Posts Tagged Crafts


The Spirit of Independence

I think the little thing about beautifying food courtesy Smita’s Little Food Junction is rubbing off on me too.

Independence day is round the corner and I found myself decorating the salad in our favorite tri-color colors.

tiranga salad with border

That’s my tri color salad with Daal Makhani. You can find the recipe on my other blog “Meal Times”.

I also spent some time lately experimenting with my beloved tools again. Here are a couple friendship bands that I made for the kids to exchange a couple weeks ago.

fband combined with border

Some earrings I made for Teej.

new earrings combined

And some old ones I resurrected from my treasure trove…

old combined

Some of my neighbor friends have asked me to design Rakhis for them and also new earrings to go with their dresses. They are willing to even pay me for this!!!

Wow… Life is just great!!!

It is so good to be a citizen of an independent and free nation!!!

Happy 15th August!!!

Let’s celebrate! (with an exciting offer!)

Ah August!

The month of celebrations!!

The month of Goodwill!!!

Check out the list of celebrations we have this year in August

See what I mean? This is just the general list. Apart from all the birthdays / anniversaries of loved ones etc.

What better way to celebrate these days than to give gifts? And how cool will it be if you can come up with ‘personalized’ gifts for each occasion!

That’s the theme of my new ‘service’ which I’ll be ready to offer in just a couple more days.

Almost all of us have digital photographs these days. Some sweet memories linked with our friends, colleagues, spouses, parents, kids and other loved ones. But what do we do with them?

  • Stack them away in some forgotten folder on our lappy?
  • Write them out to disk and keep them for ‘one day’?
  • Or go find a photo store, take prints and pile them into albums.

We watch our memories transform from

IMG_1643 with border 4

to something like

IMG_1643 with border 2 IMG_1643 with border 5 IMG_1643 with border 1

That’s it?

How about something like

zoomin page

or

zoomin page 2

??

Like it? Read on, there’s more :)

How about transforming some of your images into photo books (like the ones above) or canvases or mugs or tote bags ?

Exciting?

I am planning to offer to design these things for you. At 0 (yes, that’s a zero) cost of designing! *

All you end up paying is what ZoomIn** will charge you for printing and shipping. No extra dime. In most cases these items will cost you comparable (or even lesser) than your local photo print stores.

You can click here to take a sneak peek into the products and prices and here for some of the special offers.

I am onto the last bit of puzzle finalizing how we are going to do it. You know, the technical details you wouldn’t like to hear about. And then bang! I’ll be at your service! Designing cool stuff from your photographs to be used for yourself or your home or to be given as gifts.

For sure you do not want to miss a thing like this! Keep watching this space or better still, sign up here so you get updates in your inbox. You don’t want to get left out of the “0 cost” thingy, do you?

Sincerely,

Yours in celebrations,

~Varada

* Let me make it clear here that this 0 cost is a limited time offer and may not last long.

** ZoomIn ships to any doorstep in India, US, UK and Canada for now. Rest of the world will have to wait – either till ZoomIn starts shipping there or I find another provider to do something similar. Extremely sorry, rest-of-the-world!

Progress check:

Photo frame out of a box

Ever found a beautiful box – with sweets, clothes, gifts, toys but don’t know what to do with it? Let me share one of my ideas…

I found this lovely pink box that my friend had stacked away in her office drawer because it was too beautiful to be thrown away but she could not think of anything to do with it…

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This one had a transparent rectangle right in the middle on its face. If the box you are trying to work on, does not have one, simply carve / cut it with a sharp cardboard cutter.

clip_image002

I added another transparent pocket behind and gave it a border on the front.

For the pocket, use transparency sheets as show below.

clip_image004 clip_image006

The border I cut out from an old greeting card.

clip_image007

I had this beautiful poster of Kanha (Indian Deity) drawn on a dried Banyan leaf:

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Inserted it into the pocket I had created on the box and the final outcome came out to be…

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I did not add many embellishments simply because I wanted to keep it simple. You can add beads, stickers even ribbons or other craft paper cut outs to decorate the photo frame.

The trick is to stay focused on one idea and add things that come to mind with that theme.

Here are some examples:

  1. Suppose you want this to be your handmade dad’s day gift. You could decorate the box with some stickers related to dad’s day. Embellish with some square buttons or something. Keep the look such that it fits your father’s personality.
    Similarly for mom’s day. Add some stickers, some beads or buttons, tie a girlish bow / ribbon.
  2. For a valentines’ day you could decorate this with red hearts cut out and dried rose petals.
  3. For someone’s birthday you could add birthday stickers and some confetti.
  4. To give a gift as a remembrance of a holiday, recreate the magic of those days.
    If you went to a beach, decorate this box with shells and may be a dried star fish. You can also add a couple glass fishes (click here for instructions).
    If you visited mountains, stick together some pine needles or dried leaves or even some nuts!
  5. To add a little personal touch, cut out hearts or stars or any other shapes you like from some colored papers, write your thoughts-good wishes-messages on them and put them inside this box.
    Alternatively add chocolates / toffees / cookies inside the box.

The possibilities are only limited by your imagination!

Like this entry? You can also create cool stuff from everyday things… Just think out of the box… ;)

Update:

I am sending this entry to Shruti’s  Arsy-Craftsy Challenge from Mindful Meanderings. Wish me luck!

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