Oh the mighty gifting season, here i come!

Good morning all,

Just woke up with a foot of snow in my front yard, and oh.. what a beautiful sight it was! its just magical.. and it makes it more magical when Christmas is nearing.. I love the lights, snow and the merriment happening around, people meeting, laughing, gifting.. oh, i cannot describe my feeling.. :)

When it comes to gifting this season, i made a lot of gifts to different wonderful people.. come join me and have a look.. probably, i might have to split it up in different posts..
Ok, so the first one in the surface of my mind.
Its for a toddler, a baby boy, even though i have never seen, im sure he must be just ADORABLE! Arent babies adorable?
If he was here in this country, i would have made him a hat or a scarf, but you guys know about India, right? its hot in some places, no no, im not complaining! I love the summer in India as much as i love Winter in the US. Love for extreme weather i guess ;). ok, so, no hats, no baby blankets. so something to play with, not for just now, but for at least some years to come.. so i made this. A cute adorable toy car, for a cute adorable baby!

Isnt he cute? i even added some of the jingle bells while stuffing the car so that i would even be a rattle.. :)
He is now all gift wrapped and ready.. vroom vroommm.... :D

Happy Holidays! :)

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?

Crochet Thoranam

Thoranam- Mini door curtain. Thats how i can explain or translate in english.

It is used a lot in India, usually for the front door, from one end of the door frame to another, traditionally decorated with mango leaves and flowers. The significance of it being the green mango leaves give a lot of positive vibrations and you are entering into a home filled with positive energy, hence Happiness.
Phew! With the technicality aside, now a days its becoming a more symbolic gesture, (of course its still followed during festivals), EVERY Indian door is decorated with different garlands made of bells, beads etc.. and...LACE! So thats where my project comes into picture.
While i was searching for some square crochet patterns, i stumbled across this and i thought it was be-au-ti-ful! Next thing i wanted to make was a thoranam with it. I added some tassels and colorful beads to it, to make it look more ethnic, there you go! A 'lacey' source of bringing happiness into the home.

And this is now hanging in my parent's home, on a beautiful wooden framed door! - A gift for my mother.  Of course she fell in love with it! :D

Crazy over minions!

Who hasn't gone crazy over those cute little yellow creatures! The moment i saw them in the movie, Despicable me, i wished there was more about the minions! And my prayers have been heard, a large dose of minions in the second part! All i did was "awwww" the entire movie. So, thats it. I want it. Now.

I went and searched in Google for minion patterns, there were many many many versions of them, since my knowledge of crochet was increasing day by day, i understood the basic construction of how its made, plus a little help from here and started doing one of my own little buddy. Let me show you how much fun he had!

You like me. dont you? :P







In the mean while..

I made a 'puppet version' of the minion for my 3 yr old nephew and he loved it! He just kept singing "bananaaaaa.... Potatonaaa..." He he he..

I have another nephew who is 7 years, and he is into "Iron man" phase. So i made a glove for him too.. a modified version of the iron man gloves by Tia Davis. Apparently, my sister had bought him a iron man mask, we would all know that he had a blast with the set!

Thats it for now, see you later with my next project! 

My macrame 'Tree of life'

Hey all,
I am now learning to do macrame, and wanted to do something different than usual pot holders and bracelets. So, i decided to do a tree. The square knots (the one in green and green) are my FAV and don't mind doing it forever!
With the help of my husband, i was able to twist and hold the branches in place, used two colors of jute yarn for the 'leaf' design. I wanted to use the white cotton thread and make some flowers, but it looked too busy with all the knots.. so just came up with plain straight clean line design.
Hope you like it!

Chicks go Bollywood!

Hey, Good morning my dear readers, and a very early morning to me as i hear the silence in the air, somewhere a little cuckoo bird singing in a hope that the world would wake up listening to its sweet voice.. well, cuckoo bird, im up! :)
Talking about birds, there is a particular story i wanted to share with you. You might have seen a similar one in my previous posts, Just born, but, this one is about a bit adult ones, someone like my parents.
This one is about their undying love towards each other, a strong bond grown with them, Bollywood Style! ;)

 

My dad, my hero, epitome of simplicity, always wears a scarf or a piece of cloth around his head calling himself as 'Mannina maga', which means, son of the earth, basically posing himself as a peasant!





My mother, my inspiration, her vibrant personality shown everywhere, including her dressing! Loves jewellery, loves dressing up.




Hence begins their love story..

  

 While they continue with their romantic journey, its time i continue with my everyday life. See you guys! :) 

Tissue paper roll saves the day!

As i am in the phase of recycling/ re purpose, i am looking at everything around me for crafty projects. And this time,  it was, my poor old used up empty tissue rolls! 

Tissue rolls-cut-press-paint-compose-frame. 

The frame too is recycled. I cut off the middle portion of the shoe box, painted it with neutral color, stuck all my flowers and leaves to the sides of the frame.  

The only difficult task in it was to give maximum points of contact for the flowers to the frame. The more surface area of the flowers, the more strongly it would stick on the frame.  So had to play around during composition a bit. 

Hence, the tissue roll saved an artistic frame! :P

Rolling stone gathers no mass

But rolling paper does! and how!
Yup, Another repurpose/ recycled art.
Cut-fold-roll-Done!

Oh i wish it was so easy as i said.. the journey started with hunting magazines and that too, colorful ones with lot of pictures! After sorting all out, which took me almost 5-6 hrs, folding was yet another task. Deciding on which side to fold, sorting out the colors accordingly, i thought i was almost done, only rolling was left.

That's where i got stuck. Thats when i realized how messy the project was going to be with glue all over the place. Thats when i almost decided to just chuck the whole project.



Then a thought came over. A thought which had a chance of saving and giving a new meaning to my effort for the past days of folding and sorting.
The thought of making the project glue less!
Stapling--no, sewing--oh no, how about containing it? like in a frame?--may be.
frame.. wooden frames.. wire frames.. paper frames..Tissue roll frames! Oh yeah! 

Cut the tissue rolls into thin strips, and pack in the rolled paper so tight that it doesn't even think of peeping out. There you go.

Tissue paper rolls, saved the day, saved the art! :D

By the way, tissue paper roll, saved my another project too.. will write about it soon..
Until then, Happy rolling! :D

Its recycled eh?

Hello..As i mentioned in my earlier post, i LOVE recycling!
One day, i was just browsing, and i came upon something really amazing. Yarn made out of plastic bags! I had to try it! I keep all the grocery bags usually to throw the trash out, so naturally had a LOT of grocery bags. Learnt how to make plastic yarn, also learnt that its called PLARN, and got started with it. Plarn Doilies yet again!

We had an old picture frame, which looked antique, without a backing. That's when husband and me thought of making the project 100% recycled.

Oh yeah, my husband occasionally helps me in doing some stuff, like framing and putting it on the wall. ;)

So.., for the backing, we used one of the packing box sheet, covered with another contrasting color grocery bag! and voila! Recycled art! I love how the colors got distributed and created a design.

Yarn wrapped floor lamp

My husband, really loves to buy stuff online,  i LOVE recycling. And there came one day, a parcel, a really long nice and sleek cardboard box. As soon my eyes fell on the packaging box, it was magical.. like in the movies with violins in the background, wind hustling through.. and an idea!--box-cutout-yarn-Lampshade! tadaaa...
I ran to get my bag of yarn, and started wrapping around.. oh, it took me an eternity to finish it, but, hey, it came out good right?
And here comes my favorite part- Christmas light garlands!

This one served as a colorful object in the corner during mornings, and a floor lamp during nights.
I love the whole effect of light passing through yarn, soft.
And i am happy that i was able to Recycle stuff and give a whole new definition to it.
Talking about recycling, i have done a lot of recycling stuff. I never got a chance to post about it.. will do it soon.. :)

The jute vase next to the doily inspired rocks..

As i mentioned in the previous post, here it is, the jute vase next to my Doily rocks.. havent read that post? click here  and you will know what i am talking about.. :)
I love to re-invent, re-create, the very basic things revolving in our life. Sometimes it gets so unnoticed, we forget about the importance of its existence in the first place. One of the examples for me, is jute. Since my child hood, i have seen jute being used as those huge jute bags, in which we buy a lot of rice and other pulses. Or, for just tying something, using it as fencing for our vegetable patches, etc.
But can jute could made into something beautiful? Now i know. 

 After finishing the vase, i wanted to deck it up a bit, make it look all nice, i filled up the core of it with the light garlands, so that the design looks more prominent.
Oh, I love these light garlands that you usually get during christmas time!
It just makes anything look so beautiful! Hang it on a wall, wrap around a tree, a stick, and you know for sure its gonna look really good. Like this Yarn Floor lamp i made..and yes im sure to write about it too.. :)

Doily inspired rocks

Doilies! are the first things which comes in your mind whenever you think of crochet with thread.. Since we are always in a state of improvising and being innovative, and make it fit in the modern world, this was one such attempt. But i personally feel, doilies never go out of fashion!
Had so much fun making this, hope you had fun watching it too.. ;) For scaling purpose i can say that the biggest rock is the size of my palm.

 

By the way, you can see that im experimenting with my camera lens..

 It is now happily sitting in a shadow box frame, right next to the jute vase i made, which reminds me to write about it in the next post ;)