Easter Eggs

I have been seeing a lot of projects on the internet for Easter and I was really excited to do something myself.  I had many options and finally decided to decorate Easter eggs.

I used chicken eggs for this project and here’s how I went about decorating them.

I made holes on either side of the egg and blew the egg yolk and egg white out. Rinsed it and let it dry for a few hours.

I used strips of colored tissue paper and stuck them on the egg with a mixture of glue and water. While doing that, I covered the work area with a plastic bag to avoid the paper from sticking to the surface.  After 3-4 layers of tissue paper the decoupage eggs were ready.

Next thing on my list was a miniature egg diorama. To make this I carved out an oval shaped hole in the empty egg shell. The border was made by tight quilled coils. I glued the inside of the egg and stuffed it with some scrap paper. Then made a little garden scene with green tissue paper, rabbit cut outs and some flowers.

The last and my favorite was the quilled egg.  Since I didn’t want to stick the quilled shapes directly onto the egg, I created a paper mesh around the egg using 3mm strips.  I made two such meshes, one for the top half and one for the bottom.

All the quilled shapes were glued either to the sides of each other or the mesh wherever possible. The mesh was always over the egg while making the design. This helped me to take the egg out in the end.

This was a very different and challenging project as compared to my previous works. I learnt a lot and had a great time exploring.  And if you are wondering what happened to all the egg yolk and egg whites – scrambled eggs it was! :) 

-Smriti. 

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Urban Warli - An Easter Special!

My love of art and trying something different always has me exploring new territories of artistic expression and this is one such experiment.

I have been working with Warli for a little while now and I absolutely enjoy it for its simplistic elegance. Warli is an Indian tribal art, which illustrates daily rituals and social events of the Warli tribe. We will certainly go through more details about this interesting art form in a future post, but in this one I want to share with you my attempt towards adding an urban attitude to Warli! For this particular art piece I decided to go against conventional depiction of tribal seasons or rituals, like harvest or hunting and instead to look at a typical city event and protray it.

Easter is coming up this weekend and there are several Easter activities that have kept everyone busy in the city this week, whether it is the egg hunts, Easter crafts or planning parties. Since this is the big celebration for the week, I decided to illustrate the Easter Egg Hunt through Warli. I have taken a textured pastel coloured cardstock paper (A4 size) and folded it vertically to form the basic A5 size card. I have trimmed this card to fit a standard A5 size picture frame. Sometimes if a card is well made people like to frame it, so size the card in a way that it fits standard frame sizes.

I have used a black Sharpie to draw the elements on this one since I was using a textured paper. If it were a smooth paper I would have used acrylic colours and a size '0' brush. On the card I have tried to show a local park with the children and parents enjoying the Easter egg hunt along with some Easter bunnies, a food and refreshment table and a picnic feel. I have tried to keep to an contemporary essence by including the parked cars outside the park, a home across the park, people walking their dogs and so on.

I’m glad with the outcome of my first mix and match experiment and I am planning to continue working on more contemporary designs. Do send me suggestions for  they are more than welcome and so are your feedbacks on this one!

- Shamoni

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होली है !

It's going to be my third Holi away from home and I miss all the fun I used to have. I have some awesome memories of playing holi with my family and friends. Holi celebrations used to begin a week before the actual Holi day with competitive water balloon fights every evening. Eventually we out grew all that and then it was all about colors, good food and music. Even though the celebrations lasted for almost a week, it felt like they got over too soon. And cleaning up the color off the face and hair took almost the same time.

So I thought it would be a great idea to come up with a recovery kit for the Holi addicts.

I took a 12X12 cardstock paper and scored it on all sides at 4 inches.

Then diagonally scored the 4 corner squares.

After the scoring was done, I folded the diagonally scored squares in.

To finish, I folded all corners and pushed them at the center, punched holes in each of them and tied a ribbon to hold it together. That's it the basket was ready.

I added some pattern paper to match with the base paper.

This is a 3X3 cross stitch tag I made for the kit.

I filled it up with all the things you will need to play Holi without worrying too much about the after effects! I also made a small "user manual" to go with the kit :-)

I hope you have great fun with colors and craft this Holi.

-Smriti.

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Wear your attitude as a T-shirt this Holi

I am always excited come March because I know it’s time to get down and dirty… literally for it’s time for Holi, the festival of fun and colours!!! With winter finally tucked away somewhere dark and cold (which may not really be the case this year) it's time to enjoy the new blossoms, the birds and bees and this lovely spring festival. Holi is undoubtedly the most fun filled and energetic festival and an occasion for fun, music, yummy food and lots of colours.

 

For me Holi has always been a time to let down my guard and do things that normally would be considered unruly like squirting colourful water, splashing colours, walking drench on the roads, loads of thandai and occasional bhang with friends, uncontrollable laughter and a hangover that is more due to unending fun than the bhang!

But the best part of Holi is when you look smart before and after you have been splattered with colour! Every year dressing up on the day of Holi has always been a fuss, for you want to look smart, not spoil something new and still wear your own attitude and not some old clothes from childhood!

So this year we thought why not give you some exciting prints for t-shirts! You can print these on your old t-shirts or on new ones and with the quirky prints you will wear a smart attitude and look colourful and holi-ready!!!

 

 

 

 

These prints are available with us in printable versions so if you would like to use any of them do write to us and we will be happy to send you the image you can print on your t-shirt and look Holi-smart!!!

- Shamoni

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Quilling Therapy

I was (still am and always will be) fascinated with paper. 4 years ago when I discovered a quilling kit in a craft store, I knew I had to buy it!! It sat in my studio for about 2-3 months before I opened it and experimented. It was magical and then there was no stopping.

Quilling (also known as paper filigree) is therapeutic, addictive, fun and inexpensive. It’s an art form that uses narrow strips of paper that are coiled and then pinched into different shapes. Quilling can be very versatile and one can create unique gifts like cards, wall art, photo frames, trinkets, jewelry. It isn't difficult, just needs a lot of patience because you are dealing with tiny paper coils and trying to shape them. With practice you will get it just right. So let’s practice! J

This is where you will get some basic instructions, tools, supplies, techniques to begin. Google ‘quilling’ and you will see some really inspirational quillers who stimulate me.

Before working with the paper strips that came with the kit, I thought it would be more appropriate to practice with plain paper. So I took A4 size papers, cut them into strips (2mm or 3mm width each) coiled and shaped them. There are different ways of gluing the strips - a lot of quillers use a fine tip glue applicator, but I take out some glue on a plastic sheet and use a toothpick for application. A MUST have equipment while quilling for me is a tweezer.

The picture below was a card for my Mom's birthday. Since it was one of the first few cards I made, I played with a few shapes (basic)  which included circle, tear drop, marquise, triangle and some scrolls. 

-Smriti.

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Saint Patrick's Day

I recently got a shamrock paper punch from Daiso and with Saint Patrick’s Day around the corner, it was a good time to put it to use. The shamrock leaf was used by Saint Patrick to explain the Holy Trinity to the Irish. Nowadays the shamrock leaf and color green have become synonymous to St. Patrick’s Day.

So I also thought of going green by recycling, reusing stuff from my craft room.

I found:

• Scraps of Card Stock paper.  ( approx. 5.5x4.5)
• Leftover embroidery floss from an old project.
• Some old and read magazines for punching the green leaves.

The countdown has begun …so go GREEN !! 

-Smriti

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Earrings and a Pendant of Clay for St Patrick’s Day

As promised in my previous post here I am once again with my Polymer clay project and I’m excited to share this interesting project or shall I say mini projects *smile* with you!

Polymer clay though a lot of fun can be quite an expensive hobby as the cost of the clay itself is quite a bit plus the tools, additional findings and enhancers all add up! So I am always on a look out for discounts or sales on clay and clay tools. Most craft shops in the US do have discounts, sales or clearances regularly on their polymer clay counters, so do be on a look out! 

I was at Jo-Ann last week and I picked up a 2oz Lime and String Bean colour Sculpey® packs for 30 cents. I actually bought them because of the price, but as soon as I walked out of the store I started thinking of what I could do with these colours and it struck me that we were not too far from St. Patrick’s Day… and oh what luck to have two great shades of green!!!

• My first project is a simple set of shamrock earrings.
• Each earring is made with three heart shaped leaves and a triangular stock.
• This is stuck to flat pad earring post with some liquid clay
• Now backed as per instructions on the clay pack
•  A coat of silky glaze 
•  Final touch of sparkly stud with a quick glue

And there! I am ready to wear some luck on my ear!

Now that I had the earrings I needed a pendant to wear them with for the St Patrick’s Day parade!!!

This one has a little leprechaun peeping out of a pot of gold. This was pretty much done in a similar way as the earrings except sticking it to flat pads; an eye pin was used on this one instead… and I had a cute pendant to go with the earrings!

And so I walk out with my new earrings and pendant this St Patrick’s Day and hope the good luck always comes my way!!!

- Shamoni

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Love is in the air

I am not such a fan of Valentine’s day..but because I see so much ‘love’ around me I thought of making something for my hubby dear!

Since I am such a hoarder when it comes to craft supplies, I have a moderate collection of designer paper punches. So I decided to put those in use. 

Here's what I did : 

• Sketched a bare tree
• Punched out a bunch of hearts
• Stuck them randomly on the tree
• Got Shamoni to help me with the tag line
• Voila ! V-day card done! 

My V-day obsession didn't stop at the card, I got myself to do some more work. I got my box of quilling strips and ended up making this 3d cake ! 

This was my first time at 3d quilling. I used the curling coach to make the cake. It helped me a lot, since I was able to manage working with a lot of strips together. The strips I used for the cake were dark yellow and red color which were 3mm wide and 17 inches long. The number of stripes I glued for each layer, starting from the bottom are as follows : 

• 12
• 9 
• 6 
• 3

I worked on each color separately, then glued them all together to make a 4- tier cake! It didn't really look like a cake, especially not a Valentine's day type of cake! So I decided ..what better to add than little hearts all over! :-) I took dark magenta color strip, cut them to get 1.5mm width and made inward facing V scrolls ( basically heart shaped ).  I look forward to making more 3d quilling projects and I will post them soon! 

-Smriti

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Valentine’s Day with Polymer Clay

It is Valentine’s Day and being me it’s time for me to make something special instead of just buying it off the self! After a bit of deliberation, and after eliminating choices like cards, music compilation, chocolates, etc. I decided to pick up my new found obsession of polymer clay and make a little something with it.

Polymer clay is one of the most versatile craft mediums and it is easy and I have a lot of fun working with it. Being a novice myself, I had not bought everything that craft stores have to sell and trust me for a beginner there is no need to be overwhelmed by the number of things sold, just stick to basics when you start.

I had with me the Sculpey® 12 colour sample pack, a set of Sculpey® starter tools and a work surface and that was good enough to create a cute love bear. Oh yes! What I also had was the internet and some excellent tutorials I followed a wonderful tutorial from Deb and Co. on youtube and you can see it here. I took the basic idea from the tutorial and then made my little tweaks, as the bear Debi shows is a Christmas bear and I wanted to make a fuzzy and warm little love bear. So I used the Preomo Sculpey® gold for the body of the bear to give it a more sparkly feel and then added more bright colours like Hot Pink for his feet pads, Lime for his scarf and Red Hot Red for the heart he holds in his hands. Once the bear was ready I baked it as per the instructions on the clay pack (which was at 275◦ for 15 minutes) and done!

Trust me this project was simple and a lot of fun and although boys are not into hearts and bears, my husband was quite happy to see this cute little thing sitting on top of the cake! Oh! Did I not mention that, yep I used the bear as a cake topper and now he sits on my night stand!

As I had mentioned Polymer clay is very versatile and you can make a variety of things like accessories, jewellery, keepsakes with it. I am trying to make a variety of things myself and I am very excited to keep you posted on these projects as we go along. I do need a lot of advice, ideas and suggestions from you so do leave me a line or few! 

- Shamoni

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Starting Craft Connection

We believe that people with similar mindsets end up connecting with each other, no matter what the distance in geography or time is, for this is what happened to both of us! We had known each other since school years and although we spent over a decade growing up together, we never really shared much about our lives or interests then. After school, we pretty much went our separate ways, enhanced our education, built careers, enriched our minds and then got married…

We both left our hometowns, our family, friends, and careers and flew 9000 miles from India to settle down in the United States! This is where destiny had us bump into each other once again (and by destiny here we mean Facebook). We connected again and realized that our lives were ironically alike. We both have similar interests, likes, ambitions and questions. We...

• Love art and craft
• Have many creative ideas that pop into our head and like to discuss them
• Both don't know what to do with our energy

Over the past few months of discussions and deliberations we recognized that we had some common goals between us, which were...

• to create a platform to share and expand our ideas and knowledge
• to connect with more like minded people

Once we accepted our goals, we decided to work on a way to achieving them and figured we made a great team together… two sides of the same coin!

As one of our first steps towards achieving our goals, we decided to start Craft Connection, a platform where we will share all our ideas, knowledge and artistry to make artistic, creative and unique handmade gifts.  

We welcome and truly appreciate your contribution in helping us to make this an interactive forum. So do add in your ideas or tell us what you would like to know from us and we will be happy to write about it!

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