Svara and I are back with a fun tutorial for a paper quilling lemon slice necklace!  We made these necklaces as a party favor for her birthday a few months ago.  The theme of her party was… lemons!  It was her idea to make these necklaces, and it was a fun project to make together to get ready for her birthday party.  We obviously made a lot of lemon slices, but the instructions will be the materials you need to make just one.  Double it if you want to make a pair of earrings, or multiply by however many slices you want!  These would also make fun decorations for around a frame as a gift, on a summery greeting card, as magnets, pins, and more!

I’m definitely not the first to make a lemon/orange/lime slice out of paper quilling.  In fact, there has been a tutorial for a full slice of quilled lime earrings up on Quilling.it for a few years.  Click here to view it (you can use google translate to make the page in English).  I thought we might as well make one as well since we were doing the project.  Since Svara was helping make them I thought it was a great opportunity to show that kids can make these too!  Plus I of course add my own personal tips and tricks as well.

*links in the supply list are affiliate links, as well as some of the links in the instructions.

What You’ll Need:

• Yellow quilling paper strips
• White, cream, or ivory quilling paper strips (I am using ivory in this tutorial as I was out of white!)
• jump rings (I used 6mm inner diameter rings)
• glue (My favorite is PPA which you can find here on Amazon)
• sealant and/or topcoat to make your jewelry sturdy and water resistant (see below for recommendations)
• cork or foam workboard and pins
• slotted quilling tool
• circle guide quilling board (like this one or this one)

Instructions:

• Glue together a 6″ strip of white quilling paper to a 17″ or 18″ strip of yellow quilling paper. Repeat for all 5 sections of the lemon slice.

• Use your slotted tool to roll each strip (starting with the yellow end) and place into a circle guide to make sure each one is the same size. I am using the second smallest hole in my board from Lake City Craft.  I have had this board for more than 20 years now, wow!

• Carefully remove each roll and glue it closed.  Pinch each into a triangle shape and glue them together at the edges into a lemon wedge shape. You can use pins to hold the pieces in place while drying.

• Repeat for however many lemon slices you want to make.  Svara and I worked together to make these over a couple of days.

• In the first photo below you can see the difference between making sure your triangles have sharp corners, or if they have rounded corners.  Either will work, but they will look differently in the final design, so keep that in mind.

• Once your wedges are are all dry, it’s time to wrap them!  First use a white strip of paper and wrap it around the whole wedge two or three times.  Glue closed.  Then use a yellow strip to wrap it around once, for the skin of the lemon. I found that there was kind of a large gap in the center of the wedge, so I added a small dab of glue there and pinned it in place on my work board to reduce the gap and make a more realistic slope to the flat side of the lemon slice.

• Once all our lemon slices were ready and pinned, it was time for sealant!  I used a small paintbrush and brushed on a thin layer of Ceramcoat All Purpose Sealer  (for my review of this product, click here) to make it sturdy and water resistant.  Another good sealer to use for this purpose is Decoart Americana Sealer  (for my review of this product, click here)

• After applying the sealant to one side, let it completely dry.  Carefully remove the pins, turn the pieces over, and lightly paint the sealant on the second side.  When the second side has dried, put on a heavier layer of sealant to get into all the crevices, dab the extra sealant out with a tissue, and let the pieces dry.  I like to rest the pieces against another surface as shown below so that if there are any pools of sealant it won’t leak down and create a thick shiny spot on one side of the piece.  After the sealant has completely dried, you can add more water resistance by adding a layer of a topcoat, glaze, etc.  You can click here for all my posts about sealants if you want all the details.  For a quick answer, some of my current favorites are  Diamond Glaze, PPA Gloss, and Triple Thick Glaze.

• After the pieces are dry, you can add on your jump rings.  I used fairly large jump rings for these so that they could easily go on some necklace chains.  I mostly used some organza ribbon necklace cords, which can be bought in bulk for pretty cheap.  Great for parties!
• Here are a bunch of the finished pieces as I am working on adding the jump rings.

• And here are all the finished necklaces, ready for the party!  There is also one that I glued to a blank pin back, as one of the party guests was a boy and we didn’t think he’d appreciate the necklace 😉

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial for paper quilling lemon slice earrings, let me know what you think!  And stick around, there is lots to see on the blog!

• Click here to view more free paper quilling tutorials!
• Click here to view paper quilling tips and tricks!
• Click here to view a list of places to buy quilling supplies around the world!
• Click here to view some of my own quilling projects, with tips so you can make your own if you’d like!

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

*This post contains some 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!