Quilling - the art of rolling paper

Each year, the Vitoria City Hall offers a catalog of various activities to the citizens. Anyone can sing up, and as all the courses are entry level, you can learn anything from it's basics. There is a wide variety of things you can take part in, from gymnastics to arts and crafts. I joined a quilling class, eager to learn a new way to work with papers and curious about this thing I've never had heard before.

Quilling involves the use of strips of papers of different widths that are rolled, shaped and glued together to create decorative designs. The basic part of this technique is rolling the strips into a coil and giving that roll various shapes. This website explains how to take the first steps. Shown image is theirs.

The materials are fairly easy to obtain, there are several places that sell them thought the Internet. In the picture at right, you can see the basic ones. The most important one is the quilling needle, a tool that you roll the paper with. Angeled tweezers, glue applicator and scissors are key. Without the mat, it's hard to keep track of the size of the figures, very important too. And obviously, the paper!

I enjoy myself a lot while doing quilling, it's challenging for the mind since you have to think ahead and very clearly how you want the piece to look like. My favorite things to create are miniature things, it challenges me and my pulse. This are some of the pieces I created.

The course has almost finish, so there was a showcase of all the works created in all of the crafts courses. I volunteered along another classmate to set our table and explain our work to other people. It has been the very first time I've sown any type of artwork to people like this and it has been interesting. I enjoyed meeting people and answering to their questions about the technique.

The table was full of quilling artwork in various forms, clips, frames, jewelry.... A classmate has even beautifully decorated a glass bottle.

There were also other courses showing their work, this festivity was full of artists of various ages on different techniques. Chatting with them about their work and pipeline has been really interesting and has made me wanting to learn new ways to produce art. I hope you have the opportunity to take part in this kind of events in the future, where creativity just floats around.

If you are interested in learning more about this quilling, you can take a look to the wide variety of videos across the internet. I find this specially useful, since it's clear in their instructions.