Made 2 Craft: Quilled flowers

Make some pretty flowers that can be used on cards or gift boxes

These pretty quilled flowers need just a little bit of equipment to make - you don't even need special quilling papers. I used coloured A4 paper from my stash. It's best to use paper rather than card as the petals of the flowers if made with card are a little rigid. However the darker coloured flowers I made in this project were made using very thin card, so give it a go, if that's all you have, and see what the end result looks like.

Quilled flowers decorating a box made with Stampin Up's Window Box thinlits dies

I made them to decorate a gift box, however they can also be used on greetings cards or how about decorating a photo frame. My flowers are about 3 cm in diameter and you can change the size of the flowers by adjusting the width of the paper you cut.

Follow the below link to find out how these flowers and gift box were made

You will need

Coloured A4 paper (I used yellow, pale peach, medium peach and dark peach)
Patterned card for the gift box (I used 'You're a Peach' designer series paper by Stampin Up)
Quilling tool with slotted top
Window Box Thinlits dies by Stampin Up
Leaf die
Die cutting machine
Scissors
Guillotine
Glue and double sided tape

Die cut two box parts from a piece of patterned card

Trim the two end tabs off one of the box pieces as shown in the photo below with the two red arrows

Put double sided tape on the box tabs as shown in the photo below (my double sided tape has a red backing paper). Not all tabs need the tape as the lid needs to be able to be opened
Stick one box piece to the other as shown in the below photo. Then fold and stick all the tabs with tape on them to form the box.

Each flower needs a yellow centre and a coloured petal strip. For the centre, cut a strip 5 mm off the short end of a piece of yellow A4 paper. For the petal strip cut a 2 cm wide strip off the long edge of a piece of A4 coloured paper. I made three flowers for my gift box, so cut 3 yellow strips and 3 peach coloured petal strips.

Slot one of the yellow strips into the top of the quilling tool. Twist the tool and the yellow paper will wrap itself tightly around the top pins of the quilling tool. When you are near the end of the yellow strip, put a small amount of glue on the paper and finish wrapping it. Do not remove it from the quilling tool.

Gently fold one of the petal strips in half, half again and then in half again. Don't press the folds down too much. Draw a light pencil line along the bottom of the strip 5 mm up. Then start cutting down to the pencil line to form a fringe. Cut right along the strip through all layers.

Unfold the strip and you may notice that where the folds are, you have pieces that do not have fringes cut in them. Just get your scissors and cut in the missing fringes.

Put a small amount of glue on the bottom edge of the petal piece and attach to the yellow centre you have already rolled. Twist the tool to continue wrapping the petal around the yellow centre. When you get to the end of the strip, put a small amount of glue on the end of the petal and then finish wrapping it. You can now remove the flower from the quilling tool.

Start bending the petals downwards as per the below photos. Make as many flowers as you need for your project. I needed just three flowers for mine.

My patterned paper had a green pattern on the back, so I used the scraps left over from cutting out the box parts to die cut 3 leaves. Glue the leaves to the top of the gift box

Put plenty of glue on the base of each flower and place onto the top of the gift box between the leaves. I use Tombow multi purpose glue which is a very strong glue that dries clear. A pritt stick type glue may not be strong enough to hold the flowers to your project.