Quilling :-3D Gift for Mum
Copyright Pages from the Heart
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Assuming we have gathered together the basics as described
If not then here is a basic supply list
Several sheets of newspaper or flyers
Several sheets of green paper (can be painted green ,a couple of sheets
must be green on both sides )
Container for base of topiary
Stem of topiary I used an old wooden spoon , you
could use four or five wooden skewers bundled together
or a nice dry straight stick or twig from the garden
Flowers if using artificial flowers then any smallish ones will do
For quilled roses
In addition you will also need
White glue ,hot glue and gun,craft paint in complementary shade to flowers ,a few bits and bobs to decorate finished piece eg. gift tags ,narrow ribbons raffia sphagnum moss …..if you want to make the fringed grass for the base of your topiary creation you will also need some green paper that you can cut into 1 in wide strips .
The first thing you have to decide is how big do YOU want to make this project, just because I made one 15in tall does not mean you have to,yours could be much bigger or much smaller its entirely up to you . But it does have to be the first thing you decide upon as all else obviosly depends on it.
What size of container do you need from very small empty half and half cream containers to a or 3lb margarine or 4 liter ice cream tub all the desired plantpot shape just how big or small do you want your gift to be ,a huge floor standing model or a tiny monitor top sitter. If you don't want you need not worry about the container you use at all ,if your not making too large of a project you could cover the contaner base a brown paper lunch bag as if its a shrub freshly arrived from the nursery a variation on this would be to make a fabric bag possibly in some matching fabric you have on other items in your room.
Well what ever size you decide next step is find a stem for your topiary creation , a piece of broom handle would make a decent stem for a largish creation or a cardboard roll from paper towels ,two or three cocktail sticks for a tiny one, for mine I used an old wooden spoon I actually balled up my paper around its bowl.
To start off your ball of paper no matter what size your making the whole thing will stick together much better if you smear white glue over the first piece and scrunch it into a ball around the stem so you are in effect making a paper lollypop . You can also at this point decide not to put a stem on the flower ball at all you could simply mount it staight onto the pot like an egg in an egg cup effect. When you have reached your desired size for your paper ball ,add one more sheet of paper in a color matching your flowers so no newspaper print shows though, if you don't have any colored paper you could always paint the outside layer . If your paper ball has lumps and bumps and isn't quite the globe shape you would like then flatten these protrusions by sticking tape across them
From some green paper we need to cut some basic leaf shapes seeing as we need quite a few this process is quicker if we fold the paper into 4 so each time we cut a leaf we are cutting 4 at a time ,all the leaves do not need to be exactly the same so cuting free hand is accceptable.
Fold each leaf at its end point at a 90 degree angle glue this new flat foot portion to your paper ball randomly at intervals all over the surface of the papaer ball if you flattened the lumps on the surface of your paper ball by means of scotch tape then you will probably have to use hot glue as white glue takes too long too adheare to scotch tape. Kids if using hot glue please be very careful as hot glue can indeed get very hot and will burn you, the longer you leave the glue gun on the hotter it gets most guns do not have a built in thermostat, it is safer to turn the hot glue gun off every few minutes to cool it down the glue will even go a lttle further if you do this too.
Once again using hot glue (so kids be very very careful) start adding your flowers either silk or quilled . as far as the quilled roses go it is not necessary in my opinion it is actually preferrable if the all the flowers are not exactly the same size we don't want our creation to look that uniform that it looks like we have created a poodle dogs coat but with leaves. On my flower ball I also varied the color I used in that I chose several shades of pink even adding a few cream ones into the mix. No matter how accurate you are at sizing your quilled roses you will still need smaller ones to fill in the gaps between them . I waited to the end to fill in the smaller spaces between the quilled roses ,the very smallest spaces but still to big to be overlooked I filled in by adding an extra leaf . To save myself some time I stopped white glueing the free end of the quilling strip as each rose was finished as is the common practice with all quilled shapes.Instead in my fingertips I arranged the rose how I wanted it to look, then put a dot of hot glue onto its base and glued it into place on the flower ball , sometimes I found that the rose would unwind slightly forming a slightly more open rose this seemed to vary by what kind of quilling paper I used ,but this opening of some of the roses just added to the variety of form and added to the appeal of the piece so don't worry if this happens to your quilled roses.
Next we turn our attention to the stem base , we need to expand the dimension of the stem base so we can glue it to the inside bottom of our container the wider the base the more securely will the stem attach to the tub base we can achieve this by folding and rolling some newspaper pieces as shown in the photo's to the left . Add a small amount of white glue to the strip so it glues to itself as you roll it. When your stem will free stand on its own you have added enough rolls of paper
