Cards ,Crafts and Kids Projects

Cascading Card Tutorial

2012-03-01T05:13:00.008-08:00

Cascading Card Tutorial

Cascading card

Cascading cards look stunning and complicated but are not that difficult to make.These special accordion folded cards have 2 interlocking panels which can spring apart and also collapse to fold flat!

Cascading card

This is a special card for my mum who loves flowers so added punchcraft and quilled flowers to the layers of my cascading card.

Cascading card

The white daisies were a gift from my blogger pal Jovita.The roses are punchcraft roses made using a 6 petal punch.The pink buds are quilled coils and the tiny roses are ribbon roses.

Cascading card

I made a 3 D decoupage posy of pansies for the front of my cascading card.

Cascading card

How to make a Cascading Card.

I made this cascading card using a Card template which was so generously shared by Penny .Penny's original template is a gem but looks scary and complicated until you break it down to little steps! So just to make things easier, sharing some step by step instructions on how I made Susie Prendergast's Cascading Card.

Materials Required to make a cascading card

Card stock : 2 pieces measuring 5.5 x 12 inches - use fairly thick sturdy card if you want to add lots of embellishments like I did.

Scoring tool- if you dont have one use a blunt knife or dry pen.

Scale

Pencil

Scissors

Make the Panels of your Cascading Card

Cascading card tutorial

Mark 3 inches down one side of the card stock as shown. Cut off the white triangle you get as shown in the cascading card template.Do this for the other piece of 5.5 x 12 inch card too to get the panels of your cascading card.

Mark the Panels

The Cascading card is just 2 accordion folded cards interlocked together by slots.To help you know where to make your slots you can mark both your panels as shown.

If you are using a scale mark the midpoint of 2 sides of your panel as shown. Measure 2 3/4 inch on the taller side and 1 1/4 inch on the shorter side.Join with a pencil line.

Cascading card tutorial

I used a score pal as shown below to help quickly find the midpoint. I marked the short side and turned it 180 degree clockwise to mark the longer side's midpoint.

Cascading card tutorial

Your Cascading card panels are mirror images and shown below is how the panels will look marked.

Cascading card template

Score your panels at 4 inch intervals[ black lines]. If using a score pal score at 4 and 8 inch mark.

Make the slots:If you use a score pal it is super easy to make your slots.Drop down score lines to meet the pencil line marked earlier. The slots will be at 2 , 6 and 10 inch marks as shown.

Cascading card tutorial

Cut out 1-2mm wide slots.Accordion fold your panels as shown. The folds are Valley- Mountain in the 1st panel and Mountain- Valley for the 2nd panel of your cascading card.

Cascading card template

Interlock the slots of your cascading card starting from the taller end.The slots fit so nicely together that no glue is required and your card will expand and collapse at will!

Cascading Card Tutorial

To allow easy movement of the accordion mechanism, I attached the 3 D paper tole flowers only to one panel on the front of my cascading card.

Cascading card

Do try making this fun interactive card .Do tell me how you like this special card made for my mom!

Linking to My Mum'scraft shop[46-shaped card],Crafty Sentiments[shaped],Cutiepie[flowers],Kalalayaa[flowers],Scrapbooksisters[spring],Cutecardthursday[spring],Deepoceanchallenge[20-spring],Pile it on[Fancyfolds],ClassyCards[flowers]

Recycling Craft- Doll Making

2012-02-21T06:44:00.001-08:00

Recycling Craft

Recycling Craft

Recycling crafts are a passion of mine but boy did I struggle for ideas recently when I had to come up with a kids recycled craft ! My 5 year old has a week long exhibition in school on recycling crafts-- sounds easy ??? Well the catch is the kids have to take the material from home and assemble it themselves in the school in the time given to them !
I shuddered at the thought of sending scissors and glue to school . What if she smeared glue all over her project or worse what if she hurt herself with the scissors ??[like many mothers I am a bit paranoid where my precious bundle is concerned!].
My daughter herself solved my problem- she invented her own recycled craft !
I saw her balancing a ball atop a broken toy part which she had inserted inside the cardboard tube of an used party popper - she had made a dancing doll!
I helped make a frock for her doll and we had a cute recycled dancing doll!
Sharing how we made this doll [To help any mums out there who might have to invent similar stuffs for their kiddos!]
These are the materials we recycled to make our recycled doll.

Recycling Craft

Gems Ball Container- Useful ball shaped one that is so good for recycling crafts.
Broken Umbrella - I have quite a few broken umbrellas at home!
Fruit cover netting - Apples and pears have these lovely net covers these days.
Broken toy part - originally a trident toy
Party popper -a used one .I wondered myself why I was crazy enough to have saved it!

I stuck the gems ball on the top of her broken trident using the glue gun [the glue gun is the best tool a mom could have!!].My little one designed the face and hair-- kids have weird color ideas and she wanted her doll to have a green face, blue hair and a purple nose! The blue hair is a pipe stem cleaner [ chenille stick].I plan to send this top part as such for her recycling craft.

Recycling Craft

I cut off the fabric from the umbrella and it left just a small hole in the top part.Taught my little one to slide it down the party popper cardboard tube to help make the skirt of her recycled craft doll.

Recycling Craft

Next she just had to slide down the fruit cover net to make the blouse of the doll.The fruit cover net is so springy that it stays snugly in place like a real blouse!Here is the dress of our recycled craft doll.

Recycling Craft

Next just insert the middle prong of the trident into the cardboard tube of the party popper and you have a doll which dances as the top part is not fixed but is free to swing to and fro!

Recycling Craft

The party popper we used has a weighted base so if you are making a similar doll with a bottle or other container weigh down the bottom as otherwise your doll will topple over when she dances.I hope you enjoyed reading about this kids recycling craft!

Recycling Craft

I have dismantled this doll and packed the parts for my little one to take to school tomorrow . As this was simple for her to make, I am also sending her a cardboard box castle to make.Will share pics of that later.Keeping my fingers crossed all goes well tomorrow at her recycling exhibition.
Do share your thoughts on this recycling craft.
Linking to

Blog post photo tips

2012-02-19T01:56:00.001-08:00

Blogger photo Tips

These Blog post Photo tips are not photography tips as I take average photos only but sharing some blogging photo tips as photos are such an important part of a blog post and help popularize your blog!

Name your photos well.

When you download photos from your camera they will have meaningless names .Before you upload/post your photos rename your photos manually or more easily using a batch rename software . This helps search engines such as Google to identify your photos and can increase your blog traffic.This is a very basic and easy to follow blogging photo tip!

Blogger Photo Tips

Re-size your Photos

When you take photos on your camera the size is very large. Before you post them on your blog you have to re-size these photos and make them smaller.

Why bother?

Most of us use free photo sharing sites such as picasa, photobucket, flikr etc. Picasa is a popular photo storage site for blogger and it has a limit on the photos based on the total size. If you kept uploading large megapixel photos- you would soon run out of your free quota on the free site!

Large photos take a long time to load on your blog page.

Re-sizing your photos too small has a tremendous downside as they loose clarity and details are compromised. I generally use approx 400x 300 pixels for photos I post medium size and 640 x 480 pixels for photos I post as original size [the large ones].

Blogger Photo Tips

You can quickly resize your blog post photos using the batch re-size function of a photo-editing freeware.

Blog post Photo Size

Whether to post the photos in small/medium/large etc is an individual preference...I like to post the lovelier photos as large or original size! Closeup shots and tutorial steps can be posted as medium which is the default blogger photo size

Blogger Photo Tips

Many a times if the photo is posted small you have to click on it to see things better.Since blog surfing isnt at a leisurely pace always , the pundits say having to go an extra step to click on a photo to view it better puts people off !

Large photos look nicer but have a down side- they take longer to load on your page ! So no consensus on this point -do what you like!!

Protect your photos

It leaves a very unsavory feeling if people may post work inspired by you and don't give credit or even worse sometimes post your photos and claim them as their work. It has happened to quite a few of my blogger pals. To decrease incidence of such heartache-

Watermark your Photos

Do watermark your photos-This helps you in 2 ways –

1) Anyone who saves your craft photo for inspiration and later creates a project based on it can more easily credit it to you.

2)The other way watermarking helps is it deters unscrupulous people from stealing your images and claiming them as their work to some extent.

Popular photo-editing freeware can easily help you to even batch watermark your photos.

Positioning it across the center or in the background makes it difficult for anyone to crop it off or erase it and is one of the best watermarking positions.I personally dont like the watermark in the center as I feel it is distracting for the viewer.

The watermark should not be so large as to dominate your photo and spoil the beauty of your creation.

Disable right click

Disabling right click is a huge deterrent to anyone saving your picture. I don’t like doing that cos I feel it is an honor that a person is saving my photos to inspire them! Just because someone saves your picture doesn’t mean they will misuse it! And if someone wants, they are many ways to still capture the image despite the disabled right click!

Blogger Photo Tips

Photo Enhancement

Most of us are casual photographers and it will help our photos tremendously if we can use some simple photo enhancing tricks! The simplest tricks are playing with the brightness and contrast of your photos using a software.
What photoediting software to use?
The "boss" is Photoshop but I didnt have the patience to master it and have played around with quite a few freeware. Now settled on 2 freeware Photoscape [ helps add lines and shapes on tutorial photos] and Fast stone image viewer[ helps me batch edit fast]. Why I like these are they are easy to learn and not too complicated to understand!A caution about auto enhance feature on photo editing software-- most of the time your photo looks odd if you use it! So better adjust the brightness, then the contrast etc one by one.

Tricky Craft photos to take

Embossing- take several shots from different angles and you might get lucky!

Shiny papers- A big pain to capture. Anyone worked out a solution do let me know!

Photos at night- A big majority of us are night bloggers and even nocturnal crafters so mastering night time photography would be quite a boon! U can use the flash or the Party/ Indoor mode of your camera. You can use a lightbox like the professionals Or you can heavily play around with your photo-editing software. However I always find it easiest and in the long run quicker to take pictures in daylight outdoors[ only drawback- have to wait for free time in the day!].

Close up shots – most digital cameras will have an option for close-up mode. Since most of us are amateur photographers it pays to use this easy option of your camera.

White craft projects/cards- very difficult to capture the beauty of white- place a dark chart paper or back ground against your project while taking the photo and the contrast just may do the trick!

Easy Craft photo tip- The easiest way to get " good " pics is to take a white chart paper outdoors , prop it behind your craft project. Snap in normal or closeup mode in natural daylight and 95 % of the time you will get a good photo!

Add Captions to your blog photos

This blog post photo tip again helps search engines find your photos.This photo shows a screen shot of a blog post editing window. Click on the photo in your blog post draft and an "Add caption" will show up.Click on it and type in a descriptive photo caption.

Blogger Photo Tips

If you feel its too much of a chore ,you can take the lazier easier way out like I do and put in the same caption for all your photos! [Just a matter of pressing "Ctrl and V" !]

The first photo of your blog post

Choose the first photo of your blog post wisely as this is the photo which shows up on the reading list of the blogger dashboard of your readers .This photo along with the blog post title will be instrumental in making your follower decide whether to visit your blog to check out your post!

So the most beautiful photo should be at the top of your post!

Not everyone will be inclined to visit if on the dashboard they see a blog hop’s blinky or a challenge Bingo table but will surely be more tempted to click on to your blog if they see your lovely creation!

Check your blog dashboard reading list and tell me if its true!

Post a photo towards the top of your blog post write up.

Sometimes no photo from your blog post shows up on the reading list of the dashboard- this happens if you post the photo quite lower down. As an example I have taken a screen shot of my reading list which shows a blog post by my dear friend Patti.. no photo ...

Blogger Photo Tips

Do I click ??? Yes I do since she is my friend and I know how creative she is .I dropped by her blog and was greeted with a stunning project.. the gorgeous photo hadn't shown up on my reading list as she had posted it lower down her blog post and not at the top. Do drop by Patti's blog and see her awesome card!

So if its a friends blog you will go over no matter whether the heading is catchy or whether a photo is there or not but not all your followers will do that-- to tempt the casual reader to drop over to your blog ,you need a photo to show up on their reading list!

For bloggers who use google reader to track the blogs they follow, this whole issue doesn't arise at all!

Dont make a blog post with only photos

We all love photos but dont be tempted to make a blog post with only photos. This is a mistake many budding bloggers make including me. Many of my early posts are photo only posts! Either I didnt have the time to write about the project or was hesitant or I didnt know what to write!

Why should you not post a photo only blog post?

1.Google search engines cant see the photos- they need a word description- so put in at least captions!

2.Most of your readers would like to know something about your photos- So do pen down a few descriptive words as it keeps the post interesting and more interactive.

Post multiple photos

If you are blogging about a project you are particularly proud of -- do take multiple photos from different angles and some closeup shots. It draws your readers attention to the different facets of your project and is visually more satisfying!

Preview Preview Preview

This is the last blogging photo tip --- always preview your blog post before you publish it!

You will realize yourself which photo needs to be published in a larger size , which photos need tweaking and you may even decide not to post a blurry picture altogether!

Dear friends I am no photography expert or a computer wiz- these tips are what I have managed to imbibe in this crafting blogging journey and sharing in the hope it is of some help to my bloggy buddies!

Do add your experience, tips and suggestions so that we can all learn from our experiences.

Pop Up card Making Tip

2012-02-17T06:12:00.002-08:00

Pop Up card Making

Pop Up card Santa

Pop Up card making is fun and not that complicated once you master a few tricks.Sharing a small tip or trick to make a pop up card more gorgeous !
This Santa Claus Card is a recycled card. The Santa on the front of the card has been pieced together from paper scraps ,felt and tissue paper!

Pop Up card Santa

I made Santa Claus pop up from a chimney on the inside of the Pop Up Card.

Pop Up card Santa

I recycled a Santa Claus image to create my pop up card.

Pop Up card Santa

The simplest way to make an image pop up in a vertical V fashion is by folding it in half and folding the lower part to form glue tabs.In the Santa Claus image shown ,the black dotted line would be mountain folded and the white dotted lines mountain or valley folded depending on whether you want the lower parts which will also form glue tabs hidden or visible

Pop Up card Making

The problem with this simple pop up card construction is it would make the central fold line run through Santa's face and poor Santa would look a bit cramped!

I am sharing a simple tip to make Santa or any other similar image look more gorgeous in your pop up card

Pop Up card Santa

Decide on your central fold line [shown as a black dotted line] but dont crease it just yet.

Use a craft knife or scissors to cut along one side of the face to reach the central fold line [shown by the dotted white line]

If you want you can also avoid the central crease in another part of the image [as I have done here with Santa's belt]by using the craft knife to cut around to meet the central fold -- [Dotted white line]

Now score and mountain fold your central fold [ black dotted line], valley fold the lower part and glue the lower part .You have a fun Santa Pop Up card!

Pop Up card Tutorial

You can adapt this trick to make any pop up card more special! Do tell me how you like this fun card.
Linking to ,Unstampabelles[recycling]

Paper flowers on Handmade Photoframe

2012-02-01T07:01:00.002-08:00

Handmade Photoframe with Paper Flowers

Handmade Photoframe

I made a handmade photoframe by recycling a cardboard piece from a box.I love making paper flowers- they are so easy to make and add so much beauty to your projects. Here is the link to how to make a DIY Handmade Photoframe.

Handmade Photoframe

I love to transform mundane objects and if it involves recycling it makes it all the more exciting! This photo shows the cardboard and papers I used to make the photoframe and paper flowers.
Closeup of my quilled butterfly inspired my my blogger pal Mihaela. The white daisies are punchcraft paper flowers.

Paper Flowers

I used punched balloon shaped petals to make the large pink paper flowers on the cardboard photoframe.

Handmade Photoframe

All the paper flowers in this photoframe are easy to make but I always feel that if you see the steps to make something,making it gets even more simple.So sharing some simple steps and tips to make the paper flower.
This Paper flower can be made with the circle,oval ,tear drop or balloon shape. I used the balloon punch to make these punchcraft paper flowers.

Paper Flower Tutorial

Lightly emboss a circle,sun ,small flower or even a scrap of paper to form a cup shaped base for your paper flower.

Paper Flower Tutorial

Pinch your petal between your thumb and index finger

Paper Flower Tutorial

You need just 5-6 petals to make your paper flower.

Paper Flower Tutorial

You can apply glue to the folded tip of your petal or onto the cupped base as I did here on my paper flower.

Paper Flower Tutorial

Overlap subsequent petals and position the petals as you desire.I found using a thin tipped object like my tweezers tip so much faster than using fingers [I have fat finger tips!!]

Paper Flower Tutorial

Here is the finished paper flower.

Paper Flower Tutorial

The smaller pink paper flower is made from circles.Here is the tutorial link : how to make Circle Paper flowers.

Handmade Photoframe

I stuck some quilled leaf shapes to make a large leaf for my paper daisy.Here is the link to :how I made the quilled leaf shape.Added some Pie Lane glitter balls to glamorize the white punched flower.

Handmade Photoframe

I recycled some cord and an old button by threading the gold cord through the button and attaching it to my photoframe.

Handmade Photoframe

This Photoframe is going to hold a special family photo[ Its too lovey dovey to post on the net !!] and is my Valentine gift for my hubby who loves recycling,quilling and punchcraft flowers.[If he had the time to craft he would be the best crafter around !!] Linking to Crafty JC
Edited: This DIY Photoframe was featured on Inspire me Fridays

Quilled Box and Quilled Card

2012-01-30T10:44:00.000-08:00

Quilled Recycled Box

Quilled Box

Quilling is a paper-craft which can be as elaborate or as simple as you want-- the result is always rewarding!
This was the hideous looking notepad holder box I recycled .

Recycled Craft

I wrapped the box in some pearlised paper and added some punched leaves and quilling .

Quilled Box

I always feel pearls can glamorize even mundane creations!I used 4 types of pearl beads on this quilled box.

Quilled Box

Added some pink lace to augment the textures of the quilling box.

Quilled Box

I especially like the way the top folds into place on a slot on the box.

Quilled Box

Linking the Quilled Box to Craftycardmakers[beads]
The card is not a matching card to the quilled box but a simple quilled card I am entering for CAS at ICR. I find CAS a difficult concept indeed and salute all those ladies out there who churn up such beautiful CAS creations.

Quilled Card

Since many of my blogger pals have expressed an interest to learn quilling - sharing the link of my quilling guru Suganthi!Suganthi has the most awesome picture tutorials to learn quilling !If videos are your preferred learning media my blogger pal Pritesh has some awesome video tutorials on quilling
Do let me know how you liked these simple crafts.
Edited: My quilled box became top 5 at Crafty Cardmakers

Wishing Well Instructions and Blends Blog Hop

2012-01-22T05:03:00.000-08:00

Wishing Well

Wishing well

My dear blogger friend Jessica is celebrating her blogversary with a blog hop. Its the first hop I am part of and so pretty nervous about everything!!This 3D Papercraft wishing well is inspired by a fantastic wishing well Jessica had made for her sisters wedding .
I was undecided whether to leave the wishing well as it was or to make it into a flower-vase for punchcraft flowers.

Punchcraft Flowers

I used thick 3 D reflective paper and corrugated paper to make this wishing well

Wishing well

How to make a 3 d Papercraft wishing well

Make the cylindrical body of the wishing well :Score a thick sheet of paper as shown. Snip off small triangles on this flap.Roll this strip of card and stick to make the cylindrical body of the wishing well

Wishing Well

Fold over the wedges of the flap as shown.Trace the outline on card and cut out the circle base for your wishing well.Stick the circle base to the cylindrical body using glue and sticky tape[using sticky tape helps save time].

Wishing Well

Make pillars of your wishing well

3 D Papercraft Wishing Well

Roll paper around a pencil [serves as a mold only] and stick with sticky tape or glue.You can then remove your pencil .Cut off excess length of your paper roll .Line with pretty paper and stick to the base of your wishing well.Similar paper rolls are used to make the central cross bar and handle of the wishing well

Make the roof of your wishing well

Wishing Well

Fold thick cardstock in half and lay over your wishing well as shown to decide how large you want the roof to be.

Make supports for the roof of your wishing well
The roof support is triangular in shape and the sloping sides measure an inch less than the roof slope.
Score 0.5inch down the card stock,turn 90 degrees and score again at 0.5 inch as shown. Mark equal distances[mine was 9.5cm] on the 2 scored lines and join to get the triangular support of the roof of your wishing well.

Wishing Well

This is the diagrammatic representation of the triangular roof support of the wishing well.

Wishing well

Cut off excess card stock.Cut 0.5 inch of one of the scored lines at the apex of the triangular support as indicated. Fold on the scored lines. Stick the flap at the apex and your triangular roof support is ready.Stick the supports on either side of the roof as shown.

Wishing Well

Stick the paper roll pillars on the inside of the roof supports as shown.Ignore the different color paper roll on the top as its just part of my corrective measure for having misjudged the height of my wishing well!

Wishing well

This photo shows the roof of the wishing well.

Wishing well

Stick paper rolls covered with pretty paper between the pillars to make a cross bar. [The shiny paper on the pillars and roof support are from Jovita] I also stuck 2 paper rolls in a right angle to make the handle of the wishing well.

Wishing well

The tiny bucket is just a cone made from paper and a golden chenille stem threaded through holes punched on the rim.
I used shimmery white paper to make some punchcraft roses.

Punchcraft Flowers

Making the wishing well hardly took time but I spent all week making the punchcraft flowers!

Punchcraft Flowers

I hope you like my version of Jessica's wishing well.

Please do hop along with me in my first blog hop to celebrate my BLEND [meaning Blogger Friend] Jessica's Blogversary

Here is the Blends blog hop line up.

Jessica -Jessica's Craft Shaque
Candace -Scrappin' 2 Lil Princesses
Luisa -Creative Designs by Luisa
Cindy -Tools of a Cropping Queen
Lisa - A Mermaid's Crafts
Beckie - Just B Creative Crazy
Julie - A Little Bit of Bling
Carri - Double Click Connections AKA Abusybee
Sonia - Cards, Crafts, and Kids Projects
Cindy - cre8ivecindy
Robin - Cricut Scrapper
Nataliya -Love Crafts Forever
Stephanie -Whimsical Designs

If you are on Pinterest you can "Pin" this tutorial by clicking this button : Pin It

Wonderful BLENDS [meaning Blogger Friends]

2012-01-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

BLENDS means Blogger Friends. I have been extremely lucky to have so many BLENDS ! I am borrowing this wonderful term from my dearest BLEND Jessica who is having a grand blogversary celebration with lots and lots of prizes to win! I am part of her blogversary blog hop which is tomorrow Jan 22nd.

In this BLENDS post I am sharing some of the amazing things my Blends have sent me recently. It never ceases to amaze me how generous blogger pals are with their time, words and gifts!
I became friends with Lisa Jane through MIM and just for fun participated in her Blog Candy-- Most people give away a prize to one or two winners-- Lisa sent gifts to all her friends who participated!! How utterly crazy and sweet is that!

Gifts from Lisa

One day imagine my utter amazement when I opened a parcel and saw a Fiskars border punch from Priya Sivaraj -- I thought she must be really crazy!!! Thank You Priya you are one crazily generous BLEND!

Gift from Priya Sivaraj

I got this beautiful elegant card from Lucy-- it was such a pleasant surprise..Thank You Lucy.

Gift from Lucy

All the goodies below are from Romina who never ceases to amaze me with her generosity...the card in white is a stunner!!

Gifts from Romina

This gorgeous card and super cute bookmark are from a BLEND who has a very special place in my heart because she flatters me so much!! And literally links to me in most of her blog posts!Thank You so much Bhawana you are a darling!

Gifts from Bhawana

Blogger pals are generous in so many other ways too.

I want to thank Jani of http://papercompulsions.blogspot.com/ where she shares so many gorgeous flower tutorials. Jani has helped me on so many occasions.. she has mailed me templates of her 3 D papercraft projects, and helped me with software to make templates..Thank You so much Jani.

Deepthi is an extremely multi-talented crafter who quills paints and dabbles in so many crafts and I was so touched when she included this blog in her 2011 inspirational blogs list.. I am so honored Thank You Deepthi.

Little things touch our hearts too.. My BLEND Pritesh makes awesome quilling tutorials but I think I must have cribbed about videos [I cant sit through a You tube video!] and can you imagine she posted photos of her quilling box tutorial just for me!! How crazily sweet is that!

Also I want to thank Kalindi for being so sweet and thoughtful! Kalindi had a blog candy contest and my little one 's snowman couple won.Kalindi had already a big list of candy and I was so touched when Kalindi wrote to me asking what my 5 year old liked as she wanted to make my daughters win special !! I was so touched I could cry--Love you Kalindi

When I started blogging I never imagined I would interact with and make so many Blogger Friends [BLENDs]!Thank You so much dear friends Thank You so much for always dropping by and taking the time to leave so many encouraging and sweet words .

Dont forget to join Jessica's BLENDs blog hop tomorrow

Folding Box Tutorial - Quilled Box

2012-01-12T01:24:00.000-08:00

Box Tutorial

Folding Box

I first saw the folding box in a curio shop and was enchanted.Instead of buying it I thought I would try to make it!! I searched online for instructions but couldnt get anything so experimented and found it was actually not too hard to make your own folding box!

Fold it up ,put on the lid and this is how your folding box will look.

Folding Box

Tried the beehive technique of quilling [Thank You Pritesh] on the lid of my folding box.

Folding Box

Closeup of the quilling on the lid of the folding box.

Folding Box

I added quilled "buttons" along the sides of my folding box.

Folding Box

Materials required to make the folding box

Boxes- 2- 5.Make or Recycle. [If making boxes,square ones are easier]. Here I recycled 4 sweets boxes.

Glue- white glue or a glue gun

Scale

Scoring tool-Use a blunt knife/pen tip or a proper scoring tool.

Craft Knife/Scissors

Cardboard-to make the spine of the folding box-the cardboard should be sturdy but not too thick and you should be able to fold it with ease to allow easy opening and closing of your folding box.

Folding Box

Cardboard spine to make the cover of the folding box

Width of the cardboard spine will be as long as sides of your box [Side A + Side B + Side A + Side B ] + a few centimeters extra to allow for easy folding + closing flap of the box

Height of the cardboard spine will be a few centimeters more than the height of each individual box as shown in the diagram.

Folding Box

Score the cardboard spine 4 times as shown to get the 4 panels and flap of your folding box.Gently fold the scored cardboard into the shape of your folding box.

Folding Box

Line the cardboard spine with pretty paper. Do not glue the paper tightly so that there is enough leeway to open and close the folding box.

Glue the boxes starting from below .I used white glue to glue side A [short side] to the first panel of the folding box.

Folding Box

Glue side B[long side] of 2nd box a few millimeters above the first one on the second panel.

Folding Box

Allow enough time for the glue to dry or use a glue gun to stick side A of the 3rd box to the 3rd panel of the folding box.

Folding Box

Finally stick side B of the 4th box on the last panel of your folding box.

Make the lid of your folding box

Folding Box

I scored thick card stock 1.5 inches [this will be the the height of your lid] from one edge. Turn the card 90 degrees and score by the same 1.5 inch again.[The 2 red dotted lines].

Your next score line will be a millimeter wider than one side of your folding box.

Folding Box

You can measure it out or place the folding box on your card stock from one of your scored lines and score again as shown above. Turn the card and box 90 degree and score again .[This is the cheaters way out to avoid measuring with a scale!].The diagram shows the score lines for your folding box lid.

Folding Box Lid

Measure 1.5 inches[or whatever you decided the lid height to be] from the last 2 scored lines and score or mark.

The area shaded in pink is the excess card stock which you cut off to get your folding box lid.

Folding Box Lid

Make cuts as shown on the scored card stock for the box lid.

Folding Box lid

Fold in the flaps as shown and glue to make your folding box lid.
I lined the lid with the same matching paper as the folding box.

Make a Closing Mechanism- On the closing flap,you can insert an eyelet and ribbon or use a metallic brad and a concealed magnet like I did here

Folding Box

Added some quilling , plastic flowers ,pearls and a stocking butterfly to embellish my folding box.

Folding Box

The folding box is quite easy to make and has such a "WOW" factor when you gift it to someone and they open the lid and the boxes swing out!

I hope this tutorial will be useful to you. Do leave me your comments.
If you are on Pinterest you can "Pin" this tutorial by clicking this button : Pin It

Punchcraft and Quilling Flowers

2012-01-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

Punchcraft and Quilling Flowers

Punchcraft and Quilling

I love quilling but dont get as much time for it as I would like!The only way I can make a quilling creation is by quilling bits and pieces over sometimes months and when I have accumulated enough I throw in what all I have to make my quilling project !

And since I often dont conceptualize a quilled project while I quill I have all sorts of quilled shapes such as eccentric coils, tight coils,bell flowers and my favorite looped quilling in this Quilled project.

Quilled flowers

And as always sharing a recycling tip: Keep an eye out for beautiful borders in magazines - you can cut them out and preserve to use in crafting.I used some pretty magazine borders to make these fringed flowers.

Fringed flowers

A 6 petal flower punch was used to make these punchcraft roses.

Punchcraft roses

The pink rolled roses are made from circles of felt cut in a spiral and rolled.In punch craft, roses are my favorite paper flowers I used this Paper Rose tutorial to make this yellow punchcraft flower.

Punchcraft flowers

Here is the side view to show the dimensional nature of the Paper flower vase.I got some gorgeous shiny 3 D reflective paper [from blogger pal Jovi's shop] and used it to make this 3 dimensional Paper flower vase.

Paper Flower Vase

I designed the " Home Sweet Home " in Microsoft office. Since this is a New Year/ New House gift I plan to frame it.I haven't yet decided whether I should keep the "Home Sweet Home" within the blue or frame it as an outer border for the quilling work.

Quilled Flowers

The New Year Project is for all my blogger pals who are my constant source of inspiration and support.Wishing all my blogger pals a Happy and Creative New Year.

Do leave me your comments[Yeah I love comments and thrive on them!!]

Linking to IncyWincy,Unstampabelles,
Edited: This project won Top 3 at Incy Wincy and was featured on Unstampabelles and also won the Design team favorite once again at Unstampabelles

Sleigh Shaped Box- Recycled Craft

2011-12-31T03:22:00.001-08:00

Sleigh Shaped Box

Sleigh Shaped Box

Shaped Boxes are fascinating ! In this project I recycled a cardboard box to make a sleigh shaped gift box.I cut the cardboard box free hand using a Xacto knife and lined it with locally available glitter paper.

Sleigh Shaped Box

I used a sleigh image [from Navneet publishers paper models]and decorated the sleigh with small plastic flowers,red pearl string and Christmas bell ornaments.

Sledge Shaped Box

I twisted together a silver and red chenille stem to make a collar for Rudolf the reindeer [from Navneet publishers again].I looped a red pearl garland on the antlers and gave him a red rhinestone nose!We also used a silver chenille stem[pipe cleaner] to attach the reindeer to the sleigh box

Sledge Shaped Box

We added tiny gift boxes filled with sweets and small trinkets in the sleigh box.

Sledge Shaped Box

Here is our Sleigh shaped box which can be gifted to someone special or just adorn your house!

Sleigh Shaped Box

This post is late for a Christmas project but I just got back to blog land from a short holiday and didn't want to leave it till next Christmas!

Easy Paper Decorations Instructions

2011-12-29T22:47:00.000-08:00

Paper decorations

Paper decorations

Paper decorations are so easily available in shops nowadays that you can just go out and buy some in a jiffy-- but its so much more fun and rewarding to make them at home! These DIY Paper decorations will be unique and easy on the pocket [Ha Ha but not necessarily economic!].Sharing some simple homemade Paper decorations.

Paper decoration

This Paper decoration is a simple idea and I even debated whether to share it ! The only uniqueness about it is the recycled bit !If you are a hoarder like me and cant bring yourself to throwaways those broken bits of jewelry here is a way to show them off as your Party Decoration!
How to make Easy Paper Party Decorations

Paper decoration

Materials required to make your Paper Party decoration

1.Paper- I used some gorgeous shiny paper I had been hoarding for some time! You can use thin or thick paper.

2.String or ribbon- I used transparent twine

3.Embellishments- Broken jewelry or whatever you fancy!

Cut your paper into shapes such as circles or ovals or bell shapes- I used 5-6 circles for each Paper ornament.

Paper Ornament

Fold each circle into half. If you are using thick paper score really well.Start building by sticking folded circles together to make your paper ornament.

Paper Ornament tutorial

If you are using thick paper like I did and dont have a lot of patience to hold the paper pieces together till they stick you can use binder clips like I did here-- "Impatience is the mother of intelligence"!!

Paper decoration tutorial

You can thread your broken jewelry bits on a thread or twine and sandwich it between the final layers of your paper ornament .

Paper decoration

I used broken earring parts and broken necklace bits for my paper decorations.

Paper decoration instructions

To make it look like a Christmas tree bauble I rolled a strip of glittery paper into a cylinder and stuck it on top of the paper ornament.

Paper ornament

Here is the handmade Paper Ornament on our Christmas tree.The Paper is a holographic paper and shines and shimmers so beautifully!Do tell me how you like this simple recycling idea.

Here are some more Christmas tree Ornament ideas:

Shell Craft Angels

Shell Craft bird

Spoon craft tutorial

Bangle Butterflies tutorial

Here is the link to an easy but spectacular Paper Flower Star Decoration tutorial

Bottle Cap Crafts - Snowman Couple

2011-12-23T05:41:00.001-08:00

Bottle Cap Snowman Craft

Snowman Couple

Bottle caps are fun objects for kids to play with. Sharing a fun bottle cap craft idea.

These large bottle caps are from medication bottles- I am sure we have all had some at home at some point of time and thrown them away! Well next time do recycle the plastic and make them into something fun!

Bottle cap crafts

My daughter designed this snowman couple!My 5 year old is a perfectionist and "suggestions" from her mom aren't always accepted! She took ages to get the perfect design on her bottle cap snowman couple!

Bottle Cap Snowman

Here are our snowman couple on our Christmas tree- my little one wanted them to be together[Very romantic!!].Here are our bottle cap snowman couple all dressed up to go on a romantic date!

Linking our snowman couple to blogger pal Kalindi's Blogversary challenge on the theme Unconditional Love [dont know if snowman romance qualifies!!]
Edited: This snowman couple was voted first in the Unconditional Love Challenge!

Side Step Card Christmas

2011-12-22T05:05:00.000-08:00

Side Step Card-Christmas Scene

Side Step Card

Side step cards are ideal to create a scenic card. I wanted to make a quick Christmas card for my daughter's friend and so used stickers and lots of glitter to glamorize an otherwise simple card.
Well rather than glamorizing it with glitter I think I made a bit of a mess![Well my daughter forgave me!--as she is only 5years!!]
Really admire my blogger pals who can really jazz up a card with glitter.[If you want to see how glitter should really be used check out my blogger friend Tejals blog-- she is the Queen of Glitter!!]
I used locally available glitter paper to make the Paper folding Christmas tree.

Paperfolding Christmas tree

The tiny golden balls on the Christmas tree are "bindhis" [Indian women adorn their foreheads with these!]. The violet "Pie lane"flowers are a gift from blogger pal Snehal . I love making these Paper folded Christmas trees and even my 5 year old had a go at making them!

Here is the link to the Paper folding Christmas tree tutorial.

Here are links to some varieties of Side step cards

Side step Card with Pop up card Tutorial

Side step Card with Interactive Slider Tutorial

Linking to Pie Lane[Used Pie Lane flowers].
Wishing all my blogger pals a Merry Christmas.

Homemade Santa Toy and Santa Box Instructions

2011-12-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

Santa Box Toy

Homemade Santa Box Toy

This Santa Box Toy is a homemade invention ! Its a wobbly rolly-polly box cum toy as there is a ball under the conical Santa which holds sweets or little trinkets and since the base is a ball give Santa a shove and he wobbles away to glory!
Our Santa toy is super easy to make and would make a fun gift for children [and maybe an adult-my mother who has very elegant tastes surprisingly found this cute!][
Things you need to make the Santa Toy cum Box

Ball or Plastic Hollow Ball Container [ I used a gems ball]-You can use an unopened one or Use an empty one and add some sweets inside to give weight.
Card stock
Embellishments- whatever you fancy.We used cotton,glitter,rhinestones , googly eyes and a white pom pom.

Make Santa's Body:Cut a semicircle from red card stock and staple it in a cone shape. Our Santa is big fatty according to my daughter-- you can make yours thinner and more shapely perhaps!
Make Santa's belt:Stick a strip of brown or black card stock across the middle for his belt. We added yellow moonstone paper for a golden buckle.
Make Santa's face:Cut Santa's face from pink paper and draw his face or use googly eyes like we did. My daughter chose a red nose like Rudolf the reindeer for our Santa Box Toy!

Homemade Santa Box Toy

We glued on cotton for the beard and hair . And added a white pompom at the top of the cone for Santa's hat.
The shiny white flowers are from a local fancy store...actually meant to used on cloth-- but end up on my cards and paper projects as I dont stitch much!
Your Santa is ready.
You can use Santa as such for kiddies to play or make a more fun toy by sticking a ball under him.
Apply white glue to your ball and stick it under the Santa.

Homemade Santa Box Toy

You can fill your ball container with sweets or small toys as a gift.The photo shows how the ball is fitted below the homemade Santa toy.

Homemade Santa Box Toy

Your Santa toy will roll and wobble around!
Santa Box
We also stuck Santa on a more conventional square shaped box-- this time my daughter wanted a "thinner Santa".
I made a 6x6 inch box and decorated it with locally bought flowers [We have no shortage of these inexpensive flowers in our Indian shops and they are not meant for papercrafting but for use on dresses--I guess there may be an awful number of seamstresses in every nook and corner of "fashionable" India!].The tiny green leaves are drawn using glitter glue.

Homemade Santa Box Toy

This Santa has a Pink nose-- do little girls get enough of pink?!!The rather unusual looking beard is from an unusual material- it is a raveled pajama trouser thread ![Ha Ha I save the most crazy stuff!].His rather crooked looking mouth is courtesy my unsteady hand with glitter glue!

Homemade Santa Box Toy

You can also thread through your Santa and use him as a Christmas tree ornament!
This is a fun an easy craft to do with kids-- if you are working with young ones like my five year old pre-cut the pieces ,give them whatever embellishments you can spare and let their imaginations flow!

Linking our Santa Box Ideas to Kalalayaa,
If you are on Pinterest you can "Pin" this tutorial by clicking this button : Pin It

Do tell me how you liked our simple Santa Box Toy .

Quilled and Punchcraft DIY Photoframe

2011-12-15T09:34:00.000-08:00

Homemade photo frame

Sharing a homemade photo frame made from recycled cardboard. In keeping with the season I decorated the photoframe in the typical Christmas colors of red and green with a background of white.

Punchcraft Flowers

The large rose was made from a 5 petal punch using this tutorial.Punchcraft Flower Tutorial

Punchcraft Flowers

The smaller roses are also punchcraft flowers made using a 6 petal flower punch.
Tip- to add additional dimension I angled the flowers and leaves while sticking them to the corrugated card base.You can use normal white glue but it takes ages to dry and using a glue gun here makes it easy and fast.

Punchcraft Flowers

I quilled various kinds of leaves for my punchcraft roses.The quilling in this project is entirely hand looped!Somehow I seem to enjoy hand looping rather than using quilling tools!

Quilled Leaves

Photoframes such as these are easy to make ,make lovely gifts and are ideal to recycle those cardboard pieces we all have at home.Here is the link to how to make this easy DIY photoframe : Homemade Photoframe Instructions

Christmas Gifts Pop Up Card Instructions

2011-12-08T05:33:00.000-08:00

Christmas Pop up Card

This is a Christmas Pop up card is a Z fold card with Christmas presents as the pop up element.As part of my Guest DT project for For Fun challenges theme "Christmas Sparkle" I made this traditional glittery Christmas Pop Up Card .

Christmas Pop Up card

I cut out the Santa by hand and Paper pieced him [He was part of last year's unfinished Christmas projects!!]Added glitter and thermocol balls for the nose and cap.The green flowers [from Pie Lane] are a gift from blogger pal Snehal.

Santa Claus Pop Up Card

My Z fold card looked somewhat empty on the inside[ I always feel that!] so I added pop up Christmas presents to the pop up card.

Gift Box Pop Up card Tutorial

I had fun with thermocol balls.Here I used glitter glue and a red thermocol ball to beautify the Gift box puffy sticker.

Gift Box Pop Up Card

I incorporated a bit of nature into this pop up card.These gorgeous red berries are called "manjadi kuru" in my language-- they fall to the ground from trees and my daughter loves to collect them.These seeds are in fact even edible!I hand-cut the holly leaves and added green glitter.The Candy Cane is a sticker bought locally.

Nature Crafts Card

I made a glittery butterfly mini card .This hand cut butterfly was traced around my daughter's pencil sharpener[ you can find craft inspiration anywhere!]

Butterfly Card

How to make a Gift Box Pop up card

The Gift box is an easy pop up card mechanism which you can use as a birthday card ,Christmas card etc.You can change the boxes into cakes,flower pots -- lots of ideas!

You need 3-4 strips of thin card of decreasing lengths.

My card strips are 1.5 inch wide and lengths are 3,3.5 and 4 inches.

Gift Box Pop Up card Tutorial

Score each card strip 0.5 inches from either end and in the middle. Mountain fold at each score line.

Apply glue to the tabs at the end of the longest card strip[ the 0.5 inch segments]

Fold up the tabbed ends behind the card strip .

Place the folded card strip flat and stick to your card base aligning the center folds of both your card base and card strip.Fold and open to see your positioning is spot on.

Christmas Pop Up card Instructions

Stick the next smaller strip within the first card strip in the same fashion.[You can stick it above also- I liked sticking it within the longer strip.]

Tips :Dont apply too much glue and once you have confirmed your positioning is correct and your Pop up mechanism works give enough time for the glue to stick.

Gift Box Pop Up Card

I love making fun cheerful pop up cards maybe because my biggest critic and admirer is my 5 year old daughter and most of the cards we make are for her friends or teachers!

Do leave me your comments.
Linking to MIM, Pie Lane
If you are on Pinterest you can "Pin " this tutorial by clicking this button : Pin It

Glass Painting Peacock

2011-12-02T08:16:00.000-08:00

Glass Painting Peacock

This glass painting has a special place in my heart and in our house .Years back, as a newly married couple we lived in a rented house with a huge showcase in the front room.We couldn't afford to spend on "home decor" and I embarked on the very economic craft of glass painting to spruce up my house!

Glass Painting Peacock Design

The peacocks were inspired by a glass painting on the net-- I cant seem to find the creator to credit them.

Glass Painting Peacock Pattern

The glass painting flowers are quite bright and colorful....perhaps reflecting my state of mind at the time[Ha Ha]

Glass Painting Peacock

Black glass out-liner is freely available but for this glass painting I used different colored out-liners such as green,gold and silver.

Glass Painting Peacock Design

Here is the closeup of the glass painted peacocks.

Glass Painting Peacock

Glass painting is a very economic and fairly "quick result" hobby. For anyone who has not tried it I urge you to try as its so soothing on the soul! And yeah you can make pretty sober paintings too unlike my "all the colors I have" type of glass painting!

Easy Paper Christmas Tree Tutorial

2011-11-30T01:20:00.000-08:00

Christmas Pop Up card

This Pop up Christmas card is part of my Guest DT post for For Fun challenges.

My coloring skills are atrocious-I find I neither have the patience nor the skill to tackle coloring! I can spend hours designing an interactive pop up card but pull my hair in despair when I have to color!

[My brain didn't function at all for the coloring and I had to take help from my 5 year old to choose color schemes!]So to compensate for poor coloring of the sponsor Digital image [from Michelle Perkett Studios] ,I am again bombarding my readers with yet another pop up card!
In this pop up card mechanism the fairy rises up from the pedestal as you can see here from the top view of the Christmas pop up card.

Christmas Pop Up card

I made a pop up standing card by slightly tweaking the tutorial by Dawn . I wanted a scene for the fairy so I stuck it on a folded A 4 card and created a Christmas scene with Christmas trees.

Christmas Pop Up card

Added some punchcraft flowers I had made and some doilies[a gift from bloggerpal Sudha ] pus thermocol balls.
I had quite a few requests on instructions to make the Origami tree I used in the house pop up card so sharing a mini tutorial
How to make a flat folding 3 Dimensional Paper Christmas tree

Materials Required
Colored Paper- Use thin paper so that it is easy to fold.Cut 3-4 squares which can be of same size of different sizes.[Mine vary from 1.5 inch to 2.5 inch]
Glue-white glue
Embellishments/Glitter-Optional

Paper Christmas tree

Fold the square of paper diagonally as shown above.Fold corner to corner.Open and fold the other corner to get the square as shown above.

Paper Christmas tree tutorial

Hold in the middle of your creased square as shown and bring towards the center.

Paper Christmas tree

This will give you a triangular shape as shown below.It is ok if it is not perfect as you can always snip off unsightly edges at the end.

Origami Christmas tree

Bring one corner of the upper triangular flap towards the center as shown.

Paper folding Christmas tree

Fold the other corner towards the center too to get your tree part as shown below.

Tea bag folding tutorial

Stick 3-4 such parts into each other and you have your quick and easy Paper Christmas tree.

Paper Christmas Tree Tutorial

You can make quick cards with your Paper Christmas tree or add a string and hang as a Christmas decoration.

Christmas Pop Up card

Interactive Slider Sidestep Card Instructions

2011-11-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

Slider Card

Interactive Cards are fun to make and receive.They are fairly simple to make too!Here is Santa Claus sliding across the card.

Interactive Slider Card

I added a slider mechanism to a side step card to make Santa slide across a Christmas themed landscape.

Interactive Slider Card

I handcut a snowman and a house for my Christmas theme.Since I love a bit of texture layered corrugated paper for the chimney and the door of the house.The snowman's hat is also cut from a scrap of corrugated paper.

Slider Card

Here is the template of the house I made.

House Template

The berries and holly are homemade embellishments from lightweight play-dough [Amos company] to which I added a bit of glitter!I also added glitter to all the punched snowflakes.

Slider Card

Interactive Slider Sidestep Card Instructions
I made the side step card following the instructions here

Cut a slot on any one of the side steps of a Side step Card as shown. You need to use a craft knife to cut a slot as long as you like and wide enough to hold your slider mechanism.

Slider Card

Decide on the position of you sliding image.

Take a small piece of double sided foam tape [should be big enough to get a good adhesion but not too big as to hinder your sliding movement on the slot]

Stick your double sided foam tape to the back of your sliding image and place it on the slot of your side step card.Stick a piece of card stock on the other side and your slider is ready!

More Pictures of this mechanism can be found here : Spinning Slider Card Tutorial

You can use a Coin instead of the card on the back of your slider. If you are using a coin Santa will slide back and forth on tilting your card due to the coin sliding. I somehow dont like using a "Penny" slider as it adds so much unnecessary weight to a card and your adhesive has to be really strong too if you are using a coin.
Here is a link to an awesome slider card tutorial by my blogger pal Lisa:Lisa's Side step Slider

Interactive Slider Card

Interactive cards are very popular with kids and they have so much fun playing with the sliding mechanism!
Do tell me how you like this simple idea.

Whales School Project -Collage and Neverending card

2011-11-25T20:46:00.001-08:00

Origami whales

My daughter has the theme "Whales" in school. So we have been doing a lot of " whale" related activities.She learnt on her own how to draw a whale and then wanted to make a 3D collage to take to school.

Her collage is fairly simple as conquering the origami whale itself was quite a challenge for my kiddo!

She made a mama whale with a pink flower on her head [Do you know any little girl whose favorite color is not pink?!!]

Origami Whale

And of course my daughter wanted the baby whale to be a "girl" too!

Origami Whale

We cut "sand" out of yellow moonstone paper and my daughter cut out the "blue waves" from corrugated paper.The coconuts are thermocol balls.

Collage Art

In her school they go in-depth on their theme topic and so I had to research quite a bit about whales too to help my kiddo to grasp the "whale" theme.

There were so many tit bits of information and we stuck the pictures in a "Never ending Card"

This is one type of card which you have to make to realize the charm!! Pictures just dont do justice to it-- you have to get it in your hand and play with it-- you just cant stop!!

The pictures are in the sequence of what happens when each fold of the card is opened.

Whales School Project

And after this layer the card opens to the first layer and so on it goes ---never ending!!

Whales School Project

My daughter loves to show off our unusual school projects charts and this year her class teacher is so appreciative of the extra efforts we put in.

Other ideas for school projects involving lots of pictures

Squash book

Interactive Chart

Waterfall Card

Flag Book
Linking to Mindful Meanderings

House Pop up card Tutorial and Template

2011-11-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

House Pop Up Card

As promised here is the tutorial to the House pop up card.When I first started making pop up cards I used templates from the net ,now I find it is so much more fun and rewarding when I design one myself!
For my friends who want to make a quick House Pop up card here is my template.

House Pop up Card Template

Just score on the dotted lines and mountain fold.
For those of you who may be crazy like me and want to "understand the mechanism "and go about it the difficult way, sharing instructions to help you design your own customized House pop up card.
How to design your own House Pop up card

Make the Base of your House

Take a rectangular strip of card.Don't use very thick card stock as your House pop up should be easy to crease and fold.

For people who like measurements- I started off with a card measuring 3.5 x 9.5 inches.

Score your 3.5 x 9.5 inch card lengthwise 0.5 inch.This will help for the tab of your house base.

Pop up card Tutorial

Score at 0.5,2.5,5 and 7 inches. This will give you a 0.5 inch width tab , two 2 inch wide sides and two 2.5 inch wide sides for your house. You can play with your measurements however you fancy.

So you have your strip in now divided into tab[ 0.5 inch width], Side A[2 inch wide], Side B[ 2.5 inch wide],Side C[2 inch wide] and Side D[ 2.5 inch wide]

Pop up card Tutorial

Easy way to fold your house pop up card is score sides B and D in the middle as shown

Cut off the lower parts[ below the score line] of parts B and D as shown and slant and cut to form tabs for parts A and C.

Pop up card Tutorial

Draw a triangular shape towards the top of parts B and D as shown and horizontal lines meeting as shown on parts A and C.[My measurement was 0.75 inch from the top]

Pop up card Tutorial

Cut off the extra parts marked above.Slant and taper cut your tab also and your house pop up base is ready.

Pop up card Tutorial

You can mountain fold all the score lines to start with.Then Valley fold the score line in the middle of part B.[You can also mountain fold this if that is the shape of house you like]

Pop up card Tutorial

Glue your tab to the inside of part D and your house shape has formed.
Make a roof.

I used rough measuring for this and you can do the same.

If you want a short cut you can follow my measurements which is a 4 x 2 inch card strip scored at 0.5inch,2 inch and 3.5 inch.

Pop up card Tutorial

If you want to go about designing a roof is here is how you do it:

The guide is your roof strip should measure the same height as the width of Parts A and C[mine is 2 inches in height].To design a roof take a 5-6 inch long strip score it in the middle and place it over your house shape. Judge the length you will require. You need to cover the house and have some extra to glue on the house.Cut the rest off.

Pop up card Tutorial

Attach your roof tabs to Sides A and C as shown above.

Additional Parts

You can add lots of fun additional pop up parts like an arched door or a chimney like I did.

House Pop up Card

To make the arched door cut a shape and give it small tabs on the sides as shown.Fold it along the middle and fold the tabs too.

Pop up card Tutorial

Position it over your side B to find a position you like.
Attach one tab on the front of your house making sure the central fold lines of the house and the front of your house[ side B] align.Apply glue on the other tab and fold over your house on to it.

Pop up card Tutorial

You can decorate your house before sticking it to your base card.

House Pop up Card

Open up your house and position it over the base card.Roughly mark the position of your tabs in this position.Fold your house , apply glue to the tabs. Stick one tab to the base card. Fold over the base card and let the other tab find its own position. Wait for the glue to dry well.

House Pop up card Tutorial

I added some layers of "snow "cut from photo paper folded and attached in a V shaped manner.

House Pop up card

The house pop up card is such a versatile pop up - you can use it for a housewarming card, a moving away card, a Christmas card, a birthday card and what not!
Do leave me your comments
Edited this tutorial was featured at
If you are on Pinterest you can "Pin" this tutorial by clicking this button : Pin It

House Pop up card

2011-11-23T01:25:00.000-08:00

House Pop up card

This House pop up card is a "Thank you " card made as part of my Guest DT project for For Fun challenges.The digital stamp I was given was a cute Paper shelter image and the theme is "Thanks or Thank You ".

House Pop up Card

I gave the little girl a snowy setting with a snowman and reindeer for company outside her house!

Snowman Pop up card

Here is the closeup of the pop up card house. I enjoyed making this house pop up card as I didnt use any template but designed my own pop up. Shall share how to make the house pop up card in my next post.

House Pop up Card

I made a chimney and an arched door for the house and decorated it using stars punched from scraps of paper.

House Pop up Card

This is a Thank You card plus Christmas card for my daughters class teacher

Thank You Card

I love the dimensional nature of these plastic cube letters and I layered them on red punched stars to contrast with the white background.

Thank You Card for Teacher

Since this is a card for my daughters teacher I tried to make it special on the front too.I made a shadow box card with a 3 D wintry scene .The aperture is handcut and hence the crazily jagged edges!

Shadow Box card

Tried making a ribbon bow which turned out looking like a flower!!

Ribbon Bow

I love making this type of paper Christmas tree as its quick ,folds flat and is 3 dimensional.

Origami Xmas tree card

For the christmas decorations I stuck silver ball garlands on the "snow".The green Christmas trees on the border and popping up on the snow are punched ones.

House Pop up card

The house pop up card is such a versatile pop up - you can use it for a housewarming card, a moving away card, a Christmas card, a birthday card and what not! Here is the Tutorial on How to design your own House Pop up card .

Do join in at with a thank you card
Linking toPollycraftMonday[Christmasfun]

Salt Dough Craft Instructions - Papaya Fruit School Project

2011-11-20T07:19:00.000-08:00

Salt Dough Craft

My daughter goes to a wonderful school but sometimes I go crazy trying to manage her school projects and everything!

For her 2nd language they have the theme fruits-- well sounds reasonable doesnt it? Well, her particular project was the fruit "Papaya" .

She had to take a chart ,scrapbook or model on the Papaya and speak about it in Hindi.

For my international friends India is a very diverse country and has more languages than any other country in the world with an amazing 800 languages !![Yeah I think even my Indian friends wont know that fact!!] Hindi is the one language many know how to speak in India but its not my native tongue and I had a tough time teaching a 5 year old the wondrous properties of the Papaya fruit in Hindi!

To compensate for possible inadequacies in her "talk" I thought I would put my heart into the creative aspect of it and we made a life size Papaya fruit model using salt dough.

Salt Dough Craft Instructions
Make your salt dough
Recipe for Salt Dough

1 cup Plain Flour +1/2 cup Salt + 1/2 cup water[approx]

Knead well only adding as much water as you need.The right consistency is when the dough does not have cracks and does not stick to your fingers.
Small salt dough projects can be made with the dough only.

To make large projects make the inner core from Aluminium foil [ you can recycle a bit of used Aluminium foil packaging here]. I made a hollow ovoid shape for our cut Papaya fruit and 2 hollow ovoids over which I again wrapped Aluminium foil for our whole Papaya fruit.

Salt Dough Craft

Roll out and mold a sheet of salt dough [ours is around 4 mm thick] over your Aluminium foil core.

Bake it at the lowest setting[ 150 C if your oven has it] of your oven for a period ranging from 45 mins to 2 hours. In my oven our salt dough gets done in 30-40 mins most of the time.When its done your salt dough craft should sound hard on tapping [ like you are tapping on wood!].

Salt Dough Craft

Cool your salt dough project in the oven itself as sudden change of temperature can let cracks appear in your salt dough craft.
Paint your slat dough craft with acrylic paint once it has cooled down. Do not use water colors as you risk getting your salt dough craft go all lumpy and gooey!

Salt Dough Craft

Couple of coats of varnish can help your salt dough craft last long. I didnt apply varnish on this project as I didnt have varnish at home and didnt have time to go buy it!

Salt Dough Craft

With the leftover salt dough we made lots of decorations for our Christmas tree using playdough cutters. The angel in the right hand bottom corner was made free hand by my 5 year old! Small objects such as shown below do not need an aluminium foil core.

Salt Dough Craft

A fruit needs a basket doesnt it!So we made a fruit basket by decorating a steel tray with paper flowers and leaves.Here you can see my little one gluing punched paper leaves to her fruit basket! She is full of concentration to get the position just right!!

Salt Dough Craft

The flowers are punchcraft flowers with the orange centers recycled from medication pamphlets!

Punchcraft Flowers

Here is the close up of our Punchcraft flowers.

Punched flowers

Our Cut papaya looked a bit odd so we added seeds to it using black rhinestones.Here is my little one gluing the "seeds".

Salt Dough Craft

I Printed out 2 real Papaya leaves from the net and drew free hand some more leaves based on the shape.My daughter had fun coloring the leaves in a 2 tone fashion!

Salt Dough Craft

Our Papaya project was a big hit in her Hindi class and I felt all the effort and trouble was worth it when I saw the pride and happiness in my daughters face when she came home from school beaming and proudly showed me the "5 stars" and "sticker" she had got for her talk!! I also got lots of queries from her teachers on how to make it!

I hope our story and instructions will help you in some way for maybe a school project, home decor,toy making or simply to have fun crafting.Do leave me your comments
Linking to CraftyCreations[recycle- Our Aluminium foil is recycled]

Interactive Pop Up card Instructions

2011-11-16T01:10:00.001-08:00

Pop Up card Cornfield

As a card making blogger I regularly visit Feline Playful and during the October Celebrations I won the Guest DT post at For Fun Challenges.As Guest DT I had to make a card using a food item,Decorated paper and Brad/ button/eyelet.I was provided with a cute scarecrow Digital stamp from Clear Dollar Stamps who is sponsoring the challenge.

Interactive Card

I dont usually have the patience to work with digital stamps as I am not a "coloring" crafter and I have used digital stamps only once before[ that was part of a DT project for digital delights] .
I was fascinated by the scarecrow digital stamp and decided to make a scenic cornfield pop up card with an additional interactive element.
I stuck butterflies to thick transparent sheets and attached them to my card using pink brads

Interactive Card

The butterflies add a fun interactive element by swinging across the scenic cornfield.

Interactive Card

For the food requisite of my card I added a corn 3 D decoupage sticker .

3 D Decoupage

The lovely pink 3 D decoupage orchid is a gift from blogger pal Angelin who sent it to me all the way from the UK.

3 D Decoupage

I kept the front of the pop up card simple using just the patterned paper-- which is actually an 18th Century English floral pattern paper I bought in a local sale!

Paper Tole

Here is the closeup of the lovely 3 D decoupage scroll [again a gift from blogger pal Angelin] on the front of the card. I love 3 D decoupage images but it is so difficult to photograph their beauty!

Paper Tole

Instructions for the Scenic Interactive pop up card

I have not taken step by step tutorial style photos as I think not many crafters will be crazy enough to want to make this!!Just giving broad instructions to pique your interest.This card was inspired by a pop up card in the book "Mechanical cards" though I didnt use the templates there[ I have an aversion to tracing!!]

Base Card
The base of the card is an A4 card stock folded in half.
The scenic pop up element

The scenic pop up element needs to just fit into your folded base card-- Mine is 7 inches long and I trimmed the width to be less than my base card.

Choose sturdy card stock as it should be able to hold the weight of all your pop up elements.

I used a scoring tool [scorpal ] for the first time and I have become a big fan-- making this pop up card was ever so easier with it!!
I scored parts A and A 3/4 inch wide [this would be the height of the stage] and the tab on the right side at 1/2 inch width.Cut off the excess card at the 7 inch mark

Interactive Pop up card Instructions

Design your pop ups

Decide on what scenic elements you want to pop up in your scene and decide on where you want them to pop up .Place them at different levels for the scenic effect and ensure that parts dont pop out when you close your card.

Create small "stands" for your pop ups as shown.The double arrow marked on your "stand" is same as width A of your scenic pop up.And the little folded part of each small stand are tabs you will glue down to your base card[my tabs are 1/2 inch long]
Make slits on your scenic pop up element by laying down the "stands" and marking the position. Cut slits 2mm wide so as to allow easy movement of your pop ups.
I printed the scarecrow digital stamp twice and used the corn plants as additional elements in the pop up scene

Interactive card Tutorial

Thread your pop ups through the slits and make sure they move easily. Make your slits wider if the movement is not smooth.
Stick the left hand scored part of the scenic pop up element on the base card first as shown.Apply glue on all tabs and fold over your card

Interactive Pop up card Instructions

I must admit getting all the tabs to stick right is tricky!!

I added another pop up element above on the right for one of my corn plants!

Interactive Pop up card Instructions

Here is how the pop up card looks before I stuck all the images and embellishments to it.

Interactive Pop up card Instructions

The pumpkin is hand drawn to match the pumpkin in the scarecrow digital image .

Added some punchcraft flowers I made onto the base of the pop up card

Pop Up card Cornfield

When my hubby saw me making this he told me " you should sell this" and
I retorted " but you told me to enjoy card making and not sell " and guess what he told me " you didnt make good cards before ,only so so cards that is why I said dont sell"!!!
Men!!! What to say?!!
Do leave me your thoughts on this card.
Edited: This card came Top 3 at StampacularSunday

Spoon Crafts Tutorial - Recycling Craft

2011-11-11T02:01:00.001-08:00

Spoon Craft Flower

My regular readers know how much of a junk collector I am-- well in addition to cardboard, thermocol , packaging etc ,etc I also cant bring myself to throw away those plastic spoons we are all so bombarded with in our modern life!

My stash became huge recently and I have much more than I can use for every tin in my kitchen! So my daughter and I decided to do some crafting with our spoons! Sharing some ideas for spoon crafts

Spoon Crafting

Spoons-- In our house we have all shapes and colors! Most of them ice cream spoons [ Yeah we eat a lot of ice cream!!]

Spoon Crafts

You can create crafts using the whole spoon [ like in our spoon craft doll]or cut off the cupped part to make spoon craft flowers like we did.

How to cut spoons

Spoon Crafts

Most spoons can be cut easily with a scissors.

Some are however brittle and break if you use a scissors- In such a case soften the plastic by running through a candle flame a couple of times and then cut with the scissors-- The flame can discolor your spoon black but this can be wiped off .

Spoon Crafts

For making spoon flowers a glue gun is indispensable -- you can magically make all kinds of flowers!

Here is our most basic flower- made by sticking the back of the spoon on a disc of thick card.

Spoon Craft Flower

These lovely shaped spoons are from the Mc Donalds ice cream sundaes! We stuck a glitter flower [from my blogger pal Snehal who so generously sent me these Pie Lane metallic flowers] at the center

Spoon Craft Flower

My daughter chose the designs and which flower went on top!

Spoon Craft Flower

We stuck a double layer of spoons to make this spoon craft flower!

Spoon Craft Flower

I glued the pink tiny spoons to a paper cone to make the center of this spoon flower

Spoon Craft Flower

My 5 year old gets some amazing ideas sometimes and after our intial crafting experiments she declared she wanted a "3 D flower" which was popping up and this is what we came up with

Spoon Craft Flower

Without a glue gun this would have been impossible I think!

Spoon Craft Flower

When we got bored admiring our white spoon lily, we painted it pink to make a pink Spoon Lotus!

Spoon Craft Flower

I think the cream one looked better..... what do you think?

Spoon Craft Flower

We found lots of uses for these spoon flowers----

Secure to a ribbon and use as curtain tie backs
Car hanging
Xmas tree decoration- add a loop of ribbon or string
Add as decoration on a gift box

Also sharing a spoon craft doll my 5 year old brought home from her craft class at school!

Spoon Craft Doll

I just love this spoon ballerina!

Spoon Craft Doll

Do tell me how you liked our spoon craft ideas.
Linking to Grant Life,

If you are on Pinterest you can "Pin" this tutorial by clicking this button : Pin It

Edited: This Spoon craft was featured at Grant Life and Inspire me Fridays-- Thank You Ladies for liking our simple crafts.

Featured at Creating Success Around the World

2011-11-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

World wide Blog Hop

Dear friends many of my blogger pals have diverse crafting passions and as you all know it is so much fun to "virtually" meet bloggers from around the world.

I am here today to tell you about a concept called "Creating Success around the world" which features creative bloggers from around the world.

Thrilled to tell you I was the featured blogger for this week!
Thank You Divya , Janelle for featuring me.

DO drop over at Divya's Jewels of Sayui who is hosting this months World wide blog hop to check out creative talent from around the world and Link up your blog too to meet creative crafters from around the world!
PS: Dear friends do bear with me if I am not around to visit your blogs- I am having some computer trouble and need to get it sorted out.

House Shaped Box with Punchcraft and Quilling- Recycled Craft

2011-11-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

House Shaped Box- Recycling Craft

I get pretty excited transforming a throwaway object into a useful and beautiful creation! I didn't actually plan to make this when I started to alter a package-- The house shaped box just took shape!

Here is the front of our house with handcut silver corrugated paper windows and doors

House Shaped Box

A closeup of the punchcraft roses in the flowerbeds.

Punchcraft Roses

This is what I transformed in to my House shaped cardboard box. I cut the box in the middle in a slanting fashion.

House shaped Box -Recycling Craft

I first thought I would use the box halves to store paper scraps like I did in an earlier Paper Oraganizer I had made.But by keeping them as shown below I got the idea to turn it into a house shaped box!

House shaped Box-Recycling Craft

For the roof of my house I recycled a cardboard piece from another packaging box.

House shaped Box-Recycling Craft

I scored the roof piece in the center and folded it and trimmed it down to fit my house.

House shaped Box- Recycling Craft

To camouflage the original box I wrapped light blue chart paper around the "house".

House shaped Box

A house needs a chimney dont you think! I recycled my hubby's tie box by scoring it in this fashion.

House shaped Box

I decided to change the shape to a triangular chimney as the rectangular one looked odd! [I sometimes have weird ideas!-Whoever has heard of a triangular chimney I wonder ?!! well I can claim it as artistic license!!].
The gorgeous patterned paper on the roof was a gift from blogger pal Angelin who sent it all the way from UK. Angelin and I became such good blogger buddies as both of us love recycling so do check out her blog for some unique recycling ideas!The photo below shows the roof with all the fringed flowers.

Fringed Flowers

I decided to keep parts of the original tie box exposed and used a heart punch[Here is the link : Heart Punch Rose Tutorial] to make the Punchcraft Flower.

Punchcraft Rose

This is the closeup of my double colored fringed flowers on the roof. You don't need a quilling tool to make these.I used pink chart paper and regular A 4 white paper to make these fringed flowers.

Fringed Flowers

The roof is detachable and is secured in place with Velcro strips stapled to the walls of the house shaped box .

House Shaped Box

When the house started taking shape I knew it would be a very special gift for my mother who loves roses.My mother stays in an apartment nowadays and misses having her own rose garden so I made this house with lots of flower beds and punch craft roses!

Punchcraft Roses

To make the flower beds I again recycled what was left of my hubby's tie box [ he is a darling and saves such throwaway stuff for me to craft!]. Red arrows and dotted lines indicate the places I scored and folded the card strip to make the flower bed.

House shaped Box

To make 3 D paper objects such as the chimney and the flower bed cut away tiny triangles as shown at your fold points so as to keep your gluing easy and neat.

House shaped Box

Here is the flower bed attached to our house.

House shaped Box

And then we [my kiddo helped in this one] filled it with punchcraft flowers and leaves.Here is the link to make the punchcraft flowers : Heart Punch Rose Tutorial

Punchcraft Roses

I let my 5 year old daughter add the silver glitter to the flowers and leaves. Here you can see how seriously she is concentrating as she plans and executes her craft!! She even criticized me when I carelessly got too much glitter on a leaf!

House shaped Box

We also made a tag from the tie box packaging by sticking paper strips left over from the roof and adding some roses [ made from a 6 petal punch]. I also used an eyelet for the first time!![I had bought some on impulse without knowing how to use it and Ha Ha I had to google how to correctly use it!!]

Punchcraft Roses

My daughter really had fun [and sticky fingers] by decorating all the flowers and leaves with silver glitter glue!

Punchcraft Roses

So this is how our hand-mixer package ended up as a present for my mother!

House Shaped Box

I hope you enjoyed my recycling idea.We went all out on this project and I used up all my stash of handmade flowers but it will give my mom many hours of happiness I hope!!

Do let me know how you like this recycling idea.

Linking to ICRC12,Createmepink,MIM,Coloursdekor

Edited: This recycled project won both at Wee Memories and Create me Pink-- Yippee I am thrilled my recycling is winning!
If you are on Pinterest you can "Pin" this tutorial by clicking this button : Pin It

Punchcraft Flowers Photo frame-Recycled Project

2011-11-03T01:50:00.001-07:00

Punchcraft Flowers

I enjoy Recycling and had a blast during the Crafty JC Recycling Challenge.As part of the Top 3 in the Recycling challenge I am Guest DT for this months Color Pallette Challenge.

For My DT inspiration I chose Color Palette 1 with the colors burgundy red,green and yellow and have a recycling project to share!

I recycled some cardboard from a box into a DIY homemade Photo frame.Here is the link for tutorials for DIY Photoframes

Homemade Photoframe

I stuck some pretty flower patterned corrugated paper on the cardboard and decorated the homemade photoframe with punchcraft flowers.

Punchcraft Flowers

My bloggy friend Anita is my inspiration for Punchcraft-She can rightly be called the Queen of Punchcraft. Do check out her awesome inspiring Punchcraft at her blog.

Punchcraft Flowers

I made the roses using a 6 petal flower punch. The glossy green leaves were handcut from corrugated paper.

Punchcraft Flowers

The golden brown flower buds is another bit of recycling-they are from an old broken flower basket I had saved!I used double sided foam tape and the glue gun to achieve the 3 D look.

Punchcraft Flowers

If anyone is interested I can work on a tutorial for the punchcraft roses.These roses can also be made without a punch so no need to rush out and buy a punch !

Punchcraft Flowers

I hope you liked my humble punchcraft flowers. Do leave your comments.

Linking to Desertislands[I used leaves,punches,fall theme]

Edited: This creation won at Desert Islands

A Fairy Tale Competition Win

2011-11-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

Fairy Tale Drawing Competition

So thrilled to share with my blogger friends who have always appreciated my daughters talents that she won the drawing competition in her school!

I am quite proud to say my little one goes to one of the best schools in Bangalore ! Why I love the school is they give so much importance to arts, crafts,sports and not just academic.This year even cooking was part of the curriculum!! [And they teach chess to 5 year olds!]

Every year they have a drawing competition. This time they had a choice of 2 themes- "my fav fairy tale "or "outer space" and we had to teach the children from home.

I wanted her to opt for outer space as I thought aliens and rockets would be easy to draw but my 5 year old has a strong will power and decided it was a fairy tale- sleeping beauty to be specific complete with castle ,chariot, fairy and the villain dragon!

How to draw a castle and chariot

Like in most families , the "mom" was entrusted with the task of coaching her! I was confident of my daughters talent as last year too she had won the school drawing competition but I was not too sure of my talents in teaching her to draw this particular theme! When she grasped the castle and the chariot with ease, we tried the mandatory princess which was tougher than I thought!

Happy Fairy!

I must admit my daughter's fairy always looked better than mine! We made different hairstyles for the fairy and the princess!

I did question my decision to teach a 5 year old to draw a dragon as I had to practice myself to get it to look like a dragon! but she learnt it so well and I think this fiery cute dragon was the deciding factor which won her the competition ! The spines on the dragon were her own special touch which I hadnt even taught her!

My little ones own Fiery Dragon

Yesterday we got her certificate and prize and I also got a written pat on the back from her class teacher who wrote in her term report card that "creative "support from home was making my kiddo shine in school! Ha Ha I was beaming away to glory!!

I am no art teacher and have no experience in teaching kids [ other than one strong willed little girl] but as a parent trying to get my kiddo to do her best sharing some

Tips to Moms and Dads coaching their kids to draw

If you teach what interests them they will always draw better!
Do ask the child for ideas- believe me they do know how to draw better at times!
While teaching break down a picture in to shapes the child is familiar with and terms the child knows eg "U", "W" or "3" or "M"
Dont be rigid something is drawn a particular way- change as you watch your child draw. If something looks too difficult change it-- eg we changed the shape of the eyes to simple dots as all else made our princess and fairy look like witches!!
Practice one element at a time-- even the most patient of 5 year olds are not patient for a long art class!!
Before a competition always tell them to concentrate on their own work and not be distracted by friends! [I was told several of my daughters friends tried to copy what she was doing and did not draw what their parents had taught them!]
Give them a sequence on how to draw the scenery eg in our picture I asked her to complete the castle, the chariot, princess, fairy and dragon in sequence and then go in for the details such as the cloud , grass etc.
Teach them to completely utilize a page and not leave large blank spaces in a scenic drawing
If you can find out what size of paper will be given to the child in the competition you can help her to practice in similar size papers- my little one has a tough job judging sizes and fitting everything so we did a lot of practice to get everything to fit well together
Whatever you try to teach them-- they will do what they want !!
Enjoy!

Origamic Architecture -Tajmahal Kirigami Pop up Card

2011-10-29T07:06:00.001-07:00

Taj Mahal Pop up Card

I find Origamic Architecture so fascinating - it is almost magical to find how a single sheet of paper can be transformed into a 3 Dimensional beautiful structure!It is one of my favorite paper crafts. It is cheap [ you just need a craft knife ,sturdy paper and good hands!], interesting and oh so rewarding!

Origamic Architecture- Taj Mahal

Among Origamic Architecture patterns the Taj Mahal is one of my all time favorites--It is not all that complicated to make [but dont attempt this as your first kirigami pattern as the folds can be tricky!]

In keeping with my Taj Mahal theme I stamped a Taj Mahal on the front of my card using pearl white acrylic paint and a locally bought stencil.

Taj Mahal Card

Here is the closeup of the stencil art Taj Mahal.I actually got the Taj Mahal stencil for my little daughter as she has been fascinated with the Taj Mahal ever since we did a school project on it.

Stamped Taj Mahal

For my friends who would like to know a little bit of the Taj Mahal [Let me do my bit for Indian Tourism!]
The Taj Mahal is such a fascinating building as its a symbol of love --it is beauty and elegance personified!
-The Taj Mahal is a monument of eternal love located in Agra in North India. It was built by the Mugal Emperor Shah Jahan for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal who died shortly after giving birth to their 14th Child. The Taj Mahal was built out of marble and precious stones from different parts of India and the world. It took 20000 workers 22 years to complete the exquisite structure.

Kirigami Pop up card- Tajmahal

The pop up kirigami Taj Mahal is a pattern I love to make again and again for special occasions and a special someone!Its such a fitting card for an anniversary ,valentines day,a wedding and for the special male in your life [ as I said in an earlier post guys seem to love Origamic architecture!- This is one craft which is guaranteed to get a "wow" from my hubby!].It looks so good displayed on your showcase too!
Here are the links to the Taj Mahal Pattern if you want to make it and other Origamic Architecture Patterns which you can practice on to gain confidence.
Here are links to some of our other Taj Mahal Projects:
Taj Mahal finger painting and glitter art- Finger painting and "what not "painting of the Taj Mahal by my little one!

Taj Mahal finger painting and glitter art

Taj Mahal Stencil Art -My kiddo proud of her stencil art Taj Mahal!

Taj Mahal Stencil Art

Taj Mahal Paper Model- that's our huge Paper Taj Mahal Model atop my electric Reva car!

Taj Mahal Paper Model

Easy Paper Bow Tutorial and 3D Decoupage Easel card

2011-10-24T12:25:00.001-07:00

3 D Decoupage Easel Card

Sharing a 3 D Decoupaged Easel card with recycled paper bows .

Knowing how to make a paper bow is quite a handy thing as it can help transform your gift wrap into a thing of beauty! With a lot of festivals going on there is a lot of gifting all around. Sharing a super simple tutorial to make quick and easy paper bow.

By now I think my blogger pals know how much I love recycling - The moment I see something that should go into the rubbish bin I try to see if there is something pretty I can salvage and I am so glad I salvaged this medication advertisement.

Recycled Project- Paper Bows

I cut out the checkered borders to make the paper bows and use as borders for my Easel Card

Paper Bow Tutorial

Apply glue to the ends of the paper strip and bring both ends to the center of your strip

Paper Bow Tutorial

Make 2 bows one shorter than the other-- no strict measuring here- its an "as you please" kind of Bow!

Paper Bow Tutorial

Place the smaller bow atop the longer one and gently stick at the center .Take a small paper strip and wrap around the center and glue at the back.Your 3 D super easy bow is done!

Paper Bow Tutorial

Here is the closeup of the 3 D decoupage birds.I got the 3 D decoupage sheets from Monica

Easel card with 3 D decoupage

This is the side view showing the pretty bows and borders from my recycling adventure!

Recycled Paper Bows Project

Hope I can inspire you to look around you and salvage some paper to recycle! In our home I have made even my noncrafty hubby collect all sorts of junk which he dutifully tuns over to me saying " you can make something out of it!"

Linking to Desertislandcraft[4 Found Object,5 Candy Colours,6 Not Square,7 Stripes]

Diwali Pop up Cards and Template

2011-10-21T08:01:00.001-07:00

Diwali Pop up Cards

Its Diwali time in India.Diwali is an Indian festival of lights and is celebrated with lamps, lights and crackers.I was too lazy to make any Diwali cards earlier but today my daughter had Diwali celebrations in school and this morning we whipped up 2 super quick Diwali pop up cards.

I kept the front of the card simple and stuck a lighted lamp sticker with foam tape on some gorgeous white embossed cards Lisa Jane had sent me in her giveaway.[ Thank You Lisa those embossed cards are awesome]

Diwali Pop up Cards

Here is the closeup of the Diwali Pop up card pattern. It was pretty easy to make this pop up card- No craft knife involved only scissors and folding!

Diwali Pop up Cards

I am always amazed at the generosity of bloggers!Last night my husband came home with a parcel from my blogger pal Jovita who has opened a new craft store and is selling Pie Lane stuff and lots of other goodies. She had sent my daughter some gorgeous Pie Lane Diwali themed stickers and making these cards with those stickers was a breeze-- my daughter really enjoyed herself! Thank You so much Jovi.

My daughter has 2 teachers and we made fairly similar Diwali cards using different stickers

Diwali Pop up Cards

The Diwali themed stickers looked so gorgeous I didnt want to clutter the pop up card with any other elements.

Diwali Pop up Cards

Here is the template to the pop up card pattern used in this card.Cut on the bold lines .Valley fold the dotted lines and mountain fold the slashed lines.

Pop up card Template

Here is the link to the same type of pop up card tutorial: Cake pop up card tutorial

Diwali Pop up Cards

Wishing my Indian Blogger pals a Happy Diwali. Do leave me your thoughts on this simple creation.

Origamic Architecture- Kirigami Pop Up card Castle

2011-10-17T22:52:00.001-07:00

Origamic Architecture Kirigami pop up card

I love Kirigami pop up cards .Once you get the knack of it they are not too hard to make but you gotta love your knife in this craft!! For those unfamiliar with the term, Origamic Architecture means a 3 Dimensional reconstruction of buildings or objects by cutting and folding paper.Masaharo Chatani a Japanese architect is considered the father of this craft which came into vogue only in the 1980s.

Origamic Architecture Kirigami pop up card

This Origamic architecture pattern is from the net-I had it saved for quite some time and now cant seem to find the link to the pattern! It originates from Ms Jackie Huang who has kindly permitted me to post this creation made using her pattern.Thank You so much Ms Huang

This Kirigami pop up castle card is scored, folded and handcut from a single sheet of 180g photo paper. The cutting takes around 15 mins if you are at it at a stretch.I usually do my Kirigami pop up cards in bits and pieces as they need a bit of concentration! The scoring and folding was more time consuming as my pattern didn't have guidelines as to which was mountain or valley fold and I had to experiment a bit.

Somehow I find men are more fascinated with Origamic Architecture-My husband seems to love them!

If you have never tried this craft do try it you just need a craft knife , your kitchen cutting board and sturdy paper!
Just to get your interest piqued,here are some of my older Origamic architecture Kirigami Pop up cards some imperfect ,some ok ,and some like the puppy which I just love! These are different from the usual pop up cards as these involve cutting and folding of a single sheet of paper!
Pop up card Penguins

Pop up card Penguins

Kirigami Flower basket

Kirigami Flower basket Card

Puppy pop up card

Kirigami Pop up Swan

Kirigami Pop up Card Swan

Kirigami Pop up Car

Kirigami Pop up Card Car

Kirigami Pop up rabbit

Kirigami Pop up Card rabbit

I hope I got your interested in this fantastic craft.Here is a link to Marivi who shares some gorgeous free patterns to try.
Tips when making an Origamic architecture card

If you are a beginner start with a simple pattern with not too many folds and levels
Score always before folding- this gives a crisp neat effect.
Use sturdy paper such as photo paper 180 g -220 g works well for me.
For practice use watercolor drawing papers- they are fairly thick and crease and hold well
Use a sharp craft knife [ xacto knife] - even a little blunting can jag your edges!
For fast cutting first cut all the lines that run in one direction[vertically or horizontally]- that way you work fairly fast.
I you are not sure about the accuracy of your folding in a mutlifold origamic architecture pattern- dont score the central crease- score and fold the other creases and fold over the card and let the central crease occur naturally- this is a little trick I picked up after some frustrated" not folding well" pop up cards!

I hope I have inspired you to try this craft if you have never done it before. I find its almost magical what you can do with a single sheet of paper! Do leave me your comments

Santa Shaped Easel Card Tutorial

2011-10-14T06:56:00.001-07:00

Santa Shaped Easel Card

I am very much in love with Easel cards and experimented with the mechanics of this type of card to make a shaped card.I made a Santa in a chimney card using a Santa Claus sticker.I shaped the parts of the Easel Card to give it a House Shape with a large Chimney and Santa popping out!

Santa Shaped Easel Card

Sharing a simple tutorial to make a shaped Easel Card.You can make any shaped Easel using these instructions.

Take your card stock and fold it in half. Mountain fold one half as shown. Your Easel panel will be stuck to the free edge half [left half ]of the card stock

Shaped Easel Card Instructions

I stuck my Santa on card stock .

Shaped Easel Card Instructions

I added a Chimney shape for my Santa to pop out of and cut out the Santa and the Chimney.

Shaped Easel Card Instructions

Place your Shape on the front half of your Easel Card and trace out the shape.

Shaped Easel Card Tutorial

You can cut out the shape exactly on the front part of your card or tweak it more like I did here.I cut the lower half in the shape of a house roof. And the back of the Easel Card in a matching house shape.

Shaped Easel Card Instructions

Stick your Shape to the lower half of the front panel and your Shaped Easel Card is done!Here is how the Santa Easel looks folded flat for mailing.

Santa Shaped Easel Card

And here is the Propped up Easel card shaped like a house with a chimney and Santa popping out to wish you! I have kept the embellishments fairly simple as I wanted Santa to be the prominent feature.

Santa Shaped Easel Card

I hope you will find these instructions useful to adapt to your own Shaped Easel Card. Do tell me how you find it.

Easel Card with Kirigami Pop Up Card Instructions

2011-10-12T07:33:00.000-07:00

Easel Card with Kirigami Pop up

This Easel Card with a Kirigami Pop up combines the requisites of 2 challenges- ICR Easel and Crafty JC's Simplicity[CAS] .

CAS[Clean and Simple] is un-trodden territory for me so decided to go all out and experiment.I combined embossing, stamping and a self designed Kirigami pop up pattern!

I hand embossed the roses using a gorgeous embossing plate Lisa Jane of MIM sent me as part of a giveaway win.

Embossed Rose

I used a wooden leaf stamp also sent from the UK by Lisa Jane[from MIM]to add red leaves.

So far I have made Kirigami cards using designs from books or the net - today I wanted my design to match the rose- leaf pattern so designed my own pattern-- It was fun and not as difficult as I thought.

Kirigami Pop up card Tutorial

I made the Kirigami Pop up pattern look "CAS" [Clean and Simple] and not too complicated! What do your say?

How to make a Kirigami Pop Up card
This is not the best of my tutorials as the light was atrocious while I made it and so didnt snap many pictures.If you need clarifications do let me know and I shall post clearer instructions in another Kirigami card tutorial.

Materials Required to make a Kirigami Pop up card

Paper: Use 180 g or lesser card stock - White , cream give the best effect in Kirigami pop up cards

For this pattern I just used a cream sheet from my daughters drawing book as my pattern is not elaborate and does not have much cutting involved. If your pattern has lots of cuts you need to use a card stock.I dont like to use very thick card stock as it doesnt fold very well.

White Glue: For kirigami pop up cards,the trick is to use a glue which is strong and fast drying. Use the minimal amount of glue but be sure to apply it evenly till the edges of your design.

Craft Knife: A sharp craft knife is essential- I don't recommend any brand- even cheap brands would do as long as the blade is new and sharp.

Cutting Surface: Use your Kitchen cutting board or a cutting mat if you have one.

Kirigami Pattern: There are many free patterns on the net if you Google it but today I will share how you can design a simple pattern yourself.
Draw a kirigami pattern
I wanted my Kirigami pop up to match my rose - leaf pattern so roughly drew a rose and leaf. For a kirigami pattern you need to have the top and the bottom a bit flat as these are the anchor points of your pop up so I designed the lower 2 petals flat and positioned the leaf to be slanting at the top

Kirigami Pop up card Tutorial

Draw some simple cutting patterns within your main image- I kept mine simple for this card.You can plan and draw your pattern on the reverse side so that you dont have to erase lines[just reverse your fold lines accordingly in that case]

Kirigami Pop up card Tutorial

Cut out areas as I have done her- dont cut out more as then you will compromise on the support of your pop up and your Kirigami Pop up may buckle.

Kirigami Pop up card Tutorial

Plan your creases.Now comes the maths! I am not a maths enthusiast [ that's why I became a doctor!!] but you need a bit of "paper engineering calculation" to get a pop up card right!
The blue line will be the central crease [which lies on your card's central gully].Note that it does not run through the image.

The red lines- are valley folds and are the places where your popup is anchored to your base.
The green line- is a mountain fold. And its position is such that distances a= a.

Kirigami Pop up card Tutorial

Cut your Kirigami pop up pattern image all around except at the anchoring points shown by the dotted red lines.

Score creases at red and blue lines.

Fold and let the green crease occur naturally![So you can get around the maths too!!]

Kirigami Pop up card

Your Kirigami pop up pattern is ready.Apply glue till the edges and stick on a backing card of contrasting colors.
My first CAS attempt- do tell me what you feel!

Linking to ICRC 11,Crafty JC, Bearly Mine,Love to crop[Embossing],Blingiton