Quilling Lowercase Letter a and How to Quill a Peacock Feather Tutorial

Quilling Lowercase Letter a and How to Quill a Feather Tutorial

I have always found lowercase letters to be cuter than their uppercase counterparts. Uppercase letters tend to look more rigid and structured because of all the straight sides. But just because lowercase letters are cute, doesn’t mean it’s easier for quilling. It’s actually much more challenging to deal with all these curves.

Follow along with me in my latest video! Try quilling the Lowercase Letter a – download the free template.

In case you didn’t know, I also offer a free template for the upper case letter A.

You can watch it in another video called “Quilling Letter A - How to Outline”.

So if you haven’t tried quilling letters yet, what are you waiting for?

Also in this video, I'll be showing how tapering your ends gives your quilling strips a soft, feathering look that subtley fades away. The first time I ever made a strip "fade" was for some fireworks in a Mickey Mouse project.

After watching my video, please let me know what you think in the comments below. I want to know if you think it’s too difficult to deal with, or whether you’re really enjoying the look regardless of the effort. I haven’t written a book of lowercase letters yet, because I want to know if there’s enough interest first. To be honest with you, it takes a while for me to write a book of quilling patterns, and if I get 100 people telling me they want this, then I’m up to the challenge.

So, give it a try, let me know how it goes, and whether you’d like a book about lowercase letters! As always, your comments are what fuels me. I’m inspired by your feedback. I want to keep improving what I do. Tell me which tip is the one that’s new to you, or let me know what you’d like to see in future videos! Or ask me a question and I’ll try my best to answer!

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Quilling Letters Tutorial - DEF (how to quill a name or word)

The outlining of letters D, E, and F are somewhat covered by the tutorial techniques shown in my previous videos of A, B, and C. To ensure I don't waste your time repeating myself, this tutorial will show how to bring the letters together to form a word (even though DEF isn't quite a word, unless you're Def Leppard), the same way I did for the cover of my e-book, Quilling Letters. I'm sure you can expand upon what I'm showing to make any name or word, or even a phrase.

After printing the outlined letters, use a pencil (and lots of eraser) to draw arcs on top of the template, connecting the letters to give the whole piece cohesiveness. The letters E and F only have straight sides, so I made sure to give them many swirls to soften them up a bit. Going outside the lines of the letters is fun too, and to me, it kind of says "quilling can't be contained!"

Just as you've seen me soften the strips to follow the letter outlines, you can now follow your own drawn lines to use them as guides. My final pieces rarely look exactly like my drawing, because once the glued strip touches my surface, it's sometimes worse to pick it up and move on. If I feel the error is going to be very visible, I'll just leave it. However, if you have no choice but to UNDO a glued piece, I show just how to do that too.

In this video, I'll also show how to make the larger style leaves as well.

My latest video shows how to outline and fill the letters DEF, giving you an example of how to connect the letters to form a word.

What kind of projects are you making? Are these tutorials helpful to you? What else do you want to see? Let me know in the comments below. 

Subscribe to my YouTube video channel and be notified when I upload more letters! Start at the beginning with the Letter A.

My new PDF e-book, Quilling Letters is available in my Etsy shop. Every side and curve of the 26 letters of the alphabet is pre-measured – just lay your strip on top of my patterns, score, snip, fold, and glue.

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Quilling Letters 102 - Part 1

I started quilling a typography project around November 2016, starting with the letter "f".

The next letter, "o", is the one I find most challenging in the alphabet. There are no corners to diminish a join's seam. 

I kiss the glue on the end, then match it up with the opposite end. Since it has no flat sides to align against the surface of my desk, I have my tweezers squeeze the flat sides.

Not too shabby of a join. Then comes the smoothening out so the arc of the circle or oval.

Wondering how I traced the outline of the letters on the surface of my paper? I used the scoring tool of my Cricut Explore Air, and ask it to trace the outline of the letters. 

If you don't have an electric cutter, simply lay a printed letter on top of your surface, and use a dried up pen to trace the letter on top. I suggest using removable tape so it stays put until you're done.

There's something enticing about knowing where a letter is going to be. It's like that feeling I get when I KNOW a puzzle piece is going to fit.

In a case like this letter "l", I don't tackle it all at once because I'd end up smearing glue everywhere due to so many corners. I work it a section at a time, slipping a glue smeared strip below, dabbing, then laying that segment down = easy, peasy control.

Oh boy, another "o". I like using the metal shaft of my crochet hook for smoothening out letters like this.

Another way to align the edges is to butt against a straight edge.

I find plastic credit cards to be so helpful with my quilling butting! In this case it's helping me align the top edges of the letter "w".

Now that the top edges are nicely secured, it frees me up to then glue the rest easily.

Almost there. If you're wondering why I skipped the gluing of the previous letter "o", it's because then I'd have complete freedom when dealing with such a long strip needed for "w". Without the "o" in the way, the plastic card and my fingers can get into and all around "w". It's good to look ahead when quilling words.

I'm dismayed over the poor quality of this image, but sometimes when I get caught up in the "doing", I'm ignoring the world around me, not wanting to pause until morning, when the sun can actually let me take a proper picture.

Anyway, I hope these tiny details help you in your quilling of letters! This is the first of three words - can anyone guess what it's going to say?

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Quilling Small Letter - Work in Progress

Hi all, I hope your summer has been as blazing as mine has been.

This is a quick post to show you a glimpse of what I'm working on right now. This quilled letter E is about the size of a thumb tack.

I started with a length of 3", 1/4" wide, cut from Canson Mi-Tientes paper, which is considerably thicker than standard quilling paper.

I may need a new set of eyes when I'm done this new typographic poster. Stay tuned!

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Quilling Letters 101 - Part 4 Gluing Letters in Stages

The next letter I'm quilling is the capital letter E. Although I try to form my letter as accurately to the final setting as possible, there's no way I can simply glue the letter E without it being misshapen. Fighting the letter is like herding cats, so rather than do that, I'm going to glue it in stages.

First I lay down a bead of glue about the length of the long vertical piece of the letter E.

After dipping in the glue, I will turn it over and check for missing spots – like the area near the right. So I will re-dip in glue until the entire length is coated (the glue shown on this letter is a bit heavy, but I left it like this so it shows up better in the photos for you).

I glued the left side down first because it seemed to give the most leeway in dealing with the rest of the letter.

Don't pick it up like I'm showing here! I'm exaggerating it so you can see how much flexibility there is in dealing with the unglued parts.

Next, place glue on a scrap strip and slide it under the letter portion you'd like to glue. Using tweezers to pick up the unglued letter portions here is very handy. Dab the letter onto the glue and set the letter in place. Repeat this, gluing section, by section. You are in control every step of the way and have time to loosen your shoulders too!

When I reached the end and had to glue the corner, I pushed the left strip aside using my tweezers.

Dab glue along the end and bring the two corners together.

Note: apply less glue than I've shown here so you're not transferring a soggy blob. When I'm taking photos in my light tent, my back is tired from hunching over shot after shot, so I have less patience with my techniques than I show here.

Finally I slide a straight edge against the corner to ensure the seams are lined up.

The paper shown here is Canson Mi-Tientes, #507 Violet, 160 gsm, 1/4" wide.

Quilling the Letter B is easy with my free template!

I hope these tips help you quill your own letters. Please let me know how your progress is going in the comment section!

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Quilling Letters for Mother's Day by Carrie Finson

I received a FaceBook message from Carrie Finson the other day and was just blown away:

I stumbled across your blog a couple months ago and am in awe. A few years ago, I got a quilling kit at Hobby Lobby and did a few of the tutorials in the booklet provided. Other than that, I hadn't done any quilling. But your blog inspired me to do a special project for my mom. My mom loved it. She kept staring at it and saying how pretty it was. Now, it's nowhere close to your level of work, but I'm pretty proud of it and am looking forward to more projects. Just don't look too closely. Also, apologies for the poor quality of the photo... I took it at my light table and with my phone. Thanks for the lovely, inspirational work you do and for sharing it with the rest of us. 

Carrie

Isn't Carrie amazing??? I wasn't able to do something like this after a couple of tutorials and I certainly didn't dare do something so large! Can you imagine her next few projects? Thank you so much Carrie, for letting me showcase your work and message. It's what I've always wanted my blog to do - inspire others to give quilling a try. You've given me such a wonderful feeling to carry around!

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