January 22, 2011

Quilled Totoro toy

Paper quilled Totoro, front view

If you haven't watched the anime film My Neighbor Totoro, I highly recommend it. This is one of my kids' favorites, so I made a tiny Totoro toy with paper quilling.

January 16, 2011

Simple quilled flowers in a beveled frame

Quilled flowers in a beveled paper frame

I created this simple arrangement of quilled flowers with daisies and cornflowers as a gift. I used 1/8"-wide strips for the leaves and petals, and 3/8" strips for the fringed flowers and flower centers. The fringe is very dense. I always try to put some quilled insect as a point of interest in my flower arrangements. This work isn't an exception — you can see a tiny green bug climbing the flowers.

To frame this picture I built a beveled paper frame using 140lb (300gsm) card stock, tinted with acrylic paint. Step-by-step for a frame like this can be found in "How to make a beveled picture frame out of paper". Size of the finished picture is about 10 1/8 x 7 1/4 inches (25.8 x 18.5 cm).