A Grand Quilled mugappu jewellery

Hi all,

Welcome to my blog after a long time.. I am here today to present a grand quilled mugappu jewellery set in a traditional combo that is very much seen in southern silk sarees. -  Green  and Red..
This jewellery set is so special becoz, it is designed for my own use for this year's festive season to celebrate and satisfy my festive mood by accompanying my new dress with this beautiful handmade stuff. I am so happy with the way it has come out exactly with the richness and elegance that I had in my mind and eagerly waiting to wear them..
The set has been designed with the following materials and few other jewellery findings.
*Quilling Strips
*Crystals
*seed beads
*Rhinestones
*Cone Outliners
*Acrylic paints and varnish to protect it.
 I have used green seed beads , bigger size green crystals and smaller size red crystals for the chain and a flower shaped mugappu is done using paper strips with acrylic red coated over it.. Small golden rhinestones and green outliners have been used to decorate the mugappu pendant, the jumbo size jhumkas and the oxidised studs. The jhumkas are bordered using bigger size red rhinestones half way in and out to get an umbrella patterned finish . The pendant can also be positioned in the center as a regular jewellery if desired...

What more we need to celebrate and make the festive season grand, rich and memorable..
Do give a try on a mugappu jewellery on your own and experiance the beauty of it..

and finally , I am super happy to submit this jewellery piece as my entry for Indian Quilling Challenge's Make it festive and click here to know the challenge details  and submit your entries..

Happy quilling..

Quilled Key chains and paper cut keychains

 I had a chance to try a paper cut keychain with multi colour ball chains and cabochon as a complimentary gift when one of my friend gave a bulk order of 20 pairs of jumkas to gift for her friends.

This is what I could give her

Another quilled keychain in black green and blue made for an order..

If u find them appealing and attractive , text to shequills@gmail.com or comment below this blog post or leave a msg on my fb page shequills for placing your orders.

Customization is also done.

Quilled Circular frame

Hi everyone,
Glad to give you all a  new post which is a quilled circular frame. As I have already stated many a times, I am a great fan of Indian Quilling challenge and love participating no matter how busy the days keep me and never miss to give my submission for the challenge every month.

This month we have been invited to showcase our creativity on Quilled frames and I have taken it again. Please find the challenge details here.

Observation is a key to catch the method in which any craft/work is being carried on step wise, which in turn makes you a good implementer when it is tried on your own. This is applicable everywhere and anywhere and I applied it here by observing the ready to use rectangle shaped frames which is available in any normal craft shops. So how it is done?? I tried to bring my own frame from the scratch using papers on which I can quill and give a beautiful handmade circular quilled frame.

The materials I used for creating the circular frame:
1)plain A4 executive bond sheets(as they r much thicker than normal ones) 20 in nos.
2)pencil
3)sissors
4)compass
5)White glue
6)OHP sheet
7)eye pin/head pin
8)A needle tool
9) a small red seed bead
10) flat nose plier
11) a frame hanging ring

Materials I used for Quilling work:
1)5 mm Quilling strips in shades of light green , dark green , aqua blue , dark blue and shades of pink
2)7 mm Graduated Quilling strips in shades of orange and lavender
3)Quilling comb for leaves
4)Crimping tool for flowers
5)Quilling needle
6)Quilling board
7)White glue.

So here are the steps that I carried one by one.
Taking my first plain white executive bond paper, I drew a circle with 5cm radius and 8 cm radius using  a compass and a pencil.

I repeated the above step for 20 sheets and using the sissor I cut the inner circle and created a 5cm radius circlular space for the photo space inside the frame.

After repeating the process for all 20 sheets I glued them one by one using a white glue and glued a thick black paper behind them as a base. I then glued a patterned thick paper in the front just to hide the plain white sheets and give a patterned look. 

so you will get a frame like the one above with a black base behind. I created some space to insert the OHP sheet and the photo while gluing the black base, and inserted a plain 5.5 cm radius white circular cut paper and an 5.5 cm OHP(transparent) sheet above it to secure the photo inserted. Then I started to quill my work as below.

I gave an inner circlar border using 5mm strips in shades of pink and started crimping the 7 mm graduated strips in two alternate colours and created 10 flowers . Then I created two colour leaves using combing technique in 5mm green strips and inserted between the flowers with a teardrop piece in light and dark colours of blue over it. 

With this I completed the quilling part and moved on to create a stand for it so that It can be placed anywhere with an object lying at home supporting it behind, and also a hook to hang it on the wall as a wall decor/frame. I managed to provide both the features in it by the below steps

I created two rectangular shaped card stack/paper stack using 15 to 16 paper pieces and glued them as shown above. I allowed it to dry completely so that it becomes secure and strong enough to hold the frame in position when placed anywhere. 

Then a hook was created in the top center of the frame by creating a hole using a needle tool through which the eye pin was inserted. A loop was created in the eye pin using a flat nose plier and a wall hanging ring was attached to it.

The back view of the frame having both the stand for placement and a ring for hanging it on the wall.

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 and here is the final piece that I achieved.

A Circluar Quilled frame for a photo size 5cm in radius.

The frame when placed with a supporting object behind.

The frame when hanged on the wall.

Hope you found the post interesting by going through the steps of the circular quilled frame created by me. I hereby link this to the IQC frame it up for the month of august.

Please leave your comments and feed back for the little effort I have taken and text to shequills@gmail.com for any further communication related to my craft work and visit my FB page shequills to purchase my quilled and craft work.

Thank u so much shylaa for bringing out my creative thoughts to this craft world one more time.

Happy Quilling,

Cheers - Aparna Balakrishnan. 

WINNER AND TOPPER IN INDIAN QUILLING CHALLENGE

hi all,
I am a great fan of indian quilling challenge , a group created by a talented crafter shylaa Shree of Adhiraa creations , which organizes quilling challenges with different themes every month , inviting the crafters of India to participte and give their entries. Every month one winners and toppers are selected and honored in awarding prizes and given a badge to claim.

I am so proud to share that I am one among the winners and toppers of IQC in the year 2015 for the following entries submitted so far.

The entry which got selected as the winner for the frame it up challenge no 19 2015.
View the winners and toppers post in the link: http://indianquillingchallenge.blogspot.in/2015/09/wiiner-post-iqcg19-frame-it-up.html

The entry which got selected as one among the three toppers for the January month’s Anything goes with thank you challenge 2015.
View the winners and toppers post in the link : http://indianquillingchallenge.blogspot.in/2015/02/winner-post-challenge-no12.html

The entry which got selected as one among the four toppers for the june month's quillography challenge 2015.

View the winners and toppers post in the link : http://indianquillingchallenge.blogspot.in/2015/07/winner-post-iqcg17-quillography.html

The entry which got selected as first topper among three toppers for the July month's Ombre / Monicromatic challenge 2015 .

View the winners and toppers post in the link:http://indianquillingchallenge.blogspot.in/2015/08/winner-post.html

Hope this post will go long and long with many topper post and winner post in the future too.

Ombre / Monochromatic Quilled set

Dear all,

Glad to give a post after a long time. Indian Quilling challenge is making me do it again and again. 

Yes this time the challenge is Ombre / Monochromatic quilling. Click here for the challenge details.

I love to participate in the challenge everytime but I really didnt know what to do for this month's challenge. After thinking thinking and thinking , I finally went for a jewellery set in Blue shades.

Making use of the Qrganza cords , Oxidised bead caps, pendant bails and Studs bases that I bought recently, I made a quick Quilled jhumka pair and a Quilled pendant out of them. I chose the blue colour and just went from the lighter side to darker side both for the jhumkas and the pendant. .The Strips used are 5mm strips and the jhumkas are bordered using 2 row tiny size silver ball chains. Please have a look at the set and click here to get its price and place your orders.

Thank u Shylaa Shree and the IQC team for making me active and stay craftaholic and Quilloholic all the time. Readers if my creations impress you, please visit my page shequills for more of my Quilled and craft work.

Happy Quilling ,

Aparna Balakrishnan.

How my Quilling journey started

Hi all,

Firstly I thank everyone of you who have taken time to visit my blog and read my posts. 

I am Aparna Balakrishnan , a home maker and a mother of a lovely little boy. 

Though I am an MCA post graduate and a university rank holder, I have turned as a Quiller/Artist/jewelry designer owning a page called shequills in face book.

Quilling is a paper art where you roll and curl paper strips with a specially designed quilling /slotted needle to bring various shapes and patterns to create many beautiful quilled pieces.

You can create beautiful cards , jewelries , fridge magnets , candle holders , key chains , frames and many more using this art. As everyone say sky is the limit for your creativity.

Creative thoughts have no boundaries isn't it?

Coming back to how I started it....

I saw quilling art for the first time when one of my sisters gave me a quilled card that she bought in a sale happened inside her office premises. I didn't even know the name of the art when I saw that day. Later on I surfed the net during my free hours, skipping my noon nap and slowly found the art very interesting and just felt to give it a try and that is how I started to quill. As days passed by, I became familiar with the basic shapes, techniques and patterns and spent most of my time quilling strips ,when I was carrying my son . later on , as months rolled and a year scrolled , when I realized I had little space to spend on my craft , I took the art very seriously and started my page shequills in FB to showcase my handmade quilled work on dec 30th 2013. 

Quilled S for Indian Quilling Challenge #17

My Entry for the quillography challenge #17.. Chose the letter S as my blog name and FB page name "shequills" starts with S. Happy to see the way it has come out..

If you find this work interesting , visit my FB page shequills  for more of my quilled work.