Quilled Animals

We’ve yet to meet a papercrafter that doesn’t want to try quilling, and for good reason. While it’s a precise and time-consuming task, the finished product speaks for itself – or roars, in this case. With Quilled Animals you can test your tool with 20 separate designs, each as wild as the last: a dalmatian, giraffe, squirrels and even a bear practising magic are some of our favourites. This has ‘gift for the grandkids’ written all over. It’s just a case of picking which animal would make them smile the most.

* PaperCrafter *

Get twirling those paper strips with this fun book of twenty animals. Decorate cards, boxes and more with these cute critters just by rolling up strips of paper with a simple tool. Sound like fun?  Let’s take a look!

If this book looks familiar, then you already have Twenty to Make: Quilled Animals published in 2015. This is a larger format edition with a more spaced out look allowing you to see in greater detail all the attractive designs. It purports to be a book even a total beginner can use and if you are good at picking things up do have a go.

In here you can find a list of everything you require, plus the author’s website, www.jjquilling.co.uk, which sells all the relevant items. There is also a page of tips on how to get eccentric coils looking their best, make fringes, flowers, and shape pegs. The rest of the book contains the projects, all of which have a page of instructions facing a whole page photograph of the finished work, complete with attractive chalked background.  This addition really sets the designs off to perfection and adds a very professional finish.

The animals themselves are all on the cute side and cover a wide range of tastes and occasions. Choose from a rabbit for Easter or Rudolph for Christmas, pets (dog and cat), farm animals such as a donkey, sheep and llama, woodland creatures (fox, squirrel and hedgehog) or more exotic choices such as a lion, hippo, giraffe and elephant. Each design comes with a list of what you need, and some designs are smaller for cards or box toppers, others more for pictures. None are aimed at the advanced quiller and won’t take too long to create but making each one teaches many essential quilling techniques. This is a lovely book that is sure to please beginner to intermediate level quillers.

-- Rachel A Hyde * myshelf.c