Monday, December 31, 2012

Handmade Paper Curls


My son loves to swipe any scraps of paper I have leftover (especially long strips trimmed on the paper cutter).  His favorite thing to do with them is wrap them around a pencil to make what he calls a “paper curl”.  He even wanted to open his own Etsy shop like mine called “Handmade Paper Curls”.  I decided that he would love to learn how to put these curls together in an art-form called “paper quilling” or “paper filigree”. 


I didn’t have an actual paper quilling tool so I cut a piece of 4“ length of 1/8“wooden dowel.  Using a fine saw for cutting balsa wood I carefully cut a ¼ inch deep slit in one end of the dowel.  The end of the strip of paper easily slid into the dowel slot and then he spun the dowel to coil the paper around itself.  Once it is tightly curled let it loosen up and slide it off the dowel.  We used red and green copy paper cut into quarter inch strips and then pinched the opposite sides to make a leaf shape that we glued together to make a poinsettia ornament.  I added some gold beads and it made a great decoration on the top of a Christmas gift!


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