Best "Dressed" - Paper Twirlies Challenge

 

The Paper Twirlies team is a team of paper quillers on Etsy.  The quilled creations of today find their roots in Paper Filigree. Paper Filigree is the art of making things out of rolled paper. When paper filigree started, the paper was rolled around a feather quill which created the name paper quilling!

The latest Paper Twirlies team challenge is to make something that dresses up something else or that adds a finishing touch.  Any kind of decorative container or wrapper fits the bill, like boxes, lollipop covers, bag toppers, muffin picks, book or journal covers, picture frames, anything!  Since I have been brainstorming about my shops lately, one of the things on my list to do are to make card sets.  Even though I offer combined shipping (meaning, each extra item shipped adds a lesser amount to the shipping than the first item), the less work your customer has to do, the better.  So, I've decided to put up some more ready-made sets so that buyers have the option to put one thing in their carts instead of picking all the cards separately.

What better to package my newest set of cards in but somethng that works for the Paper Twirlies challenge?  In a previous post, I introduced a set of cards that I donated to an animal sanctuary raffle.  That set was housed in a cardstock envelope.  That envelope was only half an inch thick and I found myself having trouble getting enough cards in it (depending on what kind of dimensionals I put on them.)  So, I fiddled with the template and made this one 3/4 inches thick and I moved some of the dimension to the oustide using quilling!

 

Voila: a quilled card case!  This quilled flower design as a botanical frame is my first attempt at framing and layering quilled pieces.  I struggled with it a lot, but I feel it was worth it.  Boy, it takes a lot of patience to let it dry at each step before you get to see how it turns out!

My set of cards rest inside.  I asked my husband what kinds of cards he buys the most, as a man who might need to keep cards on hand.  (Yes, he is a LAST minute card shopper!)  Birthdays and Christmas are always the biggest ones.  I decided this set would be birthdays with two anytime cards.  One of the any occasion cards is a romantic theme because anniversaries/Valentine's was third on the list of card giving occasions.  The other any occasion card has three possible sentiments so that the sender can choose what they need it for whenever the occasion arises!

I have been having a lot of fun with glitter lately.  I have been practicing for a workshop I will be teaching later this year.  There are three ways to do it and one is harder than the rest.  Working on this set just makes me want to expand my glitter colour collection!

The Paper Twirlies challenge entry isn't due until the end of the month, but I have been working on this glitter set for all of January!  I can't wait to see what all the other Paper Twirlies members come up with in March on the Paper Twirlies Blog!

- Scrapninny