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Nine Pointed Star Frame Design

Finally I have something new to share with you all!  This nine pointed star frame design has been a labor of love for me in the past couple months! As I’ve mentioned, Erin from Little Circles hosted her third annual quilling contest recently.  I didn’t have time to participate the last two years, and I don’t know when I’ll have time again, so I took the opportunity to work on a project for this year.

My daughter and I were on a 6 week break from homeschooling between grades, so it was perfect timing.  I started thinking about what I’d like to do.  I definitely wanted to incorporate several quilling techniques in one design.  And I definitely wanted to use transitioning as one of the techniques (see how to do transitioning in this tutorial from Erin available here on Amazon or as a FREE download here on her shop website).

I played around a bit with some shapes and spent a few days making a fun project, but it was a fairly small finished project, so I decided to save that and start again. (I’ll be sharing that project soon as well, just need to take some final photos).

I decided to make a framed design, as it’s been a long time since I have done that, so it would be a nice change.  I also decided to make it a nine pointed star frame design, as nine pointed stars are a symbol of the Baha’i Faith, of which I am a member.

For the base of my design I used a Border Buddy to make nine large black triangles.  I then arranged my nine triangles into a star pattern and pinned them down (I used a compass to draw my own nine pointed grid to put under the plastic on my cork workboard so I could make sure my nine points were even!

I found it so difficult to choose a color theme!  But I knew that if I didn’t give this as a gift, I would be hanging it on my own wall, so I went with a color theme that I like, red!  Plus I was lucky enough to have several of Erin’s Culture Pop red colors in my stock, so I used those.

It can be tricky to find a lot of shades of a certain color that go well together, but Erin has made it easy with her WIDE range of colors!  Someday I want to have all of her colors, but I just have a selection for now.  The colors I used for this project were, from darkest to lightest:

The great thing about having so many shades of a color is that when you want to make a sort of ombre design like I did, you almost don’t even need to use the transitioning technique!  I only used it between hubba bubba and red hot betty, and brandywine and speeding ticket.  The other colors are really close to each other so they naturally transitioned.

I wish I could show you the progress photos of this project.  I DID take progress photos, I just can’t find them or accidentally deleted them, I’m not sure.  It’s frustrating!!

After I finished the base design, I tried it out in the frame and it looked like this:

I decided to add a Baha’i symbol to the middle, either the ring symbol or the Greatest Name symbol.  My husband printed them out for me and I tried them out:

For all my photos of the frame I removed the glass in front.  I never can get a good photo of something in a frame with glass over it!  Here is a bit of a closeup:  The strips of paper in the triangles were each about 2″ long.

I like the simple look of this design, but as it was for a contest, I decided to make it more fancy!  So I added some designs around it including multi strip scrolls.   Click here for a free tutorial on how to make the scrolls by Susan Quilling.

And a bit of a closeup:

Lastly I decided to decorate the matte of the frame as well, to make it a bit more fancy.  I had a really hard time deciding what to do for the design on the matte!  In total, I can’t tell you how many pieces I made, how many photos I took to look at side by side to see what I wanted to do.  I even took a week off as I had other stuff to do anyway, and came back to it.  Finally I decided on this:

I made larger multi strip scrolls, and I made the nine pointed stars that I make for my nine pointed star earrings, only I made each petal with three colors instead of just one, for that ombre effect.  I loved how the little stars turned out, and actually made more in other color themes for earrings.  I’ll be sharing those on the blog as soon as I get finished photos of them!

So it was the day before the deadline and I finished my design.  Whew!!!  Was I happy with it?  Well, I liked the design I came up with, and I spent as much time as I could on it.  I wish I had three times as much time, but with two girls at home, the housework, cooking, and a baby on the way, it was all I could do to devote an hour or two a day to the project (with much of that time being thinking and re-thinking my design LOL).  I was just happy that I managed to participate with something larger than a pair of earrings!

In case you are curious, here are all of the entries for the contest.  There was a wide range of types of designs and complexity.  There were many seriously impressive designs that I could tell took weeks or even months to finish.  Someday I’ll have the time to devote to quilling that I’d like.  There are so many types of wonderful projects I want to try!  It was fun looking at all of the beautiful entries, and fun being one of them!

Here is another view of my final piece:

 

As this nine pointed star frame would be a great gift, I did list it for sale in my Zibbet shop here, with varying degrees of complexity as seen in this post. I can make custom designs with all sorts of color themes and decorative accents.  Have an idea you want me to make for you?  Just ask!

  • To see some other frames that I have made, click here!
  • Click here to view more free paper quilling tutorials!
  • Click here to view paper quilling tips and tricks!
  • To find places around the world to buy quilling supplies, Click here!

*All products and supplies mentioned in this post I purchased and/or made on my own.

*This post contains some Amazon affiliate links, and some non affiliate links.  If you purchase products through the affiliate links I get a small percentage (at no extra cost to you!).  I only link to products that I believe in and/or love to use myself.  Thank you for supporting my blog!

 

Honey: