Strips of paper, coiled into shapes and later arranged to form attractive designs like flowers, miniature figures and ornaments...well this is quilling for you. Though the origin of quilling goes back a long way, the trend is rapidly catching up, thanks to new styles and techniques.
So with quilling decorating greeting cards, envelopes, photo frames or creating rakhis, teddy bears and doll houses is now easy.
“Kids love quilling because it is interesting, easy and so much fun to do. They can learn basic quilling in three or four days. However it might take 10-15 days to learn the art fully,” says Sheetal who teaches quilling at Banjara Hills. “Decorating cards or frames can take about two hours while a frame can take two days of quilling,” she adds.
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Apart from patience, creative ideas and love for art, quilling requires basic tools like coloured strips of paper, a slotted needle tool, tweezers, scissors, straight pins and glue. Quilling tool kits and quilling papers are not expensive. They are available at Jagadamba Stores, Koti and Walden outlets in the city.
Online too
Beginners can go online for patterns and techniques. One can check YouTube for tutorial videos. You can create anything simply by rolling strips of paper and coiling them into shapes like drop, heart, leaf, square and cones. You can quill a heart by bending the strip into heart shape, rolling the ending and gluing them together. “I used quilled flowers to decorate my card in the greeting card making competition,” says Swati Gorakh, a student.
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Children can also put up quilling stalls during the fairs or exhibitions held at school and earn pocket money for themselves. This simple, inexpensive, and beautiful paper craft has enormous scope for creativity, appealing to all craft-loving kids.