Enjoy the little things

                                                          

My motto for life - "Enjoy the little things".. In these busy days, in the rat race to achieve the goals, we tend to forget the little things in our life.. I loved this ever since I came across this line.. This has been the theme for this arrangement.. The cacti & pots are made from paper.. The green plants are miniature version of the snake plant & zig-zag cactus. The pots are curtain holders which I picked from walmart in my recent US trip..painted them white & kept miniature paper flowers..The shelves were made from the cardboard wrapped in a left over cloth from my dress..

Closer look..

Miniature cacti

  My neighbor has lot of cacti in her garden. I always wonder why some one puts in a lot of effort in growing something like cactus. But, she has shown me the flowers and I was surprised to see the beauty of those..those soft, bright, silky petals.. I couldn't wait much to add these to my paper garden.

Even the crate was made from paper..

Here is a pic with the original counterparts..

 And the mess I create along the way -

Quilling yellow flower bunch

The greenery and beautiful flowers in our community always inspire me to make new quilling projects. One such is the rich yellow bloom, which I think is from Golden Tree/Tallow Pui. When I go for a stroll, I keep admiring the scenic rich, bright yellow flowers which bloom in bunches against the clear blue sky.

A bit closer look...

My love for cakes

 

My 4th version of miniature bakery.. I got hooked onto box art these days.. Prepared the shelves from scratch :)

After a long search, I zeroed down on this caption, which aptly suits me

Bakery - 3.0

This is my 3rd bakery arrangement. The initial one was a simple sweet box. The second one was a card board that I made for fitting in the miniature cakes and decorated with a cake box cover. I didn't quite like the overshadowing of colors and decided to make a simple rack and here it is.

 The mess behind this -

Simple red flower branch

 Simplicity at its best !

Lavender flowers

 Reorganized an old bunch of flowers in light & dark lavender color - made with tight coils.

Tulips in rainblow colors

Well, this is my fourth Tulips quilling frame. Here are my first, second & third tulips arrangements. If I consider miniature as well, then this becomes my fifth one.
As mentioned in my previous posts, my love for Tulips started in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In my recent visit to my sister's place, we happened to visit Dallas arboretum.  Tulips were in full bloom and I was astonished to see the wide variety of Tulips.
Probably, that picture might have registered in the back of my mind and silently inspired me to pick this Tulips project in rainbow (VIBGYOR) colors.

Each flower needs 4 petals and each petal was made with 6 strips. So, a total of 96 strips need to be worked up on. This involves 7 colors => 672 strips.. It took awfully lot of time to prepare the flowers. Stemming and then covering the floral wire with crepe paper is one big task. The leaves again had to be cut from crepe paper and stemmed carefully. It's been really long since I made a paper quilling butterfly. So, I wanted to add one here. Here comes my Tulips arrangement with ~700 strips. Though it was tiresome, I liked the final outcome.

 

A closer look at the butterfly

Quilling yellow flowers

I was actually doing these yellow flowers for some other project. But, ended up here :)

In my balcony, while the sun is rising, with a hot cup of coffee, with my quilling flowers by my side..
Here goes my feelings -

https://giftsofourlife.blogspot.com/2020/06/pause-in-life.html

                  

Miniature roses

Yet again, this wooden piece was from my recent US trip. It might be clear (with this & from my previous posts) what kind of shopping I'm interested in :)

 This is how I use my laptop in the weekends :)

Forget-me-not in a pot

The world is getting shattered with corona. You open news paper or a mobile phone, it is the bad news that is pouring in..If I fail to come out of this mood, I'm sure to go into depression.  As always, quilling is my savior.
Here comes old wine in new bottle. I bought these terracotta pots from my recent trip to US and i'm longing to use them somehow..so, I took these already quilled flowers and stemmed them..added 4 leaves and placed in the pot :)

Tulips for wedding

Here comes a quilling frame, for my brother & sister-in-law on their wedding.
Happy married life Koushik & Swapna !

Quilling Miniature Bakery

                          

Hurrayyy !! My miniature bakery is finally ready.. I've made many cakes since I started quilling. Some were given away as gifts..And the ones that are left behind were poorly treated so far..I've reserved one IKEA shadow box for these little creatures..If you notice closely, I've put in my miniature teddy as well inside :)
Here is what my miniature bakery offers - Candies,  Teddy,  Cup of Coffee,Womens' day exclusive cake,  Choco Delight, Cup-cakes, Rich chocolate cream etc etc..

Here is the front view..It is very difficult to click the details with the glass on..

Quilling yellow daisies

 

I'm obsessed with yellow and as soon as I go to a craft store, I look for pure yellow paper strips and those are the first ones to get consumed in my next project. Here is one such quilling arrangement, 3 real size daisies. The leaves are not really quilled..I tried colouring them with some weird crayon colors..of course this is all about imagination and doesn't necessarily be near to reality :) 

We recently purchased OTG and my friend who already owns one, has agreed to help me in buying related baking stuff and so we ended up visiting a shop near my office and in the crockery section, I came across this pot (I think this is tea mug)...without a second thought, I purchased this as I'm sure this will serve the purpose of a pot for my quilling flowers..

Quilling jasmine pot

                             
This is something that I've made almost an year ago..but, arranged recently..The leaves were made for some other project, but got eventually ended up sitting here :(
As always, I begin with something in my mind, but ends up doing something else..Actually, this was meant to be framed, but ended up as a standing piece (after I realized that there were some empty miniature clay pots)

One thing I tried this time is the center part of the flower is not a quilled roll, but thick drop of yellow acrylic paint after trying all these options.

 

Birthday card

A simple card for my friend's daughter's birthday...God bless you Aminah !!

Quilling lavenders

Here comes my latest quilling project (well, this is a month old). I've been waiting for quilling lavender in a combination of light and dark, but I could not manage to get both these strips at a time so far. Finally, my last purchase has both these colors and this is what is made from these 2 mm strips (400 odd strips ??).

 I couldn't quickly reach to a conclusion on what the stamen should look like and in which color. I tried black, brown and finally ended up using fringed yellow strip..

Paper Quilling miniature snow man

                                                 
Here comes the month of December and what do i do, apart from enjoying a steaming cup of coffee? This time I and Kids have decided to get a Christmas tree and decorate it with DIY ornaments. We could manage to do lot of stuff with the paper and other craft accessories that we've at home..I wanted to add something made out of quilling and the first thing that came to my mind is a miniature paper snow man..so easy to make..Isn't it??

Sun flowers in a frame

Here comes the final arrangement of the sun flowers that I've quilled at least 7 months ago.. Becoming lazy these days :( ..Final arrangement is what I struggle with the most..The leaves were made out of a parrot green crepe paper and I must admit that my 5 year old younger son helped me in making the leaves. so cute of him :)
But looking at a recent project, I some how feel that I should have used a darker tint of green...Never mind, I've not glued them yet (lazy again) and may be I'll throw these leaves away if at all I could get a bit darker shade of green..

Miniature flower basket

I love miniatures, and as always I enjoy doing miniatures. Here comes one such flower basket. The basket is a quilled 3D shape on which I've pasted a swirled coil all around.

 The flowers are regular pink and yellow spiral ones. I could have used roses or something else, but my primary object here is the basket; So, didn't want to spend too much time on the flowers.