St Patrick's Day 3D Shamrock Quilled Card Tutorial
Definitely an up grade in skill level from the last Card Tutorial here we are learning the skills of three dimensional Decoupage :-3D Decoupage (Paper Tole) is one of the most popular card making techniques. Basically, its about creating 3D pictures from multiple copies of one image - individual elements are cut out and glued into layers to ‘build out’ the picture. A decorative technique I use a lot in Pages From The Heart Gift Book Designs
We are also going to learn a new quilling shape the Teardrop
Equipment list
Shamrock print Template (download) Printed on card stock
2 large shamrock bouquets
Several leaves both sizes
Small piece of ribbon
or cut out pale green hearts from sheet if you don't want to do the quilling)
White glue and paint brush
Hot glue gun
scraps of green and white paper
scissors small fine point
The only other piece of equipment that you may want to use is a quilling board ,to be honest I rarely find it necessary to use one particularly when using the slotted quilling tool (another reason for investing that $3.00 in a real tool ) is that the tension usually ends up being very similar on all pieces if you use identically sized quilling strips so when they relax they are all pretty much exactly the same size. But if you are using a substitute quilling tool or even the needle tool it is likely that you will not be able to keep the tension constant so you may find you need a quilling board.
A quilling board is useful to have amongst your quilling tools, it is usually made from cork or firm foam it usually has a template attached to the top in which there are holes of different sizes. As you make your coils you can drop them into the holes which helps them open out to just the desired size,so all your shapes are the same size . To the right is an image of a purchased quilling board usually costs between $12.00 to $20.00.
However you can make a perfectly adequate possibly not as pretty looking quilling board by purchasing a box of mixed size washers from you local dollar store and sticking them with white glue to a piece of thick card board or a couple of ceareal box sides stuck back to back.
I actually prefer this as you can make many more pieces at a time, you can make a greater variety of sizes as the size of washers available are huge ,not just limiting yourself to project sizes to the hole sizes cut in a manufactred quilling board ,plus you can re use the nice little compartmentalized container the washers come in you also save yourself $19.00 (if you can resist spending the difference in the dollar store)
Download contains the graphic template for the base of our St Patrick's Day card, and the necessary prints to form all 3D elements, also all printouts for the matching St Patrick's Day brooch Tutorial, which is number two in this St Patrick's Day trio of tutorials
The pattern and larger layout pieces are designed to form 3D elements for a card printed on a A4 size piece of cardstock folded in half sideways. On my printer (margins off) the printout pieces exactly match the size of the graphic of the front of the card if it is printed to occupy one half of a piece of A4 card stock. However allowing for printer discrepancies and resizing of images slightly if your shamrock bouquets do not match exactly the size of the graphic image on the front of your card do not worry too much, it is a guide line only; you are going to cover the graphic with 3D decoupage so not much of the original image will show.
1) Cut three of the larger shamrock bouquets intended for use with the card
(sorry only included 2 on the sheet you may have to print two sheets, or crop without resizing jpeg of large bouquet section of pattern onto a blank canvas and print as many as you like or print out extra sheet and save extras for matching brooch gift box project (which will appear on pages tutorials a little later)
You may leave the entire stem section on one image but on the others cut it off, leaving just the leaves.
2) Lay each cut out in the palm of your hand ,image face down , with your thumb from other hand in a circular motion gently rub in the center of the shape until it forms a slightly concave appearance (hollowed or rounded inward like the inside of a bowl )
3) Because these are fairly large pieces here we can use the hot glue gun, (there is a better and preferable technique which I will introduce to you in the matching brooch tutorial, however right now this is quickest and simplest) way of creating depth for our image, but be careful and quick.
On the Shamrock Bouquet Graphic on the front of the card , towards the center of the graphic starting in the center of the graphic and radiating outwards in a spiral motion to within 1/2 a cm of the edge, do not go beyond this point or glue may show. Quickly as the glue hardens very rapidly add the still stemmed bouquet piece directly over the top of the original graphic as far as possible making the stems line up.
4) You have now created your first layer of the 3D image we are aiming for. You will undoubtedly have hot glue trails or threads dangling from your project remove them now.
5) Cut off all of the stem portion of your remaining two Shamrock bouquets if you have not already done so and cut off or out as much of the white back ground that shows behind the leaves as possible
6) The two remaining bouquet shapes we are now going to attach to the main graphic, but we are not going to place them directly on top of the other as we did with the first, this time we are going to place each a little off center one to the left and one to the right, one over lapping the other by at least 50%
7) We are going to attach them with hot glue, but this time in random dots over the back of the concave pattern piece but still taking great care not to go too close to the edge, make your placements quickly as the hot glue dries very quickly...then remove all hot glue trails. Hopefully you should now have something like this
