Diana Official Blog

I'm so excited to show you my latest party favor box design, an adorable ladybug! The body is cut from a single sheet of black cardstock and after gluing, forms a dome. The wings are cut from a sheet of red cardstock and are so easy to put together. The iconic black dots are made with brads, which also serve to sculpt the wings. After the wings are glued to the body, it automatically lifts a bit in the back, appearing as if ready to take flight! Goodies can be stashed inside, accessed from the bottom. As you can see, there are two panels here to provide strength and rigidity. The size is 2.5 x 2.5 x 1.5 inches (octogonal) and fits comfortably in my hand. The digital download is available now in my Etsy shop.

I was flattered to be asked by Pritesh to be part of her blog hop, originally started by Hussena .  I love Pritesh's infectious enthusiasm for paper crafts and the ideas that flare up between us all. She shares many tutorials on her blog and I can tell we're cut from the same Type A cloth. Her work is precise, and varies widely from a tiny ornately detailed piece of jewelry to a staggering 5.5x3 foot panel – all from quilling paper. She'll analyze a paper challenge using her chemistry background, then present her lab results and findings so we all learn and grow alongside her. And now, on to the Q&A of this blog hop: 1. What am I working on?  My love of paper is focused on two genres, quilling and die cutting, and am most intrigued when both those worlds collide. In quilling, I am working on a series tutorials for letter/alphabet/monogram projects and plan to progress from easy to advanced projects. Stay tuned for more!    In die cutting, I'm currently debat...

Some friends have a new home so I wanted to quill a "Happy Housewarming!" card for them. I glued the heart outlines first to set the boundaries. Then I trimmed a popsicle stick on an angle to match the heart angle and set that in place. When making the house, I realized it was too big for the space and trimmed it down – I do that often. Just eyeball and adjust on the go. Same with the birds. They were too large at first, so I made them smaller by making the tails longer. I used Aunt Berni's left over strips, and wow, it was fun! Why? By using what she had on hand, I was forced to use the colors on hand in whatever size was there. I don't normally use so many colors in this way and am happy with how lively and vibrant it turned out.

This "before" shot is so typical of our quilling supply box, isn't it? Here it is all cleaned up (on the right hand side). Past blog readers may recall my quilling storage box custom made to fit my Ikea drawers . After inheriting Aunt Berni 's quilling supplies, I realized I didn't have enough spare room in my box and needed to condense it in my existing box trays. So I removed the dividing walls on one layer and used thumbtacks to make those strips behave ! This is a version of the thumb tack quilling storage method I've done in the past too. So how did I wave a magical wand to make this happen? Sadly it's not that magical - just a lot of patience, which we quillers know about first hand. First I separated all of one color. One by one, I lined up the ends of one side. If they were really unruly, I'd trim them. Then I pinched them with reverse tweezers (bulldog clips work too) and applied glue across all the ends. I have worked in a small print shop ...