Quilled Monogram

I've read about quilling and even tried a very simple quilling piece before, but the other day, I saw this amazing quilled monogram on Craftastical and decided I had to make it my weekend project.  The bonus: I already had everything I needed!  Score!  I love free projects.

(For a more in-depth tutorial, visit Craftastical!)

Supplies: Paper cutter, cutting mat, pencil, ruler, bone folder, craft knife, Mod Podge, scrapbook paper, and of course, a Starbucks vanilla latte to get me through it.  (The tan and black patterned paper you see was going to be my mat, but I ended up not liking the way it looked, so I didn't use it.)

I printed the letter in a very light gray (font: Rockwell) on heavier weight white scrapbook paper.  I also printed the lines for where I wanted my mat to be.  The outside line marks where I measured it for an 8 x 10 frame.  Doing this in Photoshop made it so much more easy than trying to measure it later!

I cut way more 1/4" strips of paper than I needed.  I have more than enough for two more blue and pink monograms!

I started by outlining the letter in a darker shade of blue.  I used my bone folder to make the corner folds really sharp.

Letters with curves are wayy harder than letters without, but I managed to do it without too much difficulty.

I rolled all of my curls by hand as I went.  I really would like to have a quilling tool at some point.  I can imagine that makes it much easier, but it's not too hard to roll them up manually.  I found that the easiest way to create the design was to do the strips that I wanted to extend outside of the letter first, and then go back and fill in the blanks.  I pretty much glued them down as I went, trusting that I wouldn't make a mistake.  It was just easier this way because then they would stay where I wanted them instead of going all over the place.

And the finished product:

The white paper curled up a little bit because of the glue (you can see it puckering a tad on the edges), so I'm not 100% happy with this.  I may try another one tomorrow to see if I can get a nice flat monogram.  But overall, I think this was a pretty good first attempt (and it was fun too!).

Updated:  Check out my new-and-improved monogram.