Paper Quilled Ornamental Dangler DIY

Here is a gorgeous 3D Quilled ornamental dangler i've made. You can dangle it in your homes, on your Christmas trees, on the rear view mirror of your car or even gift it to someone. Make smaller versions of this and use them as earrings or pendants too! The sky is the limit!

Strips of paper

Quilling tool or tweezers

Paper cutter

Scale

Rope

Glue

Beads

Cardstock or handmade paper

Cutting Mat (Optional)

You start with rolling the strips of paper. I have used a 12" strip and started rolling a tight coil. Colour optional. Use either your quilling tool or a tweezer

Once you've rolled a tight coil, you'll open it up to around 1.5 cms wide. Once thats done, you'll stick the strip down and form an open coil - loose. Now, shape the coil into a half moon shape and bend it as shown. Pinch the ends of the tips and stick a white or contrasting strip of paper around it. You will get the shape shown. Pinch the blunt edge of the shape to get a pointed shape.

As you'll see above, I have created the shapes and stuck them together. To get a contrasting colour in between, I have made the same shape with a different colour. You could continue with the same colour if needed.

Once thats done, make 6 such semi flowers and keep them aside.

For this half flower and to create some contrast, I've used white strips of paper. I've stuck 2 12" white strips together and created a long 24" strip. Then, in the same way mentioned above, I've made petals which are bigger than the blue ones.

This will create a distinction in your design. If you don't want this change, you can continue creating the regular blue petals all around.

Once the white petals are made, stick 3 of them together and create a half flower.

Once the half flowers are ready, apply a mixture of watered down glue - 1 part glue to 2 parts water ratio. You'll need very little. About 10 drops in total. Apply this with the help of an old paint brush and cover all the half flowers with this from both the sides.

While the flowers are drying, we'll start working on the base cylinder of our project. I've taken a golden handmade card stock and cut it to the width of the bottom of the blue half flowers. About 2 cm in width. And you count the total number of half flowers you have and count the length of the paper. We have a total of 12 half flowers - both white and blue. So, I have used 6 cm for those, 5 mm each flower and an extra 5 mm to stick over - making a cylinder. So 6.5 cm wide. It will depend on how many half flowers you have at the end. If you have less, it'll be smaller, if you have more, it'll be bigger. Once our paper length is measured and cut, we will scour the paper. I have scoured lines every 5 mm. Make 2 such pieces of paper ready.

Here, I have stuck 2 strips of paper together. Apply glue length wise on a strip and stick another strip of paper on it. This will strengthen our strips - Do not miss this step. This ensures the longevity of our dangler. I've used contrasting strips for our half flowers. The white ones will get the blue strip and the blue flowers will get the white strips.

While the strips are drying, one more thing needs to be made. Half domes to cover the ends of the cylinder. This is done with cutting strips from the golden card stock and creating a tight coil big enough to fit on the ends of the cylinder shape. Give the tight coil a dome shape and ensure it's stuck well with glue to make it stronger. With a hole big enough to pass a thin rope or thread - so our dangler can dangle.

Now, we'll start the assembly of our dangler.

What I've done here is to cut the 12" strips of paper in half and stuck them on the base to create the cylinder. Stick each colour alternately and then leaving the last 5 mms to stick over the other side. We'll stick the other golden strip of paper we made on top of the first one to make it look good and stronger. I've slid the whole cylinder on my rolling pin for support so it's easier for me to start assembling the half flowers on the cylinder.

Here is where we start sticking the STARS of our dangler on the cylinder. Our half formed flowers are to be stuck here on the base. If you are like me and have no patience, stick all of them on the cylinder and then proceed to the next step. If you are smart, you'll stick one single flower on it's place and start sticking the strips of paper around it before moving on to the next one! :)

Carefully stick the strips of paper over the flowers, make them take the shape of the petals with the help of the tweezer and when you reach halfway, cut off the excess strip and start the same process from the opposite side - this will ensure that your flowers won’t budge.

Continue the process throughout the entire base / cylinder.

Our main dangler is ready! And it looks so cute and beautiful!

As I've shown above, apply glue to the insides of the edge of the cylinder and place the half domes we made with the golden paper strips. Cover both the sides of the cylinder.

Pass a tassel or a regular bead through some rope or thread and thread it through our domes and cylinder and create a proper dangler. You could not use wooden beads and use pearls or none at all and just rope. It's your choice!

Finally, I would suggest you spray a coat of varnish over this dangler so it'll last you years! It's a great gifting idea and also enliven your home or car.

Here I've made 2 options. One resembles a poinsettia and the other resembles a snowflake. It is upon you which colours you want to choose. You could choose shades of red for the upcoming Valentines day or Pastel shades during Easter Sunday or Orange during the pumpkin season. The choice is yours!

I hope you like this idea. I came up with it all on my own. It took me about a year to get the exact steps right and come up with this gorgeous piece. I'm especially proud of myself :D

If you like this idea, please let me know. I'd love to see your feedback and if you do make this, I'd love to see pictures. Happy crafting!