My mother made it clear that she was expecting something fancy in a handmade card this year.
In the past, I’ve been on design teams and had lots of crafty products on hand, for 3D origami, and resin creations, but these day, I mostly have pens and watercolor.
I often admired the quilled artwork I’ve seen online. It looked time-intensive (and is), but not too difficult so I ordered a kit.

If you’ve never heard of Quilling aka as Paper Filigree, it involves wrapping strips of paper into coils, and then pinching them into shapes. I definitely need more practice in getting my coils an even size, but otherwise I don’t think I did too bad.

Background is Ecoline watercolor brush pen, Sakura copper gellyroll and Uniball white gel pen on Hahnemühle Expression Cold-press watercolor paper.
Beautiful! Your mom will love this!
Thank you, Roseanne!
It’s beautiful. You did a great job. I used to quill many years ago. I may even have some paper and kits in my stash. Love the idea of combining the quilling with paint and other art stuff. Thanks for the inspiration.
Thank you, Betsy! I’m not sure how much quilling I’ll end up doing, but I’m tempted that’s for sure.
You did a beautiful job, and you get huge brownie points for investing the huge amount of time for creating your mom’s card. 🙂
Thank you, Sandra! It went faster than I thought it would. I’m tempted to get one of the electronic quilling tools to make it even faster.
This is so beautiful. It brings back memories. When we were little Mom used to make wreaths of colored feathers for gifts
Thank you, Carol! I’ve looked at quilled work for years, but never tried until now.