July 20, 2009

DIY: Homemade crimpers for quilling paper

Crimped strips can be used in paper quilling along with regular strips to add special effects and freshness to your projects. A crimper is a device that consists of two cogs, which a quilling strip is run through. The cogs must be wide enough to cover the width of a strip. A crimper can be purchased in one of quilling supplies shops, but for some of you (like for me) that's not possible. After looking for suitable cogs to make a DIY crimper for quilling strips, I've finally got it and wanted to share with you my solution.

It turns out that almost any (I'm sure) printer has exactly what I needed. These days a lot of old office equipment is thrown away, so finding one you can took apart shouldn't be a problem. Look at the photo, these are the crimpers I was able to build out of only one printer. The white crimper is made of two cogs mounted with screws on a plastic board. It can easily crimp 3/8'' (1cm) paper. The black crimpers are intact blocks of the printer, I even didn't have to change anything. The cogs are pretty thin, though, but they still can be used with 1/8'' (3mm) strips.

I hope you find this information useful. Happy quilling!

18 comments:

BIKY said...

you are fantastic !!

Unknown said...

This is too clever. I will have to put a link up on my blog so everyone can see this. I never would have thought to look inside a broken printer!

eva said...

Инна,через транслейтор я поняла,что вы использовали детали принтера в качестве кримпера?Впечатляет!
У меня есть парочка кримперов,тоже можно попробовать ггофрировать и порезать.

Inna D. said...

Thanks everybody! I sometimes find myself looking inside odd places because of quilling :)

Inna D. said...

Спасибо, Eva! На русском то же самое можно почитать здесь.

Anonymous said...

Ingenious!

Inna D. said...

Thanks!

Pinky Adwani said...

Hey so nice info u shared...thanx

Inna D. said...

You're welcome :)

dikhar said...

gr8 idea

J Lim said...

You are a genius! Thank you so much for sharing your brilliant ideas, saving the environment and our hip pockets.

Anonymous said...

thank you so much inna for sharing your great ideas

Inna D. said...

@dikhar
Thank you!

@J Lim, Anonymous
You are welcome!

fauzia said...

Thanks for sharing the idea of the crimping tool

Inna D. said...

You are welcome!

Pritesh Dagur said...

Inna, I am very new to quilling and in my quilling world, you are the Goddess already! Thanks for explaining quilling so lucidly. You are just FANTASTIC!

Inna D. said...

Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the ideas. I found one old printer in a garage sale and my husband said you are a genius.!!! I can not get one because they are out of my budget but my husband now is making more tools for me so I can do quilling!!!thank you.....