Miniature garlands

Let's look at how to make miniature garlands. I used it to portray a 'Flower shop' outside a temple and in the wedding 'Pandhal' decoration in our Golu this year. You can use it for various other purposes as well if you are into miniature.

I really wanted to capture the essence of an Hindu Indian temple and what better to show it than a flower shop outside the temple! I used to quill earrings so the idea came when I was looking at some of the really old earrings that I quilled.

Initially I decided to just cut fringes across a thick quilling strip and roll it on a toothpick/ thick thread but then that didn't look good aesthetically and I decided to try this instead. I used the very common flower colours like pink, yellow, white and green to represent leaves.

I will be honest with you, this was a bit of back breaking work as you need to create fringes on a really thin paper and then repeat the same on like 20 more strips to create the 'flowers' but the result was totally worth it!

So here it goes!

Things that you need:

1. Quilling strips/ Colour papers/ White paper

2. Quilling tool/ tooth pick

3. Really good quality sharp scissors

4. Glue

5. Needle

6. Thread

Step 1:

Start with deciding what colour combinations you are going to do for the garlands. White, pink with green looks really good. If you don't have quilling papers but have colour papers then cut colour sheets to thin strips, cut them like shown in the picture. If you don't have colour sheets too then paint/ colour a white sheet and ta-da! you have your self-manufactured quilling strips! If you on't have white papers too, it's time to do some stationery shopping! 😅

Step 2:

Now once you have the strips cut to cover near half of the strip, you are sorted! Start rolling them using a quilling tool. If you don't have one handy then you can use a toothpick or something similar.

Once you have the desirable amount rolled, paste the corner and hold for few seconds for it to stick properly.

Step 3:

Time to string the garland! Again, go crazy and mix and match and try out new combinations. Your brain is your limit!!!

I have given an image of how I stringed them (above). I used it as part of flower shop outside temple (image below). You can see the shop behind the lady in green saree (Missed to take a separate picture).

Check out the complete Golu here.