Paper Quilled Ship (inspired by One Piece)

There are so many possibilities in paper quilling. We can make a Grand Piano, a Mask, Jewelry, and many more, even a ship! In this instructable, I'm going to show how I make a ship using the paper quilling technique. This paper quilled ship can be used as a decoration, and you can give it to your friend who likes a ship, maybe a fan of One Piece anime because this ship was inspired by Going Merry, a ship in One piece anime. Let's rock!

• paper strips: the size is quite various from 0.7 cm - 1 cm, I mention it in the step. various colors (brown, dark brown, black, white. i cut my own paper using paper shredder or cutter
• paper
• cardboard
• PVAc glue or All purpose glue
• scissors
• tweezers
• Sharpie marker/printer
• circle sizer ruler (optional)

Make a base for the ship using cardboard, I made an oval shape about 15 cm in length and 6 cm in width. Cover the corrugated side of the cardboard using a paper strip.

Make some tight coils using brown and black paper strips. Roll the paper strips using your fingers, and secure the tip by applying a glue. You are going to need a lot of these coils, depends on the size of your ship and the coils. Glue the coils to the base as you can see in the pictures.

Make some cylindrical objects to add support for the ship floor. The ship floor can be made simply by cutting a rectangle shape of brown paper. But I wanted to add some strips pattern so what I did is cutting a rectangular shape of white paper, then cover the paper by gluing brown paper strips on it.

After that make a rectangle coil. If you already have a circle sizer quilling tool or circle sizer ruler, you can roll the paper strip and place them in a circle ruler to make coils of exact same sizes. But if you don't have it, don't worry. I use this trick all the time. I made a circle mold using a pen by rolling the paper strips on a pen and then secure the tip. Then I just needed to roll another strip and then place it inside the circle mold. Pinch the coil, then roll it a bit, and then pinch again to gain a rectangle shape.

Glue down the rectangle coils as you can see in the picture

The front floor is higher than the middle floor, so you need to add more brown tight coils. Measure the size of the front floor by turning the ship upside down then draw the outer part of the ship on paper.

Make some rectangle coils like in the previous step. Glue the on the front floor. Make some mini coils/sticks to make the fence (I used about 1.5 cm long and 0.7 width paper strips). Glue them down on the rectangle coils, then add rectangle coils again. This step is quite tricky because the rectangle coils aren't solid, thus it's a bit difficult to glue them on small sticks (mini coils). The upper rectangle coils need to glued on their sides to add strength.

Repeat this step for the back floor of the ship. On the back floor, add a simple cabin using dark brown paper. The size of mine was 3x5x2.5 cm3.

Make more tight coils using white strips for the front side of the ship and arrange them as you can see in the pictures. For the cannon, I rolled a 1 cm width paper strip around a pen to help me shape the cannon.

This will consist of the neck and the head of the ship. Combine some tight coils in a curvy line to make the neck, and add more paper strips around the group of tight coils to add more strength.

The head was made of the coil, but not too tight. Before secure the coil, use your pinkie finger to mold the coil to make a dome shape, then secure the tip of the paper strip. After that adding glue inside the dome to secure the shape. Repeat this to make the back of the head, and connect both of the domes by adding a paper strip to make the head. Make two tight coils using dark brown paper to add the horns to the head of the ship.

The mast was made from a cone using brown paper (I made it about 11 cm in height), then glue it on the center of the ship. To make the crows nest, I draw two circles on the brown paper and cut the outer circle, and slice it to build the crows nest (the inner circle is the base of the nest). After that make a small hole on the base, then tuck the crows nest into the cone. Make a smaller cone then tuck it on the crows nest.

Make a cylinder/stick by rolling a brown paper (about 7.5 cm in length) then draw or print The Straw Hat on paper to make the ship sails. Glue the ship sails to the brown stick and glue them to the mast.

Make another mast and ship sail, don't forget the black waving flags.

The ship is ready to sail! Actually, this is my first time making a paper quilling project that require a lot of paper coils! But I felt so challenged during the process. So this is my instructable, if you have any question, feel free to ask me. See you! :D

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