Birthday easel card with pink quilling flowers

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I guess there's always a story behind every art work that I do and this one is no exception. It all started when I was playing with my quilling comb about a week ago. It had been a while since I last held one in my hand and made any quilling shapes with it. I then tried to make quilling loops with the comb and started layering each one on top of the other and somehow created this quilling pattern below.

After doing that, I kept thinking of how to turn it into a petal because I wanted to make a flower with it. But since it was so big, I turned it into a flower bud instead. Then when I did so.....it somehow reminded me of a strawberry ...doesn't it look like one to you?? Hahahahha....Check out the photo below....

No matter how it looked, pink strawberries or flower buds, I still loved it! And decided to use it for my new handmade card design that I was requested to do for a very special person.

These days I prefer to hand letter all my sentiments for my handmade cards. I guess, it would make the card more special and unique instead of just printing them. Plus by doing so, I get to practice writing with the brush again too. Which I don't get to do everyday. So it was fun. :) Do check out the video of the card below.

Like I said earlier, this card was made for someone special. And that someone is actually the founder of Jamu Mandara, Puan Azliza Ahmad. Her birthday was earlier this month but I was only able to give the card to her a week later. A little late but better late than never right? Hehe! :) Below are a couple of photos of her and me when we met a few days ago in Kangar, Perlis for a business meeting.

I also made her a hand bound book. A simple coptic stitch hand bound book. Actually, both the card and the hand bound book had the same colour combination of bright pink and lime green. This is because the product she sells uses the same colour for the packaging. So I thought that it would be cool to use those colours for the design of the handmade card and hand bound book. So it's something that she would appreciate because it's related to her products. 

I started taking her Jamu products since August this year. I've been getting really great results ever since I took them. I feel so much lighter, more energetic and I've been able to do my work better ever since. I can't imagine going through a day without it. So I am very much grateful to Puan Azliza Ahmad for her help in making me feel good through her products and I couldn't be happier to be able to meet her in person to thank her personally for that. The meeting was also for us to talk more about business since last October I decided to become an agent for Jamu Mandara because I was so confident of their products and would like to spread the word about it to all my friends and family about how wonderful Jamu Mandara is. I would certainly not hide whatever good things I know and would like more people to feel good like I do. Below is Jamu Mandara's advert and description of their product that I take every day. So if you would like to give it try, you can contact me at my WhatsApp 017-6508141 for orders. I would definitely give you a special price for it :). 

Twisted quilling leaf tutorial

I've been quilling and revisiting some old quilling techniques that I've done in the past and made some video tutorials of them about week ago. That was fun!

I remember many years ago when I made some twisted loops leaves and flowers as decorations on my handmade card, so many of my followers wanted a tutorial for it. But at that time I didn't even have a YouTube channel and I didn't know how to do a video tutorial either. I did however do a tutorial in 2012 on how to use two coloured quilling paper for the looping technique. So I did what I could by explaining it to them plus with the help of some photos and text that I added in my blog post. Back then I also used the quilling comb as a tool to do the looping technique. But in my latest tutorial here, I did it without the use of the quilling comb. You can try it with both.

Later, I learned how to twist the loops from a fellow quiller named Asma' Ahmad Bahari. I adore all her quilling art. She did a tutorial on it at her blog back then. If I am not mistaken, she did the twisting technique for her husking flower that she called the Royal flower. It was love at first sight for me. After that, I used that twisting technique whenever I made any quilling flowers that had loops. It's inevitable. I just had to do it. Because twisting the loops is fun! :).

As you can see from the photo above, you could also use one coloured quilling paper for this twisted quilling leaf technique. And you can also wrap around it with a few layers of quilling paper. It's all up to your imagination.

The photo above is an example of quilling leaves that I made in 2012.....I used only one dark green colour for the leaves. 

This is another throwback photo of my handmade card that I made in 2011 that shows how you can also make flowers with this the twisted quilling leaf technique. Yes you can. Just by choosing colours that are suitable for making flowers. I made this card in 2011.

Ok I hope you have collected some ideas here and hope it inspires you to make some quilling art with this new tutorial. Have fun watching the video tutorial below and happy quilling! :)

How to make quilling sprigs using a hair brush

I remember making these sprigs of leaves for the first time after learning how to make them last year from watching YouTube video tutorials made by a quilling artist. If I am not mistaken it was a video made by Anastasia Wahalatantiri. She is an amazing quilling artist and I really admire her work.

Anyways, I received a lot of requests from my followers for me to make a video tutorial of it too after I posted photos of the quilled sprigs that I made last year. Although I wanted to do it as soon as I could but I always find it hard to find a suitable quiet time alone at home to do it. 

So after a year since then, I finally get to make it this month! Yay! Truth is, my video tutorials are actually not only made for my followers but they are also made for me! Yes, me. Because sometimes I might forget how I made the quilling design after a few years and so it is good for me to record how I made it in the first place. Haha! Sad but true! So it's always nice to get to see and reminded of how I made it before by yours truly instead of being reminded by someone else.

I bought the foldable hair brush and comb from MR DIY. It's pretty cheap and easy to use for making the quilling sprigs. The quilling papers that I used are papers that I cut with the mini paper shredder machine. I pretty much use a lot of shredded papers for quilling instead of store bought ones. They are 80gsm type of paper and I realised that if you use thicker quilling papers for this technique it would be better. The sprigs would look a lot nicer and stand out. I tried using 120gsm paper before and it works really well.

You can also use more than one colour paper at a time so that the sprigs don't look too plain. I've tried to use two different colours to make a sprig and I really loved it. It's not that hard to do two quilling papers at a time. 

You could also make bigger size sprigs that would look just like big ferns just by using a much longer quilling paper, which means you would have to glue two or more of those shredded papers together and deciding how many pins on the brush that you would use to make the leaves long or short.

You can also use different colour of green papers, cut them up in smaller lengths, and then join them up together to get a very long strip so that you can turn it into leaves like you see at the photo above.

Below is the video I made and I do hope you will enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it for you. Do give it a try too! :)