Beaded Flowers

Hello friends,

Here is one of my old crafts, beaded flowers and a vase... thought of sharing with you all. I have used tiny round seed beads of different colors here and beaded with 0.3 mm metallic wire. 

I made this during one of my college vacations and I felt bad at that time because it consumed half of my vacation... but the result was a brilliant and bold cluster of flowers and even more vibrant vase. The best part is, it lasts for so long and looks so fresh even today. 

Nowadays we get so many tutorials, patterns and references for beading crafts but that time I had nothing like that... apart from some observations here and there and pure imagination :)

Thank you for stopping by and hope you liked it. Have a nice day.

Experimental work with Glass :)

/hihi

Wish you and your family a very Happy and Prosperous Deepavali. 

Due to some personal reasons, we could not go to our native place this time. I was missing my family very much and to overcome that I kept myself busy and tried my hand at glass work and made these pen holders.

I wanted to put these glass pieces in a wooden frame to make it more elegant, but the carpenter quoted too much for that, so I had to drop the idea. As I have no glass cutter at home, got the help from a near by shop to cut the glass. Unfortunately they were not good at cutting the smaller pieces, next time onwards I have to do this myself and make them more precise.

Have a gr8 day. /bye

Evergreen Clay Beauties !!

/hihi

    How are you ? Hope you enjoyed the long weekend :)

   Here is my recent work - Iris (national flower of France) made out of Thai clay. This flower comes in a variety of colors, but I have selected Blue Iris as it symbolizes faith and hope, most importantly it looks attractive.

Thank you very much Seema for teaching me this beautiful art, I cannot forget the way you have explained each and every thing... definitely you are the Queen of Clay Flowers dear :)

 I have really enjoyed "the making" of this flower, need to try some more varieties.

 Have a gr8 day. /bye

Hand Embroidery on Silk Sarees

/hihi

 Here I have uploaded some of the embroidery works on Silk sarees, which I did for my Aunt.


  Simple Kutch work

  I have used chained buttonhole stitch for the pallu

Here are few tips--
# The thread path is very important- the thread always goes up and down alternatively, this keeps the embroidery intact.looks attractive also. If there is a small mistake also you can easily identify...
# Take time to draw the design as perfect and neat as possible, otherwise it is difficult to move around and simultaneously rectify the original design.
# Practice a lot before trying on a saaree.. understanding the thread path is the better way.

The finished basic square looks like this-

    Kamal Kadai embroidery using Cone thread, which gives 3D effect for the work


    

You can put glass and kundan in embroidery to make it more beautiful..My Aunt doesn't like the shiny things so I kept it simple,,




I think I have posted quite a lot of posts under the label Handicrafts in last few months, its high time to work on some paintings :)

Have a gr8 day. /bye

Stocking Flowers ..

/hihi

Stocking flowers, the most colorful and creative one. Its a very interesting craft and anyone can try out easily. I wasn't sure of which flower I should do, so I ended up with a bunch of flowers. 

I read they were very popular in the 70s. The best thing about these flowers is the flexibility with which you can shape the petals and flowers in any desirable form. 

These flowers can be used as decoration in vases, jewellery and accessories. May be you will get to see more flowers here because I started loving it ;) 

Have a gr8 day. /bye

Handmade Paper Boxes

/hihi

Here are few paper boxes and a bag, I have prepared from handmade paper. This is the first time I have tried this, that's why did not spent money to buy lase, rather used jute thread we had at home. Long way to go :)

     

 They are super easy to make and are perfect for the little gift that needs just the right sized box. Of late, started loving this and planning to learn some more so that I can consider taking orders :)

Have a gr8 day. /bye

Hand Woven Swing ...

/hihi

Here is my latest craft work - Jhula (Swing) made of Chinese knotting cord. I forgot the name of the knot which I used here as I have learnt this craft around 6 years ago. 

This nylon cord has nice texture that helps to hold the knots in place and of course we have to tie the knot very tightly for these kind of works. To keep it from fraying you can melt the ends with flame. The good thing is - you can wash this work with mild detergent whenever required.

                                

                                 

Using this simple knot pattern itself you can make varieties of wall hangings, table mats, handbags, mobile covers etc,,  All it takes is a little patience for these kind of hand weaving crafts as it is very tedious process. But I'am sure once you finish the work, you will forget all the difficulties you had and will be completely satisfied.

Have a gr8 day. /bye

Few more Greeting Cards

/hihi
  

Wishing you all a very Happy Dussehra !

I found couple of greeting cards while searching for something else and thought of sharing with you all here.  Although I prepared these cards long time back, happy that I have got something to upload now :)

                                              Prepared using some wedding cards.

                                              Simple designs on handmade paper.

 
Have a gr8 day /bye

Handmade Greeting Card

/hihi
  Hi friends, I am back to blog after a long time. Hope all of you are doing great, I was really busy with my professional life, its hard to find time for my interests.
 
  I should thank the animation industry as I am getting the opportunity to meet some of the highly talented creative people. But I had mixed feelings at office in last few weeks as couple of my colleagues resigned to explore new challenges. First of all, it was the creative head of our company, a highly talented individual from whom I have learnt a lot. Although I feel myself lucky to have worked with him for more than 6 months, but its not easy to accept that he is not in our organization now.
 
  Also my good friend at work, a pure-hearted girl, moved out of Bangalore for some personal reasons.I really appreciate the way she handled the things in her life and impressed by some of her philosophies of  life. Although I can stay in touch with her through social networking sites and telephone, but I really miss her at office. Here I am uploading a greeting card made out of handmade papers, which I prepared for her in a hurry. While writing the text over the card, I thought I would have learned calligraphy ... my wish list is growing day by day :)

 
  

  

During my school days, I used to prepare a lot of greeting cards at home to wish my relatives and friends during New Year and Makara Sankranti. Unfortunately I don't have the photographs of them to share here. Now we are moving towards e-wishes and text messages, so most of us stopped sending the 'hard copy' of greeting cards !!

I've tried one more, please have a look. The photos are taken before writing the message, bit personal you know .. :)

   
Have a gr8 day /bye

Handicraft using Mangalore Cucumber seeds

/hihi

  Hello everybody, hope you are enjoying the winter season. In this post, I am going to upload couple of  handicrafts made from Mangalore cucumber seeds, around 4 years back.

 

  I don't know why its called as Managalore Cucumber, although its grown throughout the Malnad region... we too grow this in my native place. Since this is regularly used at home to prepare Dosa and Sambar, collecting the seeds is not a difficult task.

  After seeing this in one of my relatives house, my mother was impressed with that and resulted in relentless pressure on me to do the one for our showcase as well. So I visited their house (although I don't like visiting relatives !!),observed the intricacies and got some tips from my relative. Bamboo stem is used here as the base and the seeds are glued over it. Regular sewing thread and needle are used to string the seeds to prepare flowers. This is the difficult part as the seeds are very small.

This work gave me enough confidence and I've decided to do one more ...bit more complicated one. And here it is ...

  

  This is called as Aarati Kattu in Havyaka language and is used as decorative item on Aarti Plate on special occasions like threading ceremony (upanayanam) and marriage. Feel free to share your valuable suggestions.

 
Have a gr8 day. /bye

Creative Ideas - borrowed, copied and of course improvised !!!

/hihi I know its quite long I have not updated anything. I am just back from my native place and so much has happened in past few weeks.

During this cricket madness of IPL, I was fortunate to get the remote control and by chance I noticed a show on TV, where they were telling the procedure to create wall hangings from bread pieces.

I thought of giving it a try immediately after reaching Bangalore, although my husband was against me doing these kind of activities. He argues that I'll lose focus from my animation work as I have too many assignments to complete. But what to do, I can't give-up my interests so easily. I want to learn pottery designing as well as murals, not possible in near future due to time constraints !!

I just tried it in a hurry, you can consider it as a trial run although it gave some confidence to me.

Of course, you can prepare many other nice wall hangings, beautiful gift articles with ready-to-throw Iyengar breads :)

Here is the procedure for the interested people.

Materials Used :
1. A pack of bread
2. Acrylic colors
3. White Glue
4. Hand made paper

Procedure :

1. Remove the crusts from the bread slices. If the bread is fresh and soft, dry them under sunshine for half an hour to remove moisture. 

2. Use a food processor to form fine crumbs.
3. Prepare a dough (similar to roti dough) by adding white glue, acrylic color to the bread crumbs. Knead the mixture until it forms a pliable clay.  If you want more than one color you need to make separate batches of dough.
4. Now flatten the dough using rolling pin and make flowers, leaves and other ingredients for your work. 
5. Use varieties of bottle caps (for petals), knife (for leaves) and your fingers to give proper shapes required for the work.
6. Attach the flowers, leaves, petals etc to the base using white glue.

You can apply wood varnish after they are completely dry to protect the bread flowers and makes them last longer. I did not think of writing a blog for this work, so I don't have the step-by-step photos.

Aaahh, its kind of buy one get one free :) Along with the bread flower, I'll be sharing with you on how to make Golden Tree. Don't worry, its Golden Tree without using Gold and is not that costly too!!
I did this few months back, neighboring aunty was kind enough to teach me this. It is easy to make and looks really nice.

Materials Used :
1. Golden Wires
2. Golden Leaves and flowers
3. Beads  

Procedure: 

1. Fold the golden wires of equal length (around 30-40) into half and twist it in the bottom so that you will get branches and stem. 

2. Now take 5-6 branches equally from all sides and twist the remaining leaving a small gap 
3. Spread the branches equally and in each branch twist beads, leaves and flowers alternatively.
4. Repeat the same method for all the remaining branches.
5. Now divide the bottom into 4 equal parts and twist them and make it look like the tree stand. 

Here is my golden tree ....

You can enjoy the pain in thumb and forefinger thanks to twisting the wires for a day or so, along with the satisfaction you get !!

Even though there are mistakes in your work, the good thing is that you can still justify them as intentional. That is called creativity :)

Have a nice day! /bye