Tips on Making Paper Quilled Folded Circles for Malaysian Flower Design

Here I am with a tutorial post to start off a serious of new great tutorial posts!  This one isn’t a tutorial for a particular project.  Instead it is a tutorial for a particular shape.  This shape is the infamous petal of the Malaysian flower design.  The Malaysian flower was, as far as I know, created by Miss Solehah Muhammad, the quiller and blogger at  My Quilling Soul.  

Since this shape can be used for many designs besides flowers (I use it in one of my earring designs in this tutorial here) I decided it needed to have a name besides “Malaysian flower”.  So I call it a folded circle, since you start with a circle and then fold it to create the design.

There are several tutorials out there, even videos, showing how to make this shape.   What I want to do to add to the wealth of information out there is to give some tips on making it.  This shape isn’t as straightforward as making a spiral of a certain shape or size.  There are some tricks I’ve learned when practicing, so I am sharing them with you here today.

For today’s shapes I made six circles, 3 each of 2 different kinds.  The top three are made with 12″ of rose colored paper attached to 6″ of ivory colored paper.  The bottom three are made with 24″ of rose colored paper attached to 12″ of ivory colored paper.  Instead of using 2 different colors for each circle, you can just use one length of one color instead.  I just like the look made with 2 colors.

I used the same size circle template to make all six circles.  I used the largest on my Lake City Craft circle template board (find it here at Custom Quilling) which is almost 1″ (2.5cm) in diameter).  The Quilled Creations board has the same size largest circle (find it here at Custom Quilling, or here on Amazon).  Obviously the circles made with the shorter length of paper are looser.  The circles made with the longer length of paper are denser and have a thicker border.  This will affect your end design.

Next what I did was use three different ways/tools to achieve a folded circle.  Depending on the size of the tool you use to fold your paper you end up with a different looking shape!

First I used the end of my aluminum handle quilling tool (find it here at Custom Quilling, or here on Amazon).  Hold your circle against the tool and push/wrap it around until the ends touch on the other side of the tool.  Try your best to make both sides even.  Take it off the tool and pinch the ends together and you’ll have a teardrop shape.  Then you’ll need to wrap an extra strip of paper around this teardrop to hold it together.  View the next set of pictures to see how to wrap.  The last photo here below shows the two folded circles.  The first is made with the shorter length of paper (18″ total).  The second is made with the longer length of paper (36″ length total).  They are the same size, but the one made with the longer paper is much more sturdy and has quite a thick border.  Both work well, it just depends on the look you are going for.

Here is how to wrap the outside paper strip to your folded circle.  Apply a drop of glue to one side.  You can also apply several other drops of glue around the outside.  Stick the strip to the drop of glue and wait a few seconds for it to dry a bit, or else it can slip off when you pull it around.  Once it is glued on, wrap the strip snugly around the teardrop shape, making sure the tips are together.  I like wrapping paper around a certain number of times to make sure each shape is as similar as possible.  I find 3 times around is a good number, but you can do more or less as you like.

For the second size I am using a soft grip slotted quilling tool to wrap the shape around (find this type of tool here or here at Custom Quilling, or here or here on Amazon).  This totally changes the look of the shape, as it is made flatter and the middle empty part is a lot larger.  In the last photo you can see the two shapes from the two different circles.  The first is made with the longer strip and the second with the shorter strip.  You can see how solid the first one is!

For the third folded circle I used my finger to make the shape.  This created a shape that is kind of between the first and second ones.  There is actually a lot of variable when making it with your fingers.  You can make the center smaller or larger as you wish.  Try to make each the same when making for a flower as you’ll want the petals to look similar.

Here are some more tips that I’d like to share that I discovered while making these shapes:

• It can be tricky to get the shapes even, meaning both sides are the same thickness.   You’ll notice that in the above photos I have two shapes that are quite uneven.  The folded circle made with the soft grip tool and shorter strip, and the one made with the longer strip of paper and using my fingers.  The trick is to make sure that the center of your scroll is right at the top of the folded circle.  Sometimes it slides to one side as you are folding it in half.  If you are working slowly you can fix it as you are making the shape.  If you have already pinched the shape, however, and it is uneven, it is very difficult to fix it.  In this case you’ll probably need to make another (unless it doesn’t matter that each is the same!).  You might also be making a design where you WANT them to be uneven.  In that case, try to get the center of the scroll to go to one side before you pinch.

• If you are making a flower or other design where you want each shape to be the same size, you need to make your shapes carefully.  All of these were made with the same size circle, but they end up to be different size teardrops.  The reason is because the more it is folded the smaller the shape.  So the ones that used the aluminum handle tool are a lot bigger than the other ones, because not much of the shape is folded in.  So if you are making a flower or other design and want each shape to be the same, make sure you fold it the same!

Stay tuned, as I will be featuring tutorials for at least a couple designs using the folded circles.  The first should be up within a week and the second later on.

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.

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