Usually we can find swirl for classic art design. For feminine, elegant, or even grunge design. Im using inkscape for every design and so glad I found this spiro swirl tutorial using inkscape. Here is a comprehensive video tutorial, (created by syllie) that demonstrates how to use the awesome new spiro swirls feature in Inkscape 0.47, which was released in November 2009. One of the new additions to Inkscape is the possibility to use Spiro curves (Cornu spirals).

Go to Syllie site to view comprehensive spiro swirl video tutorial

Inkscape is an opensource similar to Corel Draw and Illustrator, the difference is Inkscape totally free. Even Inkscape have no many great tools compare to Illustrator, there are many trick to create 3D effect.
Here the list, some of tutorials creating 3D effect image using Inkscape.

3D Text Using Interpolation

Wrap Text Around a Globe

Draw A Realistic Vector Guitar in Inkscape

Creating a Coffee Cup

Chrome Text Effect

Lamborghini

Inkscape is vector graphic editor. File extension of Inkscape file is SVG or Scalable Vector Graphic. What is a vector and why it is scalable? You may have no idea what it is, but you can see this illustration for an example. Vector image based on geometric while bitmap graphic based on pixel. Main benefit is, vector graphic is scalable without reducing its quality.

Compare to bitmap graphic, if you scale it to larger or smaller size, the result is annoying image because you scale pixel not image. You can expand or shrink from original size without losing any of thefidelity of the original image. If you still want to have a bitmap image when you’re done, it’s easy to convert an SVG image to a bitmap. This is called rasterization. Just export SVG image to .png or .jpg file. Although it is easy to go from vector to bitmap, it’s not easy to go from bitmap to vector.