Shaping

Loose Roll

Circle: Easy to make, it’s just the basic strip rolled up and glued!

Teardrop: Support the central coil with a fingertip, and find the point where the strip is glued to the body of the roll. When you find it, take your thumb and index finger of the hand not supporting the coil, and pinch the sides, making the glued edge the point of the pinch. This will kink the loops of the coil and create a teardrop shape. It’s not essential to make the glued bit the tip of the point, but it can help to keep the sides looking smoother as the tiny ‘bump’ of the glue won’t show as much. The teardop can also be twisted into a more curved shape, like a half of a yin-yang shape.

Diamond/Eye: From the teardrop shape, pinch the end opposite the tip, making a shape with two pointed ends.

Square: From a diamond, pinch two points in the smooth sides, in the same way as making the diamond shape originally. This should give a shape with the four points roughly equal in distance from each other…

Rectangle: Follow the same instructions as for the square, but make the pinches at a different spacing.

These are some of the main shapes. You’ll find that you’ll start needing other shapes eventually, but they can be easily adapted from these basics.

Making A Picture
Most things can be made through quilling, you just need to be able to ‘visualise’ the shapes that things are made up out of, e.g. circles, teardrops, squares etc. A simple piece to make using these shapes is a duckling.

So, there you go, a quick run-through of the basics of quilling. I hope you decide to have a go, it’s very easy to pick up, and there’s so many ways to develop and experiment with those simple little strips of paper!