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.