Gallery Idol!

(for my Clear and Simple Stamps post, please scroll down)
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Well.....here we go again!  I'm so happy to be in Gallery Idol again this year, and I'm super excited to share the card I made for this week.  The theme for this round is "You Color My World."  I love color gradients and when things are in rainbow order, so I knew this would be right up my alley.

When brainstorming ideas, I thought of the amazing artwork by Yulia Brodskaya.  She is the MASTER of paper!  I wanted to give a little nod to her work by incorporating some quilling into my project.  Only problem- I've never quilled!  Instead of doing the smart thing, and looking up how to do it, I decided to jump right in and wing it.  Here's how it went:

I adhered some die cut letters straight to a black card base

Next, I cut thin little strips of cardstock

Using a glue and some tweezers, I started making free-form loops and swirls, and adhering them down

Here is one finished letter:

I followed the same process for each letter, just making it up as I went, adding paper where I thought it would look good. 

It was hard to decide when I was done (I could have added like 20 more swirls!), but I stopped at this point:

Some close-ups:

The trickiest part was where the swirls intersect- make sure to "dry fit" the pieces before you glue them down.

Tip 1:  Use thin glue!  I started on the "h" with tacky glue, but it got a little globby.  Then I went with good ol' Elmer's, and that was a lot better!  If you want to know what real quillers use, I'm sure you could look it up, lol.

Tip 2: Thinner paper is better!  It's no wonder they sell special quilling strips. I used thin cardstock, and had to run my fingers over the paper many times to get it to smooth out.  In the end it worked out well, but I could have saved time/hassle with thin paper.

Now it's time to vote! You can check them all out, then pick your fave. You've got until Thursday, June 7 at noon MDT.  Thanks so much!! Contest info can be found here.

(in case you missed that first link...vote HERE!  I'll also leave the voting widget in my sidebar)