giant-quilled shivas haminim

Check out my succah project! (Took me a while to get the blog post ready but here it is!)

 

I think of this as large-scale quilling because as with quilling, you use strips of paper to create beautiful airy light-and-shadow pictures. The difference is that these strips are half an inch wide rather than 1/8" (or thereabouts). Everything is just bigger and looser -- thus easier to handle, particularly with junior assistants -- and you get bigger results. 

 

Thanks to Sara at www.creativejewishmom.com for the inspiration/technique. I love this so much.

 

 

I made these shivas haminim* from ordinary card stock, and used scotch tape rather than glue to stick everything together. That was a good move as the tape (at least when I used plenty) stuck to itself whereas glue (at least regular white glue) would have dissolved completely in the rain. As it is, after a couple of good hard storms all of the fruits looked a little stretched out of shape. If anybody knows of some way to waterproof cardstock, please tell me!

 

*Shivas haminim = the seven species -- that's the seven kinds of fruit (well, wheat and barley plus five fruits!) that the Torah lists as specialties of the Land of Israel. They're a common succah motif.