I’m sure you are by now aware of the art of using narrow and colorful strips of paper to make different kinds of jewelry, cards and decorative patterns. This art is known as paper quilling, and there are many people who have mastered the art and have created amazing artwork through it. One such person is Semantee Raha, a paper quilling artist and entrepreneur, who shared with hotfridaytalks.com about her experience with this art form.
“I had come across quilling at a seniors place during college days and it caught my attention.” says Semantee, popularly known as Simi. She mastered this unique art completely from YouTube tutorials and started off just as a passion, with customers being restricted to friends and family.
Simi, who is an entrepreneur in this field, recollects the turning point of her creativity from which there was no turning back, “One day, my best friend wanted me to make a card for her and she offered me a price. I had never thought of selling my quills, until that morning and I never stopped since. Quilling is pure joy and, therapy. Quilling is meditation for me. You may call that, its quirk factor. I get to play with colours every day. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I pour all my emotions into my quills. No matter you whether you are sad or depressed; quilling will always calm you down. I suggest it to everybody!”
Prices of Simi’s works of art range from Rs 120/- to Rs 6000/- depending on the size, and complexities related to the design. She makes sure that her creations are attractive and liked by people of all generations. One of her works include a peaceful portrait of Buddha which has earned immense appreciation in all social media platforms. When asked about her decision of coming into this business, she expressed, “I didn’t start quilling in order to establish a business. It was really organic.”
Simi’s other works include Rabindranath Tagore, which is undoubtedly one of her best creations, and a portrait of a lady she rightly calls ‘Senorita’! Her creation of Frida Kahlo de Rivera who was a Mexican artist, has gained a lot of appreciation as well.Simi also designs trendy and chic earrings that are very reasonably priced.
Apart from these, Simi is also very passionate about making logos for cafes. Many of her logos are displayed on her social media accounts. Simi gets orders from several food joints, cafes and eateries to create logos and nameplates for them, and a paper quilled nameplate obviously looks beautiful as well as uniquely artistic, adding to the ambiance of the places.
She also remains quite up-to-date with the important dates of the year and takes orders accordingly. No wonder she is a genius in her field!
Simi, who has recently changed her logo and transformed it into quite a simpler form, has interesting projects lined up for her, including a paper quilling workshop to be held on the 20th of this month (May, 2018). People between the age groups 10 and 50 can attend the workshop and learn paper quilling from scratch and the basic fee is Rs. 900.
As Simi rightly points out always, if your passion becomes your way of earning bread and butter, there is no better life. We only wish Simi to grow bigger and better in her field.
Read Also: Meet Suchismita Kundu – The Budding Doodle Artist From Kolkata
