Quilling?

It’s been a rather boring month so far, so I thought I’d talk about a hobby near and dear to my heart – quilling! Quilling is an art form where you take pieces of paper strips and roll and shape them into various designs with a tool similar to a bident. People make all sorts of things through quilling, but I tend to stick to earrings! These are two of my more favorite designs, as they’re simple enough to make, but are aesthetically pleasing. 

 I was able to make the rainbow earring with some scrap pieces of paper I had around the room, but for the other earring I used quilling paper, which can be found in any craft store.

I first found out about quilling when I was in India two summers ago. Faced with one of the inevitable electric shorts when I was at my uncle’s house, my eyes started to wander, until I happened to take a closer look at my cousin’s earrings. Upon discussion, I found that my cousin had been making all earrings for the past year. With that, the rest of my afternoon was devoted to learning how to quill.

Over the past year, quilling has been my main tension reliever. Whenever I feel like I need a break from academics, but don’t want to give my mind over to my computer, I take out my handy quilling paper and tool and experiment to my hearts content. Before I set my mind to a design, I tend to sketch it out to get a feel for how it would look like on the ear. If I’m making an earring for a specific person, I do my best to take into account their earring size and color preference. Some people like large flamboyant jewelry pieces – others don't (I’ve learned the heard way OTL).

I found it interesting that quilling as an art form has been around for a long time. During the renaissance, nuns would use quilling to decorate various religious items.  It’s interesting to see such an art form become more accessible and widespread as time has passed – it's a easy and fun way to pass time. While the process of quilling has stayed very much the same, the tools and supplies have all modernized.  A great website that I use for the occasional quilling tip/ inspiration is http://www.honeysquilling.com, although there are plenty of good youtube channels that have similar content.

I’m working on a more complicated piece right now – hopefully it’ll be complete by my next blog post! Also, as I write this I remember that it's the fourth of July. I hope everyone gets to spend some time with family and have some fun!