My neighbor has lot of cacti in her garden. I always wonder why some one puts in a lot of effort in growing something like cactus. But, she has shown me the flowers and I was surprised to see the beauty of those..those soft, bright, silky petals.. I couldn't wait much to add these to my paper garden.
Even the crate was made from paper..
Here is a pic with the original counterparts..
And the mess I create along the way -
Well.. this one is there in my mind for the past one year. We happened to go for cherry picking last summer near SFO. It was my first such activity and I was astonished looking at the various shades of cherries.. I almost forgot it until a friend of mine talked about a cherry tree in the park near my house.
Here goes my quilling version of a cherry tree branch
A closer look at the leaves..The branch is an actual cherry tree branch that I plucked from the park ;)
These days, I'm addicted to working with 1.5mm strips..One fine day, when I was looking around my quilling frames, I realized that I didn't have anything made in orange..I do have some orange strips, but 3mm wide.. That could be the reason why I never pick them.. Now that I understood how to work with thinner strips, I picked these & cut them to 1.5 mm strips.. Came across these wild rose (simpler version of rose) and found them simple to prepare with paper.. I had to go around the community to search for the leaf template and finally a friend of mine has offered me to pluck leaves from her garden.. So, I cut the leaves in exact shape/size and painted them in similar tone of green..Here comes the final arrangement -
It's been raining heavily these days.. The Indian cork flower plants around the community park were in full bloom and the dark lawn is filled with these flowers.. I went out for an afternoon stroll and I must say that these pretty white flowers against the dark green lawn is scenic & a feast to the eyes.. I couldn't stop myself from giving an attempt to make these with paper.. Here is a bunch of these flowers made with hand cut 1.5 mm strips..
Few more background setups -
Well.. I came across blue bell flower pictures in shutterstock and the moment I saw, I decided to give it a try with quilling. Initially, I made 6 long petals & have pasted them in two circles - one inner circle with 3 petals and the in-between space filled with petals from outer circle.. And I had sent the pic to my sister for review. She didn't like that arrangement and suggested to make one circle with 5 petals.. I too liked this one much better than the previous one with 6 petals. So, I went ahead with this - made few buds too..The struggle came in making the leaves. I've tried quite a few variations. They didn't look natural, rather gave a spider cob & octopus look.. So, took away some leaves and finally retained only 6.
Few years back, I made a quilling poppy flower.. Gosh !! I hate it.. Glad that my mother-in-law has taken it to put it in her home. After a long time, I wanted to give it another try - this time with thinner strip and a detailed pistil.. It was blue last time.. I thought of giving it a try with red (as I purchased a lot of red strips recently). I had cut these 3 mm wide strips into half.. A bit tedious, but the strips made with thinner strips offers more flexibility in terms of how we want to twist - giving a more natural look.
This has got the first pistil I made - which was not approved by my sister.. I had no choice, but to make another with more detail & thinner..
Freshly arranged and shot today..
Here is a glimpse into making of this. 100 quilling strips were used for making the flowers & green felt paper for leaves. They were stemmed to create 3D effect.
