Growing up, one of my favorite books was ‘The Secret Garden’. The idea of stumbling upon a hidden garden, into which no one had stepped into for ten years was too exciting!
Well, even if you live in an apartment high rise, you can still enjoy the pleasures of a flower garden, thanks to today’s Flower Garden Paper Quilling Wall Art project!
Flower Garden Paper Quilling Wall Art
Materials Required:
- Quilling strips in yellow, red, dark green, pink, white, brown and light green
- Painting canvas or thick cardstock
- Quilling tool or toothpick
- Scissors
- Glue
- Watercolor Paints in blue, green and brown
Instructions:
1. Let’s start with the background for our wall art. A painting canvas board is ideal, but you can also go for really thick cardstock which you can then fix to cardboard. Use blue water color for the upper part of the canvas and green for the lower part. Let the paint wash over to give a very subtle effect – you don’t want it to overpower the garden.
2. Use the light green quilling paper to create leaf shapes and stems. Arrange them evenly along the bottom part of the canvas, but make them of different heights to add interest. Do keep some space in between – we have flowers and lady bugs to fit in!
3. Let’s get to the yellow flowers, which can be sunflowers if you like! First make a base – a wide circle out of green paper. Create yellow petal shapes and stick them on the base, ensuring there are enough petals to go around.
4. To make the center, we need to use fringed strips. Use a strong bulldog clip to hold the strip in place while you snip to create fringes with a pair of very sharp scissors. You need quite a few fringed strips for one center, so don’t stop at one! Now use a quilling tool to create thick coils with the fringed strips, adding more strips to increase the length. The finished coil should fit snugly into the center of the yellow flower, so keep checking as you make your coil. Once you get the right size, stop and stick the edges. When dry, fluff out the fringes a little, cut of stray edges if any and stick it into the center of the sunflower.
5. Moving on to our pink flowers, which are fairly simple to make. Make petal shapes out of pink paper and stick them together. When the glue is dry, place them wherever you’d like.
6. Our garden needs some visitors, and a pink butterfly seems perfect! The butterfly’s wings are fairly easy – make a double loop with white paper inside and pink on the outside. Create 6-7 of such loops, stick them at the base and edge with pink paper. For the upper wings which are narrower, press the entire wing together and pinch the edges.
7. To make the butterfly’s body, make two shapes with pink paper – a long-ish cone and a small dome. Fix the dome’s base into the base of the cone and stick. Once dry, assemble the butterfly by arranging the wings around it.
8. Someone else has come into the garden – it’s a lady bug! Make a tight brown coil for the head, and a bigger red coil for the body. Use brown paint to create patches to resemble a lady bug.
9. Once all your elements are ready, it’s time to put everything together. If you’ve already placed your stems, you already have place holders for your sunflowers. Insert lady bugs and pink flowers to fill in the gaps, add the butterflies and your beautiful, blooming garden is ready!
Isn’t that a pretty garden worth visiting? And this one doesn’t have to be secret; hang it up on your wall for all the world to see. Whenever you feel overwhelmed from all the noise and smoke of city life, just turn towards your flower garden quilling wall art hanging on your wall – and you’ll feel like you’ve suddenly entered a secret garden of your very own!
nice article. i love quilling art.
Loved your quilling. I have tried doing ear rings stuff. The flower garden is so lovely. I will be trying it soon.