Quilling!

The March challenge over at Unstampabelles is of all things - quilling! I have not done this before - so a real challenge for me!

The sponsor of this is Jessica Theadore at Kazzaz Creations:

The prize will be a Kaszazz Prize Packet. 

This is my card:

Late last year, Merry our bold leader at Unstampabelles gave us a list of possible challenges to discuss, and settle on. Quilling was one of them.  I though "No worries, I will have heaps of time to learn to do that".......and promptly forgot about it for a week or two.  Then I ordered some quilling strips and a tool from       a business in the North of the state (Regal Press), and when they arrived I put the tool away carefully in a safe place  - one I have not yet been able to locate! - and again forgot about it for a while except for saving some information about quilling from a craft magazine.  

Came crunch time - couldn't find the tool; decided I could use a bamboo stick, split on one end.  This would work quite well for someone with a more dexterous hand than me - I found it too small and fiddly to operate easily and became quite frustrated. After a quick visit to a local supplier (Image Plus - this usually means I go to buy one thing and come home with lots of other things that looks too lovely to leave behind!) I found the tool more user friendly for me, and made some sort-of-usable quills. After that, I looked on the internet, watched a few uTube videos and looked at a few images. I re-read the article in the magazine Papercraft Inspirations and liked the crazy birds they had created.  Not only did they have step-by-step instructions with photo's, they have testers in this magazine, and they had made some very crafty suggestions, and helpful remarks so I felt quite comfortable about making the birds.

I made the first one:

Realised he didn't have a head! Made another one:

Liked that enough to make another - found the glue dried very quickly, so you need to only put out a dab at a time.  I ended up very gluey.

Finally made these two critters into a card - the background DP comes from Prima Firefly Collection 6 x 6 paper stack. For the rest, there is  - MMI die cut of the bird cage, Memory Box for the music, a rub-on, a sparkly brad, small eyes and two tiles from my stash and it was complete. Phew!

The one below was taken in full sunlight

I will enter this in the following challenges:
Hiding in my Craft Room:  green
Allways Something Creative: Green and spring
Joyful Stamper: Anything Goes


Another part of this journey concerned the bits and bobs that came from my stash. In searching for the tool and getting some suitable non-stamp sentiments, I finally lost my patience (not that I have a lot) with all the ribbons cascading over the doors of the cupboard and getting in the way all the time when I open these up. I have ribbons in the wire drawers, and inside the cupboard and on the bookshelves in more wire drawers (colour co-ordinated), mostly on reels or wound onto strips of card.

The ribbons were in 1 to 2 metre lengths and were just hanging where the arrow is pointing! They were growing in number and had obscured the drawers of the double plastic drawer set on the top of the cupboard. So I fixed them!

I put nails into the top of the CD shelving unit and used dog-clips to attach to the nails and hold the ribbons. I can still see them, but they are not in the way.

When my husband notices them, he will also notice that I did not rule a line to bang in the nails symmetrically - bad me! It will hurt his OCD sole. The red crab I purchased in London 32 years ago.

In searching through the plastic drawers I also found some bits from the stash I had forgotten I had - like the tiles. So in a way quilling has been very beneficial, if a trifle long winded and expensive!