Customized nameplate for the family"Kushary"

My third quilled typography project got initiated with the request from my best friend (in USA now) Ranja. She was wishing to have a customized nameplate to decorate their newly bought home in New Jersey. After a real long discussion on the customizations, I went ahead with the following background created on an 8/12 inches photo paper (Fuji) with a crushed paper background in blue color, so that it goes with the theme of white door and light blue wall of her house. The writing font used for "KUSHARY" is Algerian and the design is created by me using windows powerpoint software.

Step 1: Design of project and the print

I had thought of a yellow and creme shaded beehive pattern to fill up the text and for that I have used paper strips of 3 mm width. Higher gsm text strips from A1 craft supply in blue color of width 3 mm is used for the outlines along with the light green text strips of same dimensions and weight to give some additional effect with the inner lines of this particular font.

The closed view of the outline with text strips

 Please note that the glue when dries up give a shining effect when light falls on it, because of the translucent nature of the glue. So use of glue has to be appropriate and to pour as much as close to the printed lines to achieve a neat finish, as much as possible within handmade precisions.

Now that the text outline is completed, the next step will be to fill up the inside region with tight beehive patterns so that the white area gets covered as much as possible. This is again to create a neat and clean finish. If you are planning to do the same project on a plain cardstock paper then taking an impression of the text will work, or if you working with canvas or wooden surface carbon tracing can be applied. Depending on which surface the project has to be created the initial step of background design and printing will differ accordingly.

As I mentioned before I have used shades of yellow and cream for the beehive mostly, with a trace of blue lines here and there to accentuate the overall effect.

Typography work is now completed

Typography work is now completed. The decoration of the nameplate can be done in ways as versatile as your imagination can go. As each project has an emphasis point, which, in this case, is definitely the family name types by quilling, I have planned a simple floral decoration.

Keeping the color contrast in mind a set of Malaysian flowers with a couple of composite flowers in yellow and cream are created, with a pink center, again accentuating the overall look and also breaking the monotony.

The final step is to assemble these flowers on the project. Adding a couple of white and pink swirls and lots of composite leaves in light green with a dark green border as base patterns definitely gives it a homely touch :) What you say??

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Thank you!

The Quilled Krishna Peacock

My first ever quilled peacock was in the year 2012 when I had just started trying my hands with paper quilling art. That picture is now in somebody's home who bought it that time.

Quilled typography with beehive pattern is one of my favorite projects with this beautiful paper art. I have not done much of picture quilling though the techniques are similar. Why I like to work on these kinds of projects is that you are free to utilize your creativity and imaginations in many ways starting from the font styles, picture styles, color themes, shading, background and also with the decorative assemblies around the mail text or picture. Even without much of decoration around simple quilled text or a picture can give some unique finish to projects even small as 6/8 inches of size.

This is the picture for reference.

Here is the latest peacock work (after a long time) where I have used sky blue, white and gray for the beehive, dark blue text strips for outlining and distressing with broken china, mowed lawn and mahogany red distress ink from Tim Holtz to create the background effects. The feathers are created with Malaysian petals and simple tear drops with eccentric coil effect by joining multiple strips of light blue, medium blue, orange, yellow and green in order (each of 3 mm width and 5 and a half inches length except for light blue which is of 3 inches length) and then quilling the composite paper strip using slotting tool.

I call it "Krishna Peacock" as peacock color reminds me of Krishna.
I hope you liked it.

Please visit my page "Lights and Papers" for updated pictures.

Wooden theme photo frame

Since a long time, I was thinking of making a photo frame with a dark background. Black is the darkest of all, however, keeping that aside for another project, for this one with limited materials in hand, I thought of creating a wooden look using burnt sienna and umber black mix to create the look.

This time, the photo frame is created with a single card stock instead of using two different colors on top of each other. Hence, the blank space for the photo (5/7 inches) is created by an outline with black decorated lace.

The rest of steps are same as described before. In this frame, I have used only Malaysian flowers, my most favorite floral pattern in quilling. The leaves are created by assembling five marquise shapes on yellow paper strips, which are used as small stems in this case. Three of each of these five composite leave patterns are further joined together to give another composite structure of 15 leaves together and a total six such sets are used in the assembly.

 Here's posting some snapshots on floral assembly on silicone and the side view of the frame.

Drying the flowers on silicone glue on a plastic base

Trimming the excess glue and keeping the flowers ready and planning some assembly by adding the composite leaves and swirls

The side view (Total size 8/12 ", photo space 5/7")

Thank you for reading this post and please also visit my page in Facebook, known as "Lights and Papers".

Nature theme photo frame....Sky Blue and Green

The customized photo frame series continues. I had completed two more within last two weeks. One of which is this blue and green color theme frame created on an 8/12 inches cardstock with an available photo size of 5/7 inches.

The background was created with distressing using Tim Holtz distress inks. I have used both mowed lawn and broken china inks and this is how it looked. The swirl which is used are available readymade from Nupur Creatives Store, Mumbai (online as well) and the color effect is created with distressing again.

Getting the background ready

Next step is to create the flowers and leaves by quilling of course and then assembling each of the flowers separately (as described in my older posts) with the help of a silicone glue. Apart from Anabond RTV 666 which I had used before, Permatex clear RTV clear silicone (#80050, available at Amazon) also worked well.

It takes minimum 8-9 hours for the silicone to dry and harden completely. I keep it for 12 hours and then it is easily removable from the small plastic bases (cut from any plastic cover files) using a tweezer. The excess of the silicone base is then removed with scissors.

The final step is to plan the assembly and this step is where the creativity can be enjoyed to its fullest to create some nice florals and leaves compositions. Some zoomed in view of the assembly are given below, just for you :)

So the final frame again. Just put a picture on the blank space (5/7 inches) and make this an adorable gift for your near and dear ones. The outer dimension of the designer piece is 8/12 inches in size and can be framed within shadow boxes of appropriate size, matte color and frame color. One more unique feature of these customized frames is that you can keep the orientation of your picture either as portrait or in landscape and can place or rotate the final frame accordingly.

Thank you for reading my post and please also visit my page "Lights and Papers" in Facebook.

Sospeso work on MDF tissue boxes, pen stands and gift boxes

Well, here comes a set of Sospeso art on MDF surface. I have brought these cut-outs from The CraftsLane, India. They have nice laser cut MDF pieces including photo frames, mirrors and many more.

The wooden pieces are first painted with acrylic colors and then Sospeso flowers and leaves are designed and assembled on the surface to create some art pieces which can be nice gifts for your near and dear ones or can be used simply as a home decor pieces.

Set of tissue boxes. One is with a high color contrast and the other one is created with a subtle color theme of yellow and light blue.

Next comes a set of pen stands, or vases.

Finally a set of gift boxes with cool color themes of cobalt blue and viridian green. The boxes can be used to store jewelry or as gift boxes.

A snapshot while working on the boxes is also there :)

Sospeso is a 3D decoupage art, which really gives a ceramic finish when done on 3D surfaces. Sospeso can be also done on other surfaces like glass, paper, canvas etc. Sospeso art is also used to create exotic handcrafted jewelry pieces. I personally love this art form because of the finishing it gives at the end. The individual flowers and leaves are created by heat embossing technique and so it has to be done with a little bit of care and precaution. Adding some glass crystals or glitter balls (as is used here) can enhance the overall finish of each of the shapes.

Quotation stand with a different touch

While working with different card stocks for my different projects, few cut-outs remain from the full-sized paper sheets. Using three such small card stock left-outs another quotation stand is ready today.

I have colored them with acrylic paints or added some effect with distressing ink or dry brush technique. The cardstocks are assembled on a white cardboard paper and the background is again created with three different distressing ink from Tim Holtz.

The quilled flowers used in this assembly is mostly my all time favorite Malaysian flowers and couple of composite flowers are also used on the quote area. One can put any customized quote or their favorite quotes based on specific theme or occasion. The leaves are created with basic marquise shape units combined in different composite shapes.

The birds used on the project are ready-made wooden embellishments with color effect created with distressing again, to match with the rest of the theme in this project.

Here come the pictures. The quilled flowers and leaves are assembled on a real stem cut-out  which is first dried and on which acrylic brown and black are painted thereafter.

Zoomed view 1

Zoomed view 2

Customized photo frame - Blue color theme

I started working on the assembly part for this frame on the auspicious morning of Ganesh Chaturthi, which was on 17th September this year. I was simply having a picture in my mind of how to assemble the quilled shapes when it just struck that it looked like "Ganesha Trunk and Crown" from one angle. This is how it looked and I quickly added a Ganesh silhouette in the center and captured the assembly in my camera :)

Just oriented the assembly top down and captured another angle and with this my celebration for Ganesh Festival, which I was missing a lot this year sitting in France is partly completed.

GANESH: Gives All New Energy and Spirit of Happiness

The final assembly of this customized photo frame in blue and orange theme colors looks a bit different, though. Here are some pictures of the completed frame :)

Zoomed in

Hoping to add more frames in this series, soon.