Quilling - First Snowflakes

I love snowflakes. I don't know if it's their uniqueness or how beautifully they fall to the ground, but I think they are stunning. Several years ago I realized how much I like the icicle ornaments my mom hangs on her Christmas tree. They sparkle and shimmer and give the tree a somewhat uniform look, which it seems to need when it doesn't have tinsel (which is a pain) or garland (which I don't like). In the past I have not had much luck trying to get my hands on a bunch of icicle ornaments, but a couple of snowflake ornaments got me thinking that maybe they should be the unifying element in our tree. So, after striking out at the stores, I began looking into making some.

I came across some beautiful snowflakes made by quilling paper. I started pinning what I found, and then one day, after attempting this quilling thing with a toothpick and paper shredded in a shredder (don't try it, it doesn't work very well), I headed over to a craft store to pick up the real tools. I even got some patterns for snowflakes, but after doing a couple of them, I re-affirmed that self-made patterns are more my style. So, here are some of the snowflakes I made in the past couple of months:

A few hints for those also wanting to try this out:
Use a grid or guides. I used grid paper I already had, then used my quilting ruler to get my 60 degree corners. I also didn't want to buy a corkboard just for this, so I used an old piece of foam-core, to which I attached my grid and guides. Then I put down a piece of wax paper so that any glue that seeped out would not adhere my snowflake to the background.

I found someone who suggested adding glitter to make them sparkle, an idea I really liked, but found hard to implement. I was unsuccessful at finding paper that already had glitter in it, so I tried making my own with glitter spray. Unfortunately, this made the spirals relax too much and was difficult to make the glue stick. My solution: adhesive spray, then dump glitter over the snowflake (on wax paper of course), then use glitter spray (to fill in the spaces I missed with the glitter dump) and clear topcoat spray. Also, glitter that's the same color as your paper will hide the places you missed so much better!

I've been thinking... now that Christmas is past, that I should move on to letters and words. But I don't want to attach mine to a background, so I'll have to experiment. That is, if I can get away from the snowflakes.

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Etui (Exploding Box) Gift for Mom's Birthday

In January at a Saturday art group, a friend taught us how to make the templates for Etui or Exploding Boxes (the inspiration came from seeing a box made by Janet Ghio). I took my template and decided to use it to create something for my mom. Last week was her birthday. Every night for about a week, I worked on this box. Because she wanted to spend the day at the Sophia M. Sacks butterfly house in St. Louis, especially since March is Blue Morpho month, I wanted a butterfly theme for the box. I went looking for inspiration on the internet and came across this really fun box with bees. I loved how her bees were flying and I wanted to figure out how to do this in my box with the butterflies. I'm so glad I got it to work, although my plastic supports are more visible. I wrote something I love about my mom on each flap. Here are some photos of the final box:

I was surprised the gesso and paint on each layer made it so rubbery, and so I had to add another layer of cardstock to make it thicker. I also would not attach the plastic in two places, rather I'd just have one piece of plastic for each butterfly. It was hard to glue down all the other pieces when they were in the way.

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles