Paper Twirlies Team Inspiration Challenge May 2012

I'm a member of the Paper Twirlies team on Etsy, a fairly small group of gals who love paper and quilling. In the past we've tried to participate in team challenges, it's been awhile, but we're doing one this month - an inspiration challenge. With some willing fellow Etsy sellers, a host of pictures have been chosen to keep us inspired. The first challenge photo is brought to us by Clothscapes - here is what she says about her wonderful quilt. 

A dramatic quilt made with cream organic cotton surrounding a graduated square spiral of 84 different shades, beginning with deep purple in the center and moving all the way through the spectrum to end with deep red. The binding is a dark scarlet and the backing is verigated from blue to gold.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to create but I knew it would be colorful and surrounded by white. Lately I've been working on earrings so I've been in a jewelry mode, so I decided to make a ring - although I think this design would look cool as earrings and may have to make some to match. 

Instead of squares I chose to work with circles - I LOVE circles. I choose 6 colors to form the base of the ring, each surrounded by a border of white, for the center I chose a medium gray which actually sits up from the 6 brighter colors.

Custom Cards

Last week I sold 3 cards through Etsy, that was a good week for me. I sold two of my quilled love birds wedding cards - one with custom colors and one of my quilled love tree cards with custom initials.

Custom colors - navy blue with sunny yellow

Custom initials carved in heart :)

Cross Magnets

Over the past couple weeks I've had a few custom orders - one of which was for magnets for my coworker, he wanted crosses. I had purchased these plain little wooden crosses (I think from the Dollar Tree) and thought I could paint them and add roses to each. I painted them with a metallic champagne color, quilled 3 roses for each, and glued a magnet to the back of each; not too shabby since they started out as some pretty plain looking crosses.

Fringed Flower Pens

I recently purchased a quilling book by Alli Bartkowski, (of Quilled Creations) called Quilled Flowers. Really great book, gorgeous flowers. One of my favorite projects uses a pen, ribbon, and a fringed flower. I tried it and showed my creation to a few coworkers, they each wanted some. I used polka dotted ribbon in various colors and I love them all. If you purchase the book through Quilled Creations, Alli herself will sign it for you, an added bonus to such a wonderful book.

Paper Doll Flower Child

Saturday was National Scrapbook Day, and like the past 3 years; I spent my day at my favorite scrapbook store (although I do not scrapbook), Eclectica. Every year they have a paper doll contest. They pass out the parts and we have two hours to decorate the doll and everyone votes. I've won the past 3 years and my little hippie chick flower child shared a win this year with a birthday girl. She will go on my shelf at  home with my past winners.

A Couple More Jewelry/Trinket Boxes

One of my coworkers had a birthday in March, while I was able to make her a card, I was so far behind I didn't get to make her anything, I knew I wanted to make her a little jewelry box - she has lots of jewelry - and I wanted it to either have a shoe or a dog on the top of it. She loves the color pink so I made the base of the box in pink, turned out the shoe was just not working for me so I moved on and made a doggy. It took quite some time to figure out but I think he turned out kind of cute and she loved it - she said it even looks like her dog, that's a plus since I was hoping he just looked like a dog, let alone her dog. The other box is the third one I created this weekend, bird nest with three little eggs; had to make time for photo's. 

Jewelry/Trinket Boxes

I absolutely love making these little boxes - I've created these with birds in the past but this time I used the "willow" paper strips - from Paplin - they have little speckles of brown running through them and created a little blue bird instead of the yellow one I've been doing. The whole thing has a nice nature feel about it. The other one is a new design, ladybug - I sketched out many months ago what I thought it would look like, and finally created it last night. I think it turned out cute. I have one more new design started so I'm off to finish that and will have that posted soon.