I’ve poked around with some small quilling pieces, but a while ago I decided I wanted to try something larger and more interesting. I thought it would be nice to do something that reminds me of being back at school, and having walked past FitzRandolph Gate many times, it seemed like the obvious choice. FitzRandolph Gate stands at the main entrance to Princeton University, in front of Nassau Hall.

I started with this little piece, which was enough to convince me that this was doable.

This was followed by lots of tiny little letters. I took the liberty of switching to a sans serif typeface. I also shifted a few words when my letters ended up being a little too big to fit into the box. I was using 1/4″ strips, which are wider than the letters are tall and makes them kind of hard to read from an angle. I think thinner strips would have looked nicer, and less shadowy, but I decided these were good enough. This piece was more fun. I cut out all the leaves individually, then glued them together in a wreath.

And here’s the end product. I decided to stick with just the top section of the main gate. I actually made the sides of the gate, which made it gate-shaped, but I decided not to keep them. Without the full pillars (and eagles), the sides looked pretty small and wimpy. Plus, this section was easier to frame. In this photo, the background paper is 8.5″x11″.

I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to frame this. The combination of black paper and small details means that it’s hard to see everything clearly unless there’s bright, head-on light, because the small spaces just get dark and shadowy. To partially alleviate this, I mounted the piece with some space behind it. I bought a shadowbox frame, plus an extra pane of glass. Unfortunately, the frame I choose was a non-standard size, so I had to rig up some cardboard to hold the second pane of glass in place. But it worked! I used a few tiny bits of glue to attach the quilling directly to the glass; if I ever want to take it off, I should be able to scrape the glue off the glass pretty easily.