Quilled Earrings Tutorial

Here I am with my very first tutorial on making paper quilled earrings. Till now I have posted the pics of DIY crafts, jewelry etc., which I have made.  Initially, I planed to post only the pics but later I thought of posting a detailed tutorial of the crafts that I have made, so that it may help other beginners who are in search of making some handmade /DIY crafts.

Now, coming to quilling.... QUILLING is an art that involves colorful stripes of papers of different width which are rolled into a coil (basic) and can be twisted and glued together in order to create decorative patterns or jewelry or whatever you like. It is not a newly invented craft, it is an ancient artform that was actually developed by Nuns and Monks during the period between middle ages and modern history in order to decorate book covers and religious items.

You can also use some old newspapers and carefully cut them into stripes of desired width for quilling. So this recycling of papers can be a great use of junk. (For that, you can refer the post I had written on  02.08.15)

Materials Required :

1.       5mm Quilling strips   -  12 strips of 7” long in each color (here I used pink and blue)                                                                                                                                                           (take a long 14" strip and cut it in to two equal halves)
                                       -   12 strips of 14” long in blue color (or can use both colors)
2. Slotted quilling tool
3. Fabric glue
4. Border buddy tool (round shape)
5. Jump rings
6. Earring hooks
7. Kundans  (here I used white kundans, you can make your own choice)

Procedure:

•  Take five 7” strips (three pink & two blue). Glue them back to back in the following order like pink and blue and pink and blue and pink.

• Using the above strip, form a small tightly rolled coil by inserting one end of quilling strip into the slot of the quilling tool and turn the tool (hold the coil tight with fingers) till the completion of the strip and shut it using glue as shown in the below images.

• Take three 14” strips of blue color (here I used both colors but u can use only one as it won't be visible after decorating) and by using border buddy tool form an open coil.

Note:  If you don't have border buddy tool, then you can use any circular shaped object like bottle cap or something similar.

• By using one 7” strip of blue color, make a tiny coil using the slotted quilling tool.

•  Glue the tiny blue coil on the top of the other small coil. This arrangement has to be glued over a large open coil as shown in the below images. Repeat the above procedure for making second earring.

• Decorate it with kundans and fix jump rings & earring hooks to make it complete.

To make them water proof:

• Coat them with a -
• clear nail polish
• clear varnishes
• crystal coat glaze

          - and allow it to dry for a while or overnight.

• Coating with clear nail polish (the first one in the above list) is an inexpensive way to water proof any paper jewelry but you don’t get glossy shine with this.

• The other two waterproofing methods (varnish and glaze) are slightly expensive, but it will give an attractive glossy look to the jewelry. (If you are making them for sale, then better prefer one of these two. You can purchase them on Amazon.)

Note:  

• By using the above waterproofing techniques, the jewelry doesn’t get damaged if water drops accidentally on it  - with that being said, let me also warn you that it doesn’t make jewelry 100% waterproof.

•  Prefer not to wear these while taking bath or when going out in a heavy rain.        

        

 Thanks for reading. I hope you like it.

I would love to see your comments on this, and if you have any ideas or suggestions to make it better - or any doubts in the tutorial  - please feel free to mention them in the comments box below. I will definitely do my best to help!

Have a great day…… Bye…..

- Vydehi