Sunflower, sunflower growing tall

When I think of sunflowers, inexplicably, I think of my beloved older sister. I can only attribute it to my Mum baking and icing her an incredible (purple and orange) sunflower cake for her birthday when we were young. My Mum used to bake the most incredible cakes, but I'm sure you guessed that after seeing my wedding cake masterpiece she made (which you can see here in my wedding reception post).

As usual, I have digressed and rambled away from the main point. THAT being, that it was my sister's birthday 2 weeks ago and I wanted to make her a card and for that strange reason, the idea of a quilled sunflower came into my head.  I searched the shed for my quilling tool and some A4 brown and orange paper which I cut into strips using the manual papershredder.

I must recommend quilling, it really is a lovely form of card and paper crafting. Very therapeutic and you can sit and coil papers around the 2-pronged quilling fork whilst watching TV or chatting rather like one would knit.  You can use quilling sizing tools (basically looks like a stencil or different sized circles) to regulate the size of all your coils but I am lazy and just use my eye-judgement. It can also look very effective through the combination of a coils and not too much skill!  I also like to make up some generic coloured coils and keep them in and old pill pot in case I want to make a quick card.

The difference between the different coils in the card are that the brown ones are coiled and then glued (you stick a cocktail stick into your glue and dab over the end which secures to the coil) or the orange ones are coiled and then you release it and catch it/stop it when it has uncoiled/loosened to a size you want. Then you dab the glue on the cocktail stick again.

I cut a circle of brown paper in order to centre the sunflower and give it a background and then used a hexagonal formation or coils to ensure uniformity.  To make the orange petals, once you've made the loose coil and glued it, you pinch the ends between your fingers and I twisted the outward ones slightly.
It looked a bit bare so I stuck some of the strips and then punched a few butterflies from my wedding butterfly punch.

What do you think?

Linking to Creative Mondays
and Pink Elephant Challenge this week where Anything goes!

April makes: quilling special!

Linking up to Annie the Felt Fairy's a make a month for 2012.  Go and see what everyone else has made!  I'm afraid my April makes have not been anything new and innovative in terms of trying new crafts, but I've made one or two cards I've been rather pleased with! I always tend to spend an inordinate amount of time making cards in the holidays, it's just nice to sit and waste time doing something frivolous (I say frivolous as I already have a large supply of cards ready made from previous holidays etc!)

 This first one still needs some googly eyes added to the ladybirds but this one recycles some lady bird bodies (the black legs bit) that I had on some ladybird chocolates I was given for my birthday.  It seemed a shame to throw them away so I made them some red circle bodies from some scrap red card I rescued from the recycling and some black paper and a hole-punch.  The leafy background was produced using a tearing ruler.
The quilling madness:
One of the papercrafts I adore which looks effective but is really easy is quilling, i.e. using a tiny pronged fork to make tiny coils of paper from thin strips that you then shape and put together to make images.  There are some amazing amazing examples out there on the web, go and look!

This all came about because of a card-making book I borrowed from the library that had some lovely quilled examples in.

 Ice-cream!  I was rather pleased with this one using pastel colours and some brown

 A simple daisy, I think I am quite boring with my quilling!  Half the time, I do flowers!

 Another simple flower though I like the combo of bright colours.

 This was an Easter card which I actually forgot to send in the end!

 Another bright flower!

 Another Easter card, not too sure about this one.  Is it a flower, is it a sun, is it Superman?  Who knows!

 One more Easter example, I think this is my favourite, even though it took ages!

Are you bored of quilling yet?

 This was a version of the design that I saw in the craft book that inspired it all.  Well, a similar one! This isn't the finished version which has a contrasting lilac and mint stripey inside- perhaps the recipient, my sister, might send me a photo of it!  I was especially pleased with the flowers on the left- it's the first time I've tried using thicker strips and fringing it in quilling- I actually followed the instructions correctly! (more recycling on this!  The purple flowers are all made out of envelopes!)

 This one was also based on a design in the book but I was cheapy and used free patterned papers from Papercraft inspirations magazine..

 Likewise this one!  I somehow broke my circle scallop punch on this one!

 This one was for a lady who loves monkeys!  The monkeys are cut from some plastic packaging from a Thorntons Easter egg last Easter which I saw (WOMOTM's Easter egg!) were about to be put in the bin so I thought, "Ahaaaaaaaaaa, I know someone who likes monkeys!  Unfortunately her birthday had just been so I've waited a year!!!!

 A simple Decoupage design that's been kicking around for ages (this is where you have multiple images of a picture which you cut and you layer them on top of each other with sticky pads to achieve a 3D effect)

Finally, I'd seen this sort of design in Papercraft inspirations and loved it.  I tried to find 2 different complimentary patterned papers that matched but failed so I made the spotty paper by adding hole-punched scraps from an envelope to orange paper!

There's a few more but one of them is for a birthday next week so more anon!

Please tell me, what do you think of them?  Are there any that you'd laugh at if you received it?  Are there any that you think are nice?  Have I inspired you to make some cards at all?

(Back to my work!  Ahrgh, panic panic!!!!!!!!!)