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..

Home..Sweet Home

 Positive effect of lock-down - increased family time & bonding.. & this idea popped up..

 

Salute to the brave fighters of COVID-19

On the day, when PM Modi asked all the Indians to come out and clap to show gratitude to the brave fighters of COVID-19 i.e; doctors, medical staff & police - I was doing this and thought that this is my gift for them.

 

Miniature tulips

Got this little glass bottles from walmart in my recent US trip..Here comes my first miniature tulips :)

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 :)

The bloom shop

Here is my latest version of an earlier florist shop. It makes me feel really sad to see these miniature flower pots being exposed to dust & dirt. I've got a shadow box frame from my last visit to IKEA and thought of moving these pots inside the shadow box. The existing shop doesn't fit. So, I had to make another one out of card stock and arrange these flowers inside it. With the help of my younger son, we named this as "The bloom shop".. I'm so glad that my miniatures are safe and dust free.

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..

Mini paper quilling flower arrangement

Recently, my grand parents stayed with us for some time. My grand father's hobby is to complete word search puzzle books. He has finished three books (yeah, you read it correctly..they are books)
To highlight the words that he has found in the puzzle, he use color markers/highlighters.
I've collected all the caps of these & put in my age old miniature quilling flowers in these..

 And here is what I've finally made from these.. Guess what the base is ?? A Ferraro-rocher chocolate box cover that we recently got in my office ;)

As this is so light weight, I was experimenting it by putting on a leaf  :)

Quilling roses

Here comes another quilling flower arrangement..Couple of 3D roses; each of them took close to 100 strips and good amount of time. But, I'm happy with the outcome.. I think, I could have chosen a better color, but not much choice is left. I'm running out of stock and it is high time that I place a new order and fill my stock :)

I'm yet to decide if I should leave it as a stand alone piece 'or' it should be framed..

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..

The beauty of simplicity

It was the last day for code delivery and I was literally getting mad as the delivery attempts were failing for no fault of us..It was more like watching an Indo-pak cricket match.Will it get through successfully this time? I've shut myself in a room (in which I keep my craft stuff)..laptop on one side...books on another side (to get myself diverted)..Then, my lil monkey came and asked why I've not been doing any craft in recent past. Yes.. why am I not doing? For any craft, I need some inspiration. Out of our conversation, he wanted me to make some simple bouquet..He only picked the red & green colored strips and here is the simplest stuff I could do with his choice of colors..When I'm in this mood of doing crafts, I literally forget everything..I didn't even realize that the delivery happened and it went smoothly this time...

2015 - Summary

Just before I move to do something new in this new year, here is the stuff that I've framed up in the year gone by..So, replaced all the existing ones hanging on the walls, with this new stuff.
Something new I did this time, was to add my sign at bottom right corner of the frame..

As usual, I failed to capture a clean picture of the frames and this is the best I could shot with my smart phone :(

Oohh...Just realized that this is my 100th post....Patting back myself :)

  

 

Pretty pink flowers against a bright moon sky

I had this project in mind since one year..It was the sight of the bright November Moon amidst the coconut leaves that triggered this idea. It is my favorite month of the year coz I had my birthday and wedding anniversary in this month. Not just me, many of my family members and my dear friends were born in November and I had some sweet childhood memories of this month. Me and my sister along with my Mother and grand mother used to go to temple on auspicious karthika pournami (full moon day in November).

Back to business, last November I wanted to make them for our anniversary. But the flowers I quilled for this project were used for something else and it was down in the queue. It's  November again and yeah..this time it is our 10th wedding anniversary and I gotta do this at any cost.

                Quilling elongated petals was always a puzzle to me..Tight coils would give round and at most oval petals. One fine night, I had made few attempts and after I could understand the technique behind this, I was overwhelmed with joy and decided to use these flowers for my moon project.

And for the first time, I'm using a proper crepe paper for leaves and am glad that this was much better than any leaves that I've made so far. 

A closer shot of my paper mate..

The background was hand painted by me. It was a weekend effort and my son too made his hands dirty with water colors to paint some bright and night skies. It was a very good weekend..Me and both my kids were sitting in our guest bed room painting , painting and nothing else.

 And this is my messy room :)

Couple of other back grounds that I've tried for this project..

Paper quilling gerberas

This is my second gerbera project. Earlier, I’ve attempted to make one using A4 paper & cut them into different sized petals and later paste them as flowers, backed by a colourful butterfly. I gifted it to my college buddy, whom I met after many years. 

 I wanted to make one for myself and here it goes.

 It’s been really long since I purchased any craft material and one fine wednesday, I came across itsy-bitsy and ordered bunch of quilling strips. But lil bit disappointed to see that delivery would take a week days. It was quite a relieving week at work and reached home after a Friday pizza party @ work. To my surprise, I got the stuff on same day. What else do I need to start a week end? I made 4 flowers in the week end.

Assorted quilling daisies

I purchased quilling stuff from craftadda a while ago....left with assorted colors, in little quantity...Before I place my order, I want to finish off the left over strips for some colorful project...I came across an assorted daisy frame in fellow blogger's page and it looked so beautiful to me..I just can't wait any longer to give it a try..Here is my version of assorted daisies frame..