For My Friends

Utility Stands

My elder sister has all of a sudden developed this craze for bangles! Luckily for me, she gave me an order to think of making a stand for her latest collection and this is what I came up with. Like always, my base for the entire stand was newspaper and metal wire. Unfortunately, this was not sturdy enough to hold her glass bangles and they would always topple off! :( hmmm…I should’ve made a stronger base structure.

My mother and sister have stainless steel and plastic stands adorning their kitchens.  I wanted one too and that is how I decided to make one of my own. It was actually not that difficult! I used old cardboard boxes of cereals, shoe boxes and the like as the different sections of the stand, joined them with fevicol, gave them a wooden textured paint effect and decorated them with dried water melon seeds. Now, that is truly eco-friendly!  Unfortunately though, this did not last long since the boxes could not withstand sufficient weight and gradually began to sag :(

My Own Letter Box at Home

I opened my own savings account at home, without having to walk into any bank branch and without filling up any form! A little help from Neil was all that I needed. :D
I had this project in mind when I visited my parents in Kerala. Luckily for me, I found an old, empty Pringles tin there along with my mother’s collection of “additional” utensils. Once I was back at home, I started working on it. There were not many steps to creating this letter box. It only required making a slot to push the money through and some corrugated sheet for the base. The top of the letter box is a newspaper ball carefully stuck to the lid of the tin. After taping everything securely into position, the next step was covering the tin and lid separately in 1-2 layers of paper mache (fevicol + tissue paper pieces). When completely dry, I painted the top portion and the corrugated sheet at the bottom black and red for the middle portion. There seemed to be some mistake in the coloring and I went and checked my nephew’s little metal letter box that he recently got. And then I found my mistake…the top portion was supposed to be red and not black like I’d done. I made the correction the very next day and gave it 2-3 coatings of red and black. A black band made of newspaper separated the top and middle portions later on. And there it is…my very own savings account at home, and I’ve already transferred my “Vishu” savings to this! :)

Check out the original version by Neil Buchanan here

http://www.hitentertainment.com/ARTATTACk/pocketmoneybox.html

My Creations at Home in Kerala

This time when I visited my parents, I took my camera along to click pictures of whatever was remaining of my earlier crafts. Here they are:

I’d learnt the soft-toys making from my neighbour Manonmani’s amma during my 10th std vacations. I’ve made only these 3 since they were time consuming and I didn’t know where to buy the materials from.

RadheShyam

This idea occurred to me when I was deciding on what to gift my sister and jeeju on their wedding anniversary. I wanted it to be something special and something that conveys the message of togetherness. Being a Krishna devotee, this was the first picture that came to my mind. I started by making a sketch of Krishna and Radha. With my limited skills in drawing, I made a rough copy and then copied it to black chart paper. I didn’t need to give much attention to facial features and other details since this was not going to be a painting. Once the picture was copied, I applied fevicol (the free-flow one that comes with a nozzle bottle) on the lines, working in sections. Then sprinkled glitter on the fevicol, allowed it to sink in for some time and tapped the picture on some paper to remove glitter from areas outside the fevicol lines. I wanted the highlight to be on Krishna’s peacock feathers and hence used green and blue glitter there. Once all fevicol lines were covered with glitter, I blew away all excess glitter. Finally, I’ve created a simple frame using newspaper rolls and painted it golden to match the picture. With a cardboard back-support and a triangular cardboard piece to make the picture rest on, my RadheShyam was complete. My sister and jeeju really did like their anniversary gift and now wants me to make a bigger one! Hmmmm….now that is something I’ll have to think about… :)

What a Mess!

I learnt to "create" this mess from Neil Buchanan of Art Attack. It was extremely easy and quick, creating it hardly took 15mins! I started by firmly taping a plastic sheet on a cereal box. Then I mixed fevicol with coffee powder for the brown one and fevicol + rasna orange flavor powder for the yellow :). Half a cup of colored fevicol is all that this “mess” needs. Then spread the mix on the plastic sheet in shapes that would naturally be created when some liquid is dropped. Place the cup on one end and add spoons or straws for an added messy effect. That is it! Allow it to dry completely (this might take a few days). Once dry, peel it off carefully from the plastic sheet.
When dry, the fevicol turns transparent, giving the mess the color of the powder used. What I intended with the brown one was actually coffee, but it turned out to look like black coffee when dry. Hmmm…I should have mixed a bit of white paint along with the fevicol and coffee powder. The yellow one did come out really well; it looked more original and even had a bubble in it! I couldn’t make this for April 1st though; else it would’ve been a good chance to fool somebody! :)

Check out the original version by Neil Buchanan here

http://www.hitentertainment.com/artattack/makeyourownmess.html

Chart Paper Embroidery

This design was inspired by an advertisement I saw on TV, and then I found a similar wall hanging during our shopping at Spar. I began by drawing the rough sketch on paper and colored it with pencil colors.
My plan was then to recreate the same design on a larger scale on black chart paper and do sand painting on it. But unfortunately I couldn’t find enough sand anywhere near our apartment and was forced to drop that idea. Later on I remembered the chart paper embroidery I’d done back in school days. I’d done it with the same “Framed Peacock” design then. Things moved faster then. Once the design was drawn on the black chart paper, the next step was to create small, neat and approximately equally spaced holes throughout the edges of every section. This was tiresome and my fingers started aching with all the pressure I had to apply using a small needle. Placing stacks of old clothes underneath makes it easier to pierce the needle through. Anyways, once the task of making holes was complete, the only thing remaining was to do embroidery on them. Embroidery wouldn’t be the right term for this kind of stitching, since I’ve used only straight stitches (like the ones used in Anchor Quick Stitch Kits) for the entire design. My materials basket had these colors of Anchor crochet thread remaining and I’d been waiting to somehow make use of them. I had actually bought these to make crochet mats, but found it easier to work with wool than these thin plastic-like threads. The stitching part also took a looooooong time. It took me almost a month to complete this from beginning to end, devoting at least 4-5 hrs everyday on this. I wanted the frame to look really simple and used cardboard cut into the frame shape, wrapped it in newspaper, stuck it to the edges and painted it a woody brown. To hang it up, I’ve first given it a back support with cardboard and then used balls of Fevicol GlueTack to stick it on the wall. Phew, this was one big project!

More pictures...