doodling away with Artline's Yoodle pens!

one of the most relaxing and soothing activities anyone can do - doodling! and i came across this set of pens, Yoodle by Artline. since i am a beginner, i wanted to try out with basics first and then later move on to more professional range of calligraphy pens offered by Artline. and boy! aren't these pens just A-M-A-Zing! Extremely smooth to write with, they don’t dry up fast at all. they are perfect if you are a beginner or mid-level doodler/calligrapher, someone just starting out.

DIY embellishments on a fun sunday!

there's no right way to do it, just do it!

we all have that stach lying around for a "later use" but we always take out fresh material whenever there is a project to do it. so today was dedicated to making some treasure from my stock of trash.

using my

rakhi greetings 2.0

another rakhi and this time around i wanted to go more traditional so made some rakhis using metallic embellishments..

but went funky with them greetings!

repairing some ripped pants that i cannot just let go of with embroidery

so today was dedicated to making a-mends. this paosr of pants that i loooooove was ripped from the knee in a small accident a few years ago. and i hadn't let go of these even though i was too lazy to actually repair. and one fine TOday i finally decided i won't buy another pair of denims until i had repaired any/all of my old one (yeaas there's more than one, i am a hoarder what can i say)

i hate doing the patch thing, simply don't like them. so i had to find an alternative to patching it up. a simple answer - embroidery. and my inspiration - this lovely blog called Small Things. 

so here's the fractured denim as it looked after the accident. ripped on the left knee.

full length

i started by first creating a sort of 'canvas' for me to work upon. a base of any cotton fabric to be put at the back to provide more strength to your patch

diy mini album with colorful printed paper

picture chime for a cute couple

artist trading card swap with Shilpa Nagaonkar

so i had the chance to go to this amazing workshop with Shilpa Nagaonkar in Bengaluru and now all thanks to this sweet lovely crafter, i am part of a very active and creative group of ladies. they keep sharing pictures of things that they make over WhatsApp and it is always refreshing to look at all that amazing stuff at the end of day!

so, as a part of that group, everyone was asked to make ATC's or Artist Trading Cards. a lovely post i found online on ATC's. me too, all excited prepared some ATC's:

alas, i forgot to take any pictures while actually making them, so making do with just text on how i created them:

for the first one, i applied a layer of gesso with some coffee powder added for color (and the fragrance!). i love working with coffee, the color and texture that it lends to your work cannot be copied with paint. at least beyond my capability. so i sprimkled some coffee powder here and there while it was still wet to give some effect when it dried.

once it was dry, i painted a cherry blossom tree with coffee and let it dry for at least a day.

once it was dry, i added the flowers made with quilling strips. since the card was a mere 3"x4", i decided to represent flowers with just circles instead of petals. and also the theme of this month's ATC was circles, so well....i had also made a cherry blossom greeting card some time back, with complete flowers with quilling.

flower watercolours

mixed media canvas on a fun sun-day!

today was spent on yet another mixed media session! using some different techniques from the mixed media session i did earlier this year, today i made it on a canvas. 

take your blank canvas and paint it over with a thin layer of Gesso. this is to give you a smooth surface for the next steps. the thickness of Gesso varies with the purpose you want to solve with it. for example, if you want to create a base for your inks and paints, paint a thin layer and if you want to create texture use a thicker layer.

dry out the canvas using a hair dryer or heat tool. when using a dryer, be careful not to go really close to the canvas as it may cause bubbles in the Gesso, which would kind of defeat the purpose of creating a smooth surface. if you have the time and patience to let it dry in the sun, then go for it too. the canvas should be warm to touch, that's how you would know its completely dry.

just trying to see how i would want to arrange my focal point items. as you progress with your piece however, you will keep changing these positions and the end result could be different. but in this piece, the second texture could only be created in a straight line, so i could not arrange my flowers this way. 

the nest step was to use texture paste and stencil. this particular texture paste when dried gives the look of cracked paint. the beauty of mixed media is that there is no right or wrong way to do it (excepts the basics of course). use your imagination and apply the materials or techniques any which way you like. the only requirement is to keep practicing and keep experimenting.

so here i used my stencil to create a polka dot appearance.

golden sequins design on a white T-shirt

Using the very simple technique of applying sequins, i started working on this design today. it's a symbol in Sikhism that stands for sovereignty and integrity.

i had made a design on similar sequined embroidery technique a while ago, that too was something related to Sikhism. well the reason behind this preference is that CraftWings along with Teri Oat is planning to launch a series of T-shirts with these designs and all profits from these T-shirts would go to charity. not any particular charity, but a different one everytime we launch a new design.

we would request you to please go to the Teri Oat page and be a part of this endeavour. all our new designs shall be uploaded on their Facebook page. sign up for the newsletter and you shall get an alert everytime a new design is launched.

here's a little tutorial on how i proceeded with the design, slowly and patiently, one sequin at a time and doing it only during the day as it takes a lot of eye work!😁

first off i copied the design on to my t-shirt using a black carbon paper. i had printed out the design on an a4 sheet.

sunday photography at Cubbon Park, Bengaluru

keeping in line with doing a creative thing every sunday, i finally took a more concrete step towards my another love, photography! armed with my Nikon Coolpix L120 (yes, i wanted to start small) i set out for Cubbon Park early today morning. amidst a game of hide and seek by clouds and the sun, it was the perfect weather for a place like Cubbon Park.

before i begin, a slight warning especially for mosquito magnets like me, please cloth yourself well and apply a generous amount of mosquito repellent as the place is swarming with them. that said, it is still a beautiful place to go to on a lazy sunday and just observe each and everything. 

  i started off from the gate, facing the Central State Library and walked down the bamboo lined pathway. it almost seemed like walking in a jungle; a bit scary, a bit adventurous...

baby girl scrapbook

a multi-paged scrapbook completely handmade for a sweet little baby girl. everything from the binding and interactive pages is handmade.

baby album for a baby boy

we love handmade! as if that wasn't clear from this blog, here's one more baby album for a cute little guy. a loving aunt wanted to gift her nephew something adorable that the mom could use to save her memories of the little one. 

the album is made using lots of colors. now i know its not a written rule that anything related to kids has to be colorful, but for this particular item we were asked to include as many colors as possible. personally i too am a fan of colors and we had a blast making this album. 

read on for more images..

mixed media for the first time

handmade boxes for gifting

this is totally addictive. once you strat making boxes you can't stop till you have churned out every inch of creativity you have got inside! here's another paiur of boxes we made for two of our special guests. 

once more explosion box!

another explosion box for a lovely couple

love knows no boundaries and we did realize this while making this cutest ever explosion box card for a friends fiance. and this box made it all the way to Sydney, Australia! 

accompanying the box was a quilled card which the pretty lady used to express her birthday message.

more pictures of the explosion box follow...