When thinking about home decor idea, I always wanted to try making flamingo paper quilling that can give summer and tropical vibes to my room. In this instructable, I am going to show you how I made my framed flamingo paper quilling for home decoration.

Supplies

paper strips (80 gsm; 0.5 cm): several shades of pink (I used 3 shades of pink), white, black
mini scissors
PVa glue
cutting pen and ruller: if you cut your own paper strips
tweezers: helps you to arrange paper strips
colored paper (any size): pink, shades of green, yellow, blue
pencil and eraser
3D frame

Step 1: Sketch the Flamingo

I sketched my own flamingo using pencil. One thing to remember, don't sketch-erase too much that can wrinkle the base paper. You can also print your own flamingo. Browse free flamingo line art, set the line color a faint grey so that the line won't stand out terribly if you miss the line.

Step 2: Core of the Flamingo

I started the paper quilling part by gluing down white paper strips on the outline of the flamingo. By placing the strips on the outline, I've marked the places where the strip will need to be bent. To curve the paper, you can gently run your finger along it, much like you would do with scissors and ribbon to get that to curl. Using a straw, I applied a very precise line of glue over the outline of the letters. Using a pair of tweezers, I placed the paper strip over the outline. It would be ideal to do the whole outline with one strip but sometimes, the lengths are insufficient. This will lead to joints. In order to make the joints less conspicuous, use one of the bending points for making a joint. Put a thin line of glue on the edge of the strip and glue the new strip there. The other technique when you attach two pieces of paper together, make sure there was about 0.3 cm of overlap and glued between them.

After the outline, I started to made the core of the flamingo. The core is some kind of guideline how I will arrange may paper strips if you know what I'm saying. Usually when I made the "core", I used the brightest/boldest color of paper strips, thus in this project I used Neon pink.

Step 3: Filling the Flamingo

When the outline and core are done, I filled the flamingo by placing some pre-curled pieces of paper strip using my finger, and sometimes I just fill it with simply curved strips. Don't forget to add black accent for the flamingo's beak. Additionally, I cut pink colored paper for the rest of the beak.

Step 4: Thinning Effect

In this project I used a thinning effect. I cut the end of paper strips diagonally, and arranged the paper strips from the boldest to the white color so the flamingo seems fading (if that makes sense).

Step 5: Additional Items: Tropical Leaves

Now that I made the flamingo paper quilling, I added some leaves to make it looks "tropicaly". You can browse tropical leaves to get some inspirations and then draw and cut your own leaves or using cutting machine.