Earth, Sea, Air - Quilling

My first quilling project. Please look at the accompanying deviation for close-ups. [link]

This project was inspired by this [link] I am not a quiller and don't have the recommended tools for it. So I did what I do best, improvise. Besides the basic structure of the box (even that is different ), I winged everything else. No patterns or diagrams were used. It should be obvious once you look at the link above.

Quilling usually utilizes long, rolled, thin strips of paper. Being cheap and lazy I just used a shredder and colored printing paper to make fast and even strips of paper. No quilling tool or board was used. I rolled the pieces with my fingers and used a ring sizer to gauge the non tight coil pieces.

The checkerboard pieces were made by rolling strips continuously in a row. 20 lb. paper utilizes 3 strips, whereas 24 lb. paper uses 2 and a half in order to achieve the same size. The long corners are 2 and three-quarters inches long, sandwiched between 2 tight coil pieces.

The rest of the pieces are mostly dual colored which were made by cutting strips of paper in half lengthwise and gluing one edge together. Figuring out what to do and how to make things took the most time. I generally just squished the rings into various shapes and then put them together like a puzzle.

The bottom is a koi pond. Lily pads, lotus, vines, and of course, koi fish adorn it. The fish turned out very well.

The middle portion is a field of flowers complete with a couple of bunnies.

The top, which is a cap, represents the sky. It has treetops, dragonflies, and butterflies. I put stars in the corners and on top. The peak was created by making 4 checkerboard sticks and gluing each one into the corner and attaching it to a flower/sun on top. The red butterfly inside is hanging by a spiral so it flutters when moved.

I'm happy with the end result.

Materials:
- Colored Printer Paper
- Paper Shredder
- Glue
- Ring Sizer (Size 2 1/2) or whatever ring you want to make the pieces even.
- Small Screwdriver (For spacing out the coils.)

Time Estimated: Off and on over a few weeks. About 10+ hours of actual work, maybe. I don't really remember.