to have something to work off of.

You could also have the design, this is actually what I'm modeling this off of.

Hannah: The first way to start a quilling project is to create a border, at least for this project in particular.

You can kind of see that there is a very clear kind of navy border around the piece.

That's where we're going to start.

So we've got our little dollop of glue right there.

And these are paper strips that I have already cut.

I'm going to take this navy strip.

I'm going to start with this awl tool, this one here.

You kind of need to break the fibers first.

What I mean by break the fibers, think about ribbons, when you're curling ribbon for a Christmas present.

So what that does is it just makes it so it is more malleable.

I am just going to gently dab into this glue.

If you apply too much glue it takes a really long time to dry and then it can move, and you don't want your quilling to move.

This is way too much glue.

So I'm going to take my little needle tool and I'm just going to kind of wipe it away.

And then another thing that I often do is I just tap, tap, tap over here, just to get some of the excess off.

If you try to glue the entire strip at one time it's a little hard to handle.

So if we just want to do one section at a time, and we're just going to hold it into place, so we're just going to let that sit for a little bit.

Hannah: Gently lift up this paper strip and I'm just applying glue underneath.

And you want the whole underside of the paper to have glue on it.

And again, I'm just kind of trying to make sure I follow that really light outline of the heart that it made.

So now we're going to use the same thing where we're just going to put some glue on here and then we're just going to hold this in place and that is half of the outline of the heart.

Hannah: To complete the outline of the heart, you repeat the exact same thing we did on the right side with the left side.

Right here I have this heart piece kind of sketched out, some preliminary ideas of where I want the coils to go.

So same technique to break the fibers as we did the outline.

I'm going to show you two ways to do this.

And let's actually start off with the slotted needle tool.

There is a place in this tool where I'm going to slip the piece of paper into it and then I'm curving, I'm curling it right here.

And I'm going to gently unroll it so hopefully you can see I'm with my fingers adjusting how tight that coil is.

And what I'm using this for right here is I'm going to reference the general size and placement I want my coil to be.

I've got in my brain I'm going to cut it about right here.

I am going to dab it into the glue.

It's more important than even the outline that the center coil area has glue on it because it will try to pop up.

I'm just going to place it right there.

I'm going to hold it for a little bit.

But you want to try to be as steady-handed and place it where it should go right from the beginning.

That's our first coil.

Hannah: Now, the next one I'm going to work on, I'm just going to use this awl or this needle tool, and this is my preferred way for making the coils.

I'm just taking my fingers and I'm wrapping it around the needle.

Then once it is started you just use your fingers.

♪♪ Hannah: What you can do with any of these tools is also apply the glue.

So instead of doing the dab, dab, dab method, you can take this and just apply.

You could use a toothpick, a wooden skewer, there's a whole bunch of options for household items that don't cost you anything.

Hannah: So we have continued making the coils and filling in the rest of the heart.

To really complete the piece, we take our little strips of paper and we would add some of these straight details.

So if you can see here, that is just a strip of paper that I glued here and you would repeat that throughout the entire piece.

Hannah: I always recommend that people go and they frame their quilling pieces in shadowboxes.

You can get them at a local hobby store, you can buy them online.

There's a lot of options.

But if you work with like an inch strip or a half-inch strip, that's just something you want to make sure that it fits into the shadowbox.

Hannah: Like I mentioned, I love quilling because it is an accessible art form.

You can use these tools like I mentioned, you can buy a set online, but if you're not ready to make that investment anything that can help you manipulate the paper can be served as a tool.

I buy pretty decent quality paper, but you can use construction paper, you can use stuff that you just have laying around, you can even use magazines or anything that you want.

Hannah: We have created this quilled heart together, but you can make anything you can imagine.

I've done landscapes, I've done dogs, I've done baby's names, anything.

One of the best things about quilling is that it is such an accessible art form.

Anything that you imagine, you can make happen.

♪♪