Halloween Sampler - Projects #8 and #9

This is the last post for the Halloween Sampler!  Finally ... I hope these instructions are of some use, and that you have fun making a few of these little projects, or the whole sampler!

I particularly hope you have fun with the projects that are a little more unusual - there are lots of patterns for pumpkins, but vampire fangs and skeleton keys are a little more hard to find.

This post covers projects #8 and #9 (out of nine).  I've already posted the general instructions, the mat board cutting instructions, as well as projects #1 - #7 and a bonus project!

First post -  Halloween Sampler
Second post - General Instructions and Mat board
Third post - Bonus Project and Project #1
Fourth post - Projects #2 and #3
Fifth post - Projects #4 and #5 
Sixth post - Projects #6 and #7 
Seventh (and last) post is this one! - Projects #8 and #9

And remember, if you want to download all the instructions right now in one go, then head over to Craftsy where I have them posted for $3.99.

Project #8:  Vampire Fangs

Materials:
Mouth
- bright red, 2 strips at 8” (upper lip)
- bright red, 1 strip at 12” (lower lip)
- bright white, 2 strips at 3” (fangs)
- dark red, 1 strip at 6” (blood drop)
Thorny Rose Vines
- bright red, 1 strip at 12” (rose) 1/4” wide strip
- olive green, 2 strips at 5” (vines)
- olive green, 4 strips at 2.5” (thorns)
- dark red, 1 strip at 3” (blood drop)

Start by using 2 of the 8" bright red strips.  Make two long teardrops.  Make a long, flat semi-circle with the 12" strip.  Glue these three pieces together as shown to form lips.  Form fangs by taking the 2, 3” strips of white and making long triangles.  Glue these on top of the lower lip.  Make a teardrop out of the 6” dark red strip, and glue it to the lower lip so it appears to be dripping off of one of the fangs.

Make a rose from the 12” strip of 1/4" wide paper.  Make two long “S” coil shapes from the 5” olive green strips.  On each of these “S” shapes, glue two thorns.  The thorns are long triangle shapes made from the 2.5” long strips of olive green.  For a final touch, create a small teardrop shape from the 3” dark red strip and position it so it drips from one of the thorns.

The fangs and thorny vines are found in the upper right square of the sampler.  Glue the pieces into place there, the square in the top, right column.

Project #9:  Witch’s Lair

Materials:
Hat
- bright purple, 2 strips at 10” (hat)
- orange, 1 strip at 1.5” (sash)
- yellow, 1 strip at 1” (buckle) ¼ wide paper
- black, 1 strip at 1/8” (buckle)
Cat
- black, 1 strip at 9” (body)
- black, 1 strip at 5” (head)
- black, 1 strip at 4” (tail)
- black, 1 strip at 2” (whiskers)
- black, 1 strip at 2” (nose) 1/8” narrow paper
- black, 2 strips at 2” (ears)
- neon green, 2 strips at 1.5” (eyes)
Caldron
- black, 1 strip at 25” (pot)
- black, 1 strip at 12” (lip of pot)
- black, 2 strips at 3” (feet of pot)
- green/yellow, 4 strips; 5”, 4”, 3”, 2” (poison fumes)

To make the witch’s hat, start with a 10” strip of bright purple and form it into a long triangle, with the tip slightly bent.  Make a circle out of the other 10” strip and squash it flat to form the brim of the hat.  Glue together.

Use the strip of orange and wrap it around the bottom of the hat just above the brim.  It should go across the front and down both sides of the hat (but not around the back).  Trim the strip to fit if necessary. 

To make the buckle use the bit of 1” yellow wide width paper, cut a small rectangle.  Use the black paper to cut an even smaller rectangle, as shown.  Glue the black rectangle onto the yellow one.  Now glue this onto the hat, on top of the strip of orange.  (You can also make a nice hat from other colors, such as black and dark green, and use strips of different colors as well for the sash.)

The cat’s body is made from a wide teardrop formed from the 9” long strip of black paper.  The 5” strip should be formed into an eye shape and glued on top of the teardrop.  Use the 4” length of black to form a tail, curving and trimming into whatever shape pleases you.  Make two ears by making long triangles from the 2” strips of black paper.  An image of the back of the finished cat is shown.

The face is more detailed, and getting a good picture was hard.  First, make two eye shapes from the neon green, and glue them to the upper part of the head, just under the ears.  Now take the 2” strip of black and use the scissors to cut it lengthwise into 4 very narrow strips.  Center these under the cat’s eyes, and fan them out a bit to look like whiskers.  Glue into place one at a time, right on top of one another.  Just use one tiny dab of glue at a time, and then put another whisker down, and glue that.  On top of the center of the whiskers, you will put the nose.  The nose is a triangle made from the 2” strip of narrow black (although regular width would work fine, using narrow width paper here helps to keep the nose from poking out, and hides the middle of the pile of whiskers where you glued them in place.)  Glue the nose.  Trim the whiskers to be the right length for your project.  (mine stick out about ½ to ¼ of an inch from the nose on either side).

The boiling caldron starts with the 25” strip of black, rolled into an offset-circle.  Put the center of the offset at the bottom, and flatten the top of the circle to be the top of the pot.  Use the 12” strip to form a circle, and squash it flat to make up the brim of the pot.  Glue in place.  The feet of the pot are made from the 2, 3” strips made into circles.  Glue to the pot.

The poisonous fumes are made from four pieces of yellow/green paper of various lengths.  Each is made into an “S” Shape and glued to the top of the pot, and to each other wherever they touch.  I used 5”, 4”, 3”, and 2” length strips.

Arrange the hat, cat, and caldron in the lower, middle square.  Glue into place in the middle column, bottom, as shown.

Image Credit:  All my own pictures of my own quilling, all my own original designs.

     
   
 

Halloween Sampler - Projects #6 and #7

Right, I had said in August that I'd get all these sampler instructions up by Halloween.  Well, that's today, and I still have instructions to put up.  So I'm just going to get these two posts up right now, and get this done once and for all :) Still my excuse was all the work I was doing on my "Spiral Moon" project, which as the Moon is also vaguely Halloween-y.

This post covers projects #6 and #7 (out of nine).  I've already posted the general instructions, the mat board cutting instructions, as well as projects #1 - #5 and a bonus project!

First post -  Halloween Sampler
Second post - General Instructions and Mat board
Third post - Bonus Project and Project #1
Fourth post - Projects #2 and #3
Fifth post - Projects #4 and #5 

And remember, if you want to download all the instructions right now in one go, then head over to Craftsy where I have them posted for $3.99.

Project #6: Black Widow Spider

Materials:

Web
- grey, 4 strips at 5” (web top and bottom)
- grey, 1 strip at 3” (web strands)
- grey, 3 strips at ¾” (web)
- grey, 3 strips at 1” (web)
- grey, 1 strip at 2” (strand from spider)
Spider
- black, 1 strip at 4” (head)
- black, 1 strip at 7” (body)
- black, 4 strips at 2” (legs)
- bright red, 2 strips at 2.5” (hourglass)

Web:  The web is made of grey strips.  First, take two 5" strips and make long 'S' shapes.  Glue together to form the ‘side’ of the web.  Make two more long “S” shapes and glue these together for the ‘top’ of the web.  Glue these two sets together where they touch.  Take the 3" long strip and fold it into a 'V' shape.  Place it inside the long “S” shapes and glue into place.  This forms the long, straight structure of the interior of the web. 

The cross webs are each a separate bit of paper, slightly curved.  Inside are three .75" strips, and outside are three 1" strips.  Slide them in-between the “V” and “S” shapes, and carefully glue the ends in place.  I found tweezers to be very helpful when doing this.
 
Then the spider.  The head is a 4" strip of black, and the body is a 7" strip of black, both formed into circles.  Before gluing them together, take 4, 2" strips of black and glue them flat between the head and body, one at a time.  When dry, curve these to form legs, and trim the length as necessary to fit your project. (I wanted my spider legs to be really long, but I had to trim them up to get the spider to fit in the box.)

Take 2, 1.5 inch strips of bright red and form them into triangles.  Glue together at the tip to form an hourglass shape.  When dry, glue this onto the body of the spider. 

Last, take a strip about 2" long of the grey, and attach it to the spider's body.  Attach the other end to the top of the web, trimming as necessary to fit your project.

The black widow can be found in the first box of the project.  Glue the pieces together in the first column, left, top box.

Project #7:  Skeleton Keys

Materials:
Silver Skeleton Key
- silver metallic, 1 strip 20” (skull)
- silver metallic, 10 strips at 1.5” (barrel)
- silver metallic, 2 strips at 2” (long tines)
- silver metallic, 1 strip 1.5” (short tine)
- black, 2 strips at 2” (eyes) 1/16” narrow width
- black, 1 strip at 2.5” (nose) 1/16” narrow width
- black 1 strip at 3” (mouth) 1/16” narrow width
Bronze Skeleton Key
Same as above, except using bronze metallic paper.
Keyholes
- black, 2 strips 4” long
- black, 2 strips 6” long

Start with a 20" strip of metallic silver.  Shape it into a 'pear'.  This is the skull of the skeleton (the top of the key). The barrel of the key is made with 10, 1.5" strips of silver metallic paper.  Form each strip into a tight circle.  (You might need 2" pieces of you don't wind around a needle tool like I do.)  Stack the tight circles and glue them in place in a long line, with all the ends of the strips lining up together (that way you can hide them under the key).  The final three pieces making up the tines of the key are 2 rectangles of 2" paper and one circle of 1.5" paper.  Glue pieces together as shown.

The picture shows the backs of the keys, where I tried to show how the paper ends of all the tight circles all line up along the back of the barrel (but I could have done a better job with my own keys :).  Repeat the whole process with bronze metallic paper for a second key.

The face is made from 2, 2" strips of black in closed circles for eyes, a 2.5" strip in black in a triangle for a nose, and a 3" strip in a long oval or rectangle for a mouth.  These were 1/16" narrow width paper, but you can use 1/8" for the face and it will work fine.  Make two sets of these.  Make sure you are now working with the TOP of your key (lines on the barrel are now down against the work surface) and glue your faces in place.  This picture is a bit over-exposed, but it shows the faces well.

To finish the project, make two keyholes.  Use the black 4” strips to make circles, and the black 6” strips to make long triangles.  Flatten the tops of the triangles slightly.  Glue the circles on the tops of the triangles.

Display your keys and the keyholes together in the sampler.  Glue them into the square in the middle of the left (first) column.

Image Credits:  All my own pix of my own qulling, my original designs

Quilled Moon Won Second Place!

Happy framed full Moon!

Wow!  OMG!  I am thrilled, humbled and honored to have tied for second place in the Little Circles Quilling contest for this year!  The newsletter from Little Circles with the announcement of the winners is here.

My piece "Spiral Moon" (that I've been blogging about here) was selected based on number of likes, originality, creativity, and technique.  There were so many really outstanding pieces in the 64 piece lineup, that I really am surprised to have earned a 2nd place finish.  Thanks to everyone who encouraged me while I was working on this piece, and who liked the picture on Facebook - both gave me the boost I needed to have a winning work of art!

The art will get a bit more exposure, too, because it is going to be exhibited as part of The Art of Planetary Science that will be offered at this year's DPS/EPSC meeting in Pasadena.  So I'll get to see what the science community has to say about it, too  :)

I hope you enjoyed following along as the piece took shape!  I'll blog more about the exploits of 'Spiral Moon' as they occur!

Image Credits:  All my pix of my original art.

Quilling the Moon: Highlands and Maria

Moon - over half completed!

Highlands regions carefully
constructed to be filled in
later with 'mare' material.

As I mentioned in my first "Quilling the Moon" post, the highlands are the bright, mountainous areas of the Moon, while the mare regions (maria, plural) are the dark, flat, volcanic plains of the Moon.  I also mentioned along the way that since the mare were being filled in with nearly black paper, I needed daylight to do that work.  So I ended up working nights on the light highlands and leaving holes behind to be filled up with dark paper during the day.  It was an interesting way to approach the project, since I had to be constantly planning several steps ahead as to how the regions would look once they were completed.

Moon - Maria filled in!

Again, the color choice was really critical, and took a great deal of time.  I wanted to be sure the smaller, bright craters were consistently marked with the bright white paper, and that the intermediate areas were marked with the darker grey, leaving the bone white for the overall highlands material.  Creating the mare boundaries was also a challenge because I needed to ensure that the quills fit together nicely, with the sizes varying in a pleasing random sort of way.

Close-up of filled maria.

Going back and filling in the mare was very gratifying, since it made me feel like I was making a ton of progress.  But this was where the sizes of the quills really made a big difference.  Being constrained by the small areas, I had to be very careful and clever about how each quill fit next to its neighbor.  Some of the quills in this project are made from paper less than 1/4" in length, and so were pretty challenging to make and to fit into the tiny spaces they needed to occupy.  I remember doing work like this is a child, and the 'smallness' of the quills not being nearly so difficult for both fingers and eyes!

Image Credits:  My pix of my own quilling, my design!

Quilling the Moon: Progress in the South

Some progress!

Even more progress!

As of this moment, I've finally completed my Moon, but I want to post some of the intermediate pictures to show the progress.  So I'll be finishing up the Moon blogging in another post or so.  But for now, compare the two images here and you can see how the edge of the Procellarum basin expanded towards the center of the image, and how the highlands were filled in from the right.

The mare sections at the top and left of Copernicus crater were really challenging.  As I approached the bottom of the Imbrium basin, I got more and more nervous about exactly how the basins would 'express' themselves.  I wanted them to be bold and easily recognized, but didn't want to lose the subtlety of the interesting margins, and of the craters and their ejecta.  So I moved very carefully, filling in the area to ensure that the basin would have an obvious round edge to it, but also ensuring that all the important tiny features could still be seen.

Close up of the area around
Copernicus.

Looking at the close up image makes this all seem so straightforward and easy!  But since every single quill was created on the fly - size, color, and placement - it was really very difficult.  But I do like the general effect.  It is certainly the Moon, and it has a strong mosaic look without losing the lacy feel that quilling offers.

What I'm starting to worry about now is how to hide the errors I'm spotting.  Like how my Moon is not a perfect circle anymore.  Pressure from the different areas as I glued them in place slowly altered the nature of the outline - it isn't quite a perfect circle.  I can see flatter areas, and areas with slight bulges.  Not sure how to hide this - I was already planning to put mat board around the outline, so perhaps this will make the project look more even.

Image Credits - My pix of my own quilling, my design!

Quilling the Moon: The Edge of Procellarum and Some Lessons

The first portion is filled in.

Here's some progress on my quilled Moon!  I filled in the areas of the highlands and the edge of the mare on the south eastern portion of the Moon.  Many lessons were learned during this initial phase of the project, and I'm sure I'll be going back to this section when it is all finished, and thinking, oh yeah, could have done that bit better.  But there is always room for improvement on any project, and if you wait for perfection, you get nothing!

Color choice - very tricky.

One lesson I learned is that I need better quilling lighting.  Working with dark paper in anything less than bright light is a chore.  It is too hard to see if the quills are nicely coiled, and to determine the perfect sizes to fit together in the mare regions.  So the lesson was twofold - buy a lamp, and also, only work on the mare regions during the daytime!  Another lesson, one I knew but had to have reinforced, was use the tiniest amounts of glue possible.  It really shows up in the dark regions, and I had to take out and redo some sections just to eliminate small glue spots I couldn't get rid of with my tweezers. 

I had no idea that only working with four colors could make color choice so difficult.  But it is.  Each and every one of these quills is an agony of choice.  The regions at the edge of bright/dark regions are particularly challenging.  How and at what point does the gradation start?  Some of the margins were easy, since they were very 'digital' - one side bright and the other dark.  But the messy grey regions ... very challenging.  I spent a lot of time making decisions between what met my artistic vision, and what was the most scientifically accurate.

One of the greatest challenges was the quilling around Copernicus crater, the larger bright crater on the right side of this image.  But I'll talk more about that next time!

Image Credits:  My pix of my own quilling!