Crepe paper flower Garland tutorial

Hello everyone!
I know I am not a regular blogger, but hey, you have been seeing all my Facebook posts right?! If you don't know what I am talking about, check out my Facebook page here
So, we all have been busy lately, because FESTIVAL SEASON IS HERE!! That means, lot of preparations, preparing sweets treats, new clothes, lots of cleaning up the house and decorating it. Well, lets start from the decoration part of it, because its my most favorite!
We all want all our decorations to last for a long time, don't we? I mean, real flowers are nice too, but lets be honest, its all a a bit expensive affair, don't you agree? Especially, if you are living in a place where the kind of flowers you are looking for are scarcely available. So, one of the next best thing? Ta-da... our very own lovely crepe paper garland. This is something we have been doing in our home since ages- be it Diwali (festival of lights) decorations, Dussera (Kinda hard to explain this festival) , Krishnashtami (Lord Krishna's birthday) or Ganesha chaturthi (Lord Ganesha's birthday). The entire house i.e., the main entrance, walls, railings, every room entrance and in places wherever we think would look fine, would be decorated with these lovely colorful flower garlands! oh what fun! We have amazing childhood memories attached with it. Since i came so far far away from my parents' home, I decided to do the decorations to the place we call it 'our' home. Also, i thought to put up a teeny tiny tutorial of the flowers, so that everyone can make it! without any further talking, let me start off with the tutorial.

Step 1: Look at the picture below and admire the beauty of it. Imagine doing this to your own home, with your own hands, of your own favorite colors.. Isn't it beautiful? Now let's hit the craft stores!

Step 2: Look for the textured crepe paper that is available in craft stores. It much easier to work with. if not plain paper works fine too. And the tools you need is a pair of scissors, and needle and twine/thread to make the garland.

Step 3: Cut a small portion of the crepe paper so that it makes a bigger rectangle. It doesn't matter if you make it a square too! The fun part of this project it nothing has to be exact because ultimately, it will turn out to be pretty! I cut a rectangle.

Step 4: Fold that piece into half, fold again to another half, and repeat it couple of times until it becomes a tiny (and fat) rectangle piece. If its too much to handle, go ahead, and unwrap couple of times and cut it at the seam. We can work with that piece later.



Step 5: Now find the center seams and start cutting it.The goal is to ultimately get smaller pieces of squares or rectangle. See the picture Below.

Step 6: We will now work with the stack of separate rectangular/square pieces we made earlier. Fold it one more time, and from one end to the other end, start cutting it only at the ends as shown in the picture below. Do not cut all the way through. Once you open the fold it should look like the 3rd picture shown below.

Step 7: Now comes the super fun part. Unravel all the cut stack of paper into seperate pieces.

Step 8: Pick each piece, pinch it at the plain uncut center, and twist it. Ta-da.. You just made flower. Just like that. Repeat this step some 100 times until you run out of paper. In no time you would start doing with both hands, one flower in each hand and you would be a flower making ninja!

 

Step 9: Take your needle and thread, string it at the centre. Just like how you string flowers to make a garland.  The method i used to string the garland is kind of complicated, I do not use a needle, but tie it around. I found this video tutorial on Youtube if you want to learn the way i did it. It is skillful but not mission impossible :p
Follow this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ9wopJ1new

Step 10: Decorate and be proud! :)

P.S.: You can do this with plastic grocery bags, thin polythene table covers, colorful trash bags etc etc to make it washable. 

Love,
Kavya.

Mud room makeover

Hey friends! :)
Today i want to share with you, a different type of project. Neither crochet, nor macrame. Just a pure home improvement project. Inspired by a pin posted in pinterest.

We have a typical small mud room, where we have coat hangers, shoe rack, a small corner seat to sit and wear the boots etc etc, details of it is not important. The important thing is, what did we do with the corner, and how did we go about it? :)
All we wanted to do is make it a featured wall, for the guests, for us. Oh my oh my, how it evolved, is really amazing! :)
Our mud room was of basic cream color. we wanted to make it a different color, to stand out. so it went from being cream- to blue - yes blue! i know! - to tan.

 The next step was to make the console table. Our whole concept was, since the room was too small to keep the console table and chair, we just wanted to paint the table, have a hanging lamp, and have some books.
So, for the console table, we sketched out a design. well, two different designs, by my husband and me. And after a whole lot of brain storming sessions, we decided upon the best side of the design, traced, mirrored, and traced it back on the wall. After 4-5 coats of white paint on it, our console table was ready.
For the book stand, as i said, there was not enough room for us to have the whole book to be placed. So, we got some old books for a nice vintagey touch, started cutting each and every page of the book, and the cover for upto one inch thickness. Yes, that's almost 300-400 pages! I had to remove the spine from the fatter books since i would be crazy cutting up 1000+ pages!
I was already thinking up of another project to do with the old pages that i cut up. Its now safe in my shelf for future use ;)
So, after that is done, we attached the new 1" thk book with a corner brackets available in a hardware store, bought a Buddha face, old lamp shade, and Voila! :) A super serene atmosphere for my guests and for our mud room! :)

oh, ya, forgot to mention, i used a old circular lampshade wire frame, wrapped it with cotton thread, and wrapped across the frame like cycle spokes, to create the 'aura' effect for Buddha!
So.. you like it?