Inspired by Paper Quilling

I was first introduced to Yulia Brodskaya's amazing paper work through the interwebs awhile back. I was reminded of it again recently when my boyfriend's mom pulled an article about her for me and then again when I saw the same technique in the below piece by Carl Kleiner (found via designsponge).

I have since researched and learned that this technique employed by both Yulia and Carl actually has a name and that it has been around since the Renaissance when French and Italians nuns and monks used it to decorate book covers! It is called "paper quilling" or "paper filigree" and involves curling paper and gluing it by the edge to paper. It's the kind of technique that is so rarely done well, but these examples really stand out and showcase the possibilities of the craft (love Yulia's white on white pieces!)...

Last week my lovely friend Yelena invited me to the Monday night crafts night held at the Etsy offices in Dumbo. It happened to be an "open crafts" night, which means no guided activity, but we were free to make anything we liked from the leftover materials scattered about. To be honest I was probably more psyched about seeing the Etsy offices that actually crafting, and at about 10 minutes in I was still hopelessly scanning drawers full of fabric scraps. I finally spotted some hot pink paper and thought of Yulia! Below is my own haphazard experimentation with the technique. I think it came out looking pretty neat considering how stupidly easy it was to do: just some scraps of paper, a scissor, and Elmers glue...

For all you crafters out there, have you ever tried quilling? Were you successful?

PS-the parrot at the top is from Yulia's Google Chrome theme, which you can apply here.