Overquill

Overquill… overkill… get it?  Tehehe!

I enjoy posting about the pieces that I think turned out well, but I suppose I should keep things real around here by posting the pieces that I’m not so crazy about as well. Here are two.

They were ordered as going-away gifts for military spouses by their FRG (Family Readiness Group) and I was given creative freedom.  The only request was for their unit logo to be featured.  The logo was not easy to recreate with quilling and took several attempts to get right, but I really like how they turned out.  I wish I had left the logo on its own, but nooooooo, I just had to have my precious filigree, bluebirds, and asymmetry. Those elements usually serve me very well; however, in these pieces, the quilling might have gotten in the way of itself a bit.  Oh well… it’s done and, on the bright side, I got very positive feedback from the recipients.  If nothing else, they enjoyed the novelty of this 3-D-type art, which they had never seen before.

Army in Pink

One of my most quilling-supportive friends requested this one back in December… I finally finished it just yesterday.  It’s not that it took me that long to work on it—the whole thing, beginning to end, took about 3 hours—but between moving and other life busyness, it just kept getting put off.  The request was for a certain army unit patch to be quilled using a lot of pink and was going to be given to a friend who is retiring from the army (and happens to be female).  The emblem on the patch was a huge quilling challenge and I’m not even sure that I beat the challenge very well; I think I got the general likeness to the original patch, but the symmetry issues were never fully resolved.  That’s where the “embellishments” came in!  The butterfly, flowers, and swirly bits were not originally going to be part of the piece, but I think they furthered the femininity and boosted the pink theme nicely.  The final product is about 4″ in diameter and was designed to fit inside an acrylic case that protects the quilling beautifully, but also serves as a coaster or paperweight if the recipient so desires.  You might see that there is one little swirly piece that is bent in the photos… I have noticed it and will be sure to repair it before shipping.

The first photo is the original unit patch (sorry, it’s the largest photo I could find), with the quilled versions following: