How to Make a Maple Leaf Paper Quilling

Despite living in a tropical country and have never experience the autumn season, I really like maple leaves in their red colors. They are really stunning, make me want to make a paper quilling project based on maple leaf's shape and color. So here is my instructable about how I made the maple leaf paper quilling :D

Supplies

In this project I used:

scissors
tweezers
cylindrical tool (pencil, plastic straw, etc.)
A4 white base paper
PVAc glue
paper strips. 0.5 cm in width; 700-800 gsm; colors= red, orange, gold, dark brown, light brown and also white

Sketching and Outlining

First thing first, I sketched the design using a pencil on the base paper. I didn't draw the whole actual shape of the maple leaf because I intended to make the right section of the maple leaf looks fading or scattering. Don't forget that the sketch needed to be as thin as possible so that the sketch won't appear too bold on the paper base.

Then I used the 0.5 widths white paper strip to make the outline of the maple. I applied a little amount of PVAc glue on the edge of the paper strip, then glue it down on the base paper along the outline of the maple leaf. I used tweezers to help me get a hold of the strips.

Filling

For the filling step, I started by using the dark brown paper strip to make some kind of guidance to set the flow of the paper strips if that makes sense (as you can see in the first image). After the main flow guidance, I started to arrange the paper strips randomly to fill the maple leaf. I also curled some paper strips on one edge to make some variations in the filling other than straight or arched strips.

This part was quite challenging for me because I needed to put extra patience in arranging those paper strips. At some point, I felt no confidence about how this piece would become that I had to pause this project for two days. But later on, I decided to keep arranging the paper strips and didn't think too much about the final result. Turns out that this piece is one of my most favorite :D

Tight Coils and Cylinders

The last part is the "scattered" part, which is the tight coils and cylinders. To make tight coils, I rolled the tip of the paper strips to one of the edges and then secured it using a little amount of glue. The cylindrical object was made by using a plastic straw to get a perfect cylinder shape, also secured it with a little amount of glue. Then I arranged the tight coils and cylinders randomly to make a scattered effect. Done!

Thank you for reading this instructable until the last part. If you made a paper quilling maple leaf based on this instructable, don't forget to let me know!

See you :D

Quinzy Varira | Instagram | TikTok