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

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.

Some earrings I made for Teej.

And some old ones I resurrected from my treasure trove…

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!!!

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The month of celebrations!!

The month of Goodwill!!!

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

• National Friendship Day (Sunday, August 1st)
• Indian Independence Day (Sunday, August 15th)
• Women’s Friendship Day (Sunday,  August 15th)
• Onam (Monday, (August 23rd)
• Raksha-Bandhan (Tuesday, August 24th)

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

to something like

That’s it?

How about something like

or

??

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:

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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…

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.

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

For the pocket, use transparency sheets as show below.

The border I cut out from an old greeting card.

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

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

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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1. This is my first video post. Yeah, I am experimenting with a different media.

2. This is my first “how to” or “tutorial” post for any of the crafts. (If you count out the recipes of course). I’ve posted several of my own jewelry designs on A-mused-mind. But never got into the details of how I ended up making them.

So wish me luck.

This is something that Bhabhi taught me to do. Apparently they did do something like this in school days and weaved the fishes together into garlands. (Interesting na?)

When me and Princes Diya worked on her holiday homework, we ended up doing these fishes. (More about it here.)

Basically we created four types of fishes for her project.

Type 1 (Simple)	Type 2 (Intermediate)	Type 3 (Slightly Advanced)	Type 4 (It’s Different)

• Type 1 – Simple: Simply stick two pieces of bangles together to form a fish shape. Let the bangle pieces move over each other at the tail part. Color the insides. This is simple, but the result was little unstable. Specially at the crossing part near the tail. So adopted Bhabhi’s way. (Type 3)
• Type 2 – Intermediate: Stick the bangle piece. Roll a string of wool on your fingers to make it about 2 inches in length. Spread one side of this roll on the mouth of jelly fish and then cut the strands. Sticking one side and then cutting makes it real easy instead of sticking one piece at a time.
• Type 3 – Slightly Advanced: This fish, unlike type 1, is whole and holds nicely when stuck. Check out this video to see how you can do it yourself.

• Type 4 – Different: This one is not made from glass. It’s a metal bangle! Simply twist it gently to form a fish shape. Easy and really beautiful.

Some ideas where you can use it could be:

• A photo frame? Watch this space for I plan to post a tutorial on how to turn a box into a photo frame. You could always use fishes and shells to decorate it!
• Scrapbooking?
• Interweave type 3 fishes to form a garland? Or if you have plenty of these interweave the fishes together, decorate with some beads / shells and make a curtain for your window / door.
• Similarly you could make a wall-hanging or a wind-chime!

So, what are you waiting for? Start collecting pieces of bangles and get crafting!!!

Don’t forget to share your results with our readers out here.

Happy Fishing!

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.

She has an amazing collection of simple yet beautiful ideas for DIY art / craft projects.

Thanks Shruti for having me on the "Treasure from Trash" series for Underwater scenery made of waste material

So, next time you are at home wanting to DO something instead of watching TV, head to her site, grab an idea and set to work. Sometimes you can surprise yourself!

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Princess Diya had to create a scenery made from waste materials – old pencils, bangle pieces etc. I was a little worried about this one, to be honest. How do you get a four yr old to create so much as a drawing that looks like what its label says?

Then Diya visited Mahesana – my BIL’s place and was fascinated by the fish tank they have. She kept talking about it, describing it on and on – which gave me an idea. We would (re-)create the magic of a fish tank as an “Underwater scenery” for her school work.

And so we did. Glass bangles were twisted over a candle flame to become colorful fishes. Discarded string of wool helped design a jelly fish. Old pencils, crayons with a green tape became underwater plants. The result was really stunning – check out:

Moral of this story:

Holiday homework – something most parents dread of.

Need not be so if you turn if you turn it into a fun activity.

What do you think?

Update:
Learn how to make these fishes from this post:  Glass fish from a bangle

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