[celebratory quilling for some of the divas]

There have been a few milestone celebrations this past month, all of them for my wonderful dancing friends (aka the dancing divas). The celebrations kicked off the first weekend of March with a Rocky Horror 30th birthday. Anything for a dress up I say! I got my Magenta on (with many other Magentas), including the birthday girl, but the star performers were the birthday girl's hubby as Rocky and her brother as Frank'n'Furter. I also created a quilled birthday card for her in a monochromatic mid to very dark metallic blue colour scheme, with silver highlights.

The second event was an engagement, and it was lovely to see the sun out for a very pleasant afternoon in the park. Sitting under the boughs of sprawling trees while a light breeze gently buoying paper lanterns strung up in the foliage was just perfect. I'm sure the special couple were very thankful after having weeks of rain in the weeks leading up to that weekend. A little passport-sized photo accompanied the invitation so that was my inspiration for the quilled card I created, with the colour scheme picked from the background of the photograph.

The final diva celebration was last weekend for a 40th birthday get-together. The card I made was a actually a combination of a card and a picture frame, with a special slip-in card at the back where everyone could sign their name. I knew I'd picked the perfect colour scheme when we walked into her house as the feature colour in the living area was red! Using some scrap booking and collage techniques, the final piece was a delicious feast of reds, oranges and a little dark green as a highlight. The entire piece was contained within a paper frame, which I found a pattern for at this incredibly talented quiller's blog.

Quilled butterfly detail.

Quilling numbers and letters is rather tricky, you have to assemble the vertical paper strip in mirror reverse by delicately holding it by pins, pinned into a polystyrene board. Sometimes there are some very tricky moments when the paper strip comes adrift and you have to place it back on the pins with tweezers. You then have to carefully put glue on the uppermost edge of the paper strip and then place your paper down on top of it, wait a moment for the glue to start to stick, and then carefully peel it away from the pins. 

I've previously blogged a step-by-step guide on a 50th Birthday Project - I learnt the hard way on that project that you need to do the lettering in mirror reverse from the beginning!