Introduction: Cut Your Own Paper Quilling Strips in 2 Minutes

By Lights & Silhouettes
About: I love creating. I love ART in all its forms. I am a daughter of the 50s, born in 1992. I had the pleasure to be a Featured Author on this fabulous site, and you can read my interview here: https://www.instr…

I love quilling, but preparing the paper strips has always been a problem since I started. I know there are kits for it, but I didn't want to spend money on them while I could actually make my own strips.
Drawing and cutting my own strips took way too long and made my laziness win whenever I wanted to create something with this technique.

Then one day I thought I would try this super fast method to cut my strips and, to my surprise, it worked! I've been using it for more than a year now and it has made everything so much faster and easier.
A piece of paper and a common pasta machine with linguini cutter is pretty much all you need.

Curious about this method? Read my instructions to find out how it works! ;)

Step 1: Supplies

*I recommend you to perfectly clean your pasta machine after cutting paper with it if you still want to use it to make pasta. If you have more than one pasta machine, you could use the oldest one for paper and the other one for pasta.
I was lucky enough to win a new pasta machine in the Italian Food Contest a couple of years ago so I always use my old one for my crafts only ;)

You don't have a pasta machine? Try this same method using a paper shredder, I'm pretty sure it will work as well!

Step 2: Measuring

The first thing you need to do is to measure the length of your pasta machine's cutter with a ruler.

Mine turned out to be about 14,5 cm (5.7'') but other pasta machines can be slightly different.

When you know yours, measure that size on your piece of paper starting from one of its longest sides and trace a line. This way you'll have 2 different sections.

Cut the paper in two following that line.

Step 3: Make Your Strips

Now the best part:

take the biggest piece of paper and carefully insert its short side in the cutter while rolling it. Make sure to keep the longest side of the paper perfectly parallel to the side of the machine.

As you roll it, you'll start seeing your paper strips coming out from the bottom of the pasta machine!

When the big piece of paper is over, pass the small one through the cutter too. I recommend you to place it on the side and be even more careful to keep it tight and parallel to the machine.

Your paper strips will be about 0,7cm (0.27'') thick. This size can vary depending on the pasta machine cutter you have.

Step 4: Tips and Tricks

Your paper strips are ready to be used! I told you this was a super quick method! ;)

Here are a few more things you should know:

  • If, for some reasons, two or more strips are not perfectly separated, do NOT try to tear them off with your fingers! You would probably end up breaking them (this happened to me!).
    You simply have to cut them with scissors trying to be very accurate to make a perfectly straight cut.
  • The strips that came out from the sides will probably be a little bit thinner than the others. Even though you can hardly notice the difference, I recommend you to not use them with the others because the coils you make with them will be recognizable at the end of your work.
    This doesn't mean that you have to throw them away! Collect them and use them for another quilling project once you have enough of them ;)
  • Instead of being thinner, some of the side strips may end up being a little thicker. This happens more rarely to me but, if it happens, you can proceed the way I explained previously for the thin strips.

I hope this instructable was useful to you and helps you save money and time for your quilling creations!
Have fun! :)