Hello art-cravers !!

Presenting you  "madhubani painting" I did recently. This painting has been inspired by Mrs. Bharati Dayal who is a renowned artist. I dedicate this painting to her and thank her for cultivating in me such great interest in this kind of art.  Madhubani paintings are also called Mithila paintings, more can be read here madhubani 

So I started with a sketch.

Notice, this art has some specific ways of drawing the facial features.

I used a marker to make the outlines.

And used water based paints.

Lets add color to the ladies.

And...tadaah...they are all dressed up now.

Now handling the tree and the birds.

All the detailing is done using marker pen. The beauty of this art is it fills up the whole space and does not leave much of white space in it, giving it its signature intricate look . And its done :D 

Handmade greeting card

Hey!!

This post is dedicated to a cute lil girl who turned 5 recently. And I made her this birthday card. So before we start, I would like to tell you that I used quilling techniques to make it. 

Things needed:

•  Thick papers for making cards.
•  Colorful paper strips for quilling
•  Glue
•  Quilling tool or a toothpick
•  Sketches

So lets get started.

I bought these paper strips for quilling, which are available in most craft stores I believe. If one does not find them, you can make your own by making strips out of colored papers. It demands lot of patience though. Using these, I made a simple S shaped scroll. Its quite simple. We have to quill both the ends of the paper strip in opposite direction. You can google it for help. 

Once done, I pasted these colorful scrolls on a rectangular thick paper which has been cut into a frame like structure. There is no specific pattern here. I just filled up the white space. I chose to only fill two sides of the frame. But if you like you can go all the way. Its one's choice.

They look pretty, don't they?

If there is excess of white space left which cannot be filled with a scroll, you can fill it with a simple circle, like the blue one am pointing at. Just coil the paper strip and leave it, let it uncoil and then you can glue the end to secure it.

And then, I made this cute flower using two colored strips  yellow and orange joined at the ends. Each petal is an individual drop.  Glued them to the green circled coil at the center. And later pasted the flower on a black paper and trimmed the edges.

This is where I positioned the flower on the frame.

Now I needed some colorful simple butterflies. So used these triangular pieces from my past crafts. I drew a simple butterfly on them and cut them out. And used a marker to give them an outline.

Now I placed these cute butterflies on the frame and glued them. Most of them seem like they are flying towards the flower. 

Now I needed a patterned paper for  filling up the hollow frame. I first chose to make waves using highlighters. But later changed my mind. As it seemed too much color contrast.

I had cut out another rectangle from the left out thick paper for placing it in the center. Once you have decided the right position to place it, go ahead and glue it.

Notice the background is changed.

Now for the best part, I made some paper roses to go for the center. And colored them using sketches and highlighters. The tutorial for this is at :

quilled paper rose

We are almost done...

For the inside of the card, I made these circles and pasted them. This is where I wrote the birthday message. And pasted some left out butterflies there.

And now the card is done. This is the final look:

I was thrilled to know that the birthday girl loved it. It gives true happiness to put a smile on a kids face. 

I wish that sweet girl all the happiness in the world. Happy birthday :) !!

Clay floral design on canvas

Hola !

Am back with some more work of mine to share :)  . After making a lot of mixed media artwork involving clay, I got obsessed and made another canvas with clay. I had finished making it in January but somehow forgot about it later. But now, its all out. The paints used here are acrylic and the clay is painted in gold color.

This canvas was meant originally for a painting depicting an Indian women. I started working on it last year, but somewhere during the course, I didn't like it anymore. So I colored it all black. I had no idea what to do on it. Later I tried little horizontal strokes with green and red colors. That background looked really appealing. Then I later added gold strokes. And then I thought, now what???

And right then, clay came to rescue ;)

I looked up the internet and  found this simple floral design. I made the sketch using a pencil and then started working with the clay. As always, took small pieces of modeling clay, rolled it into a thin long string. Applied glue on the design and placed the string on it. And allowed it to dry. And after few hours of work for several days, I ended up with this. It looked very beautiful in white, but to match the background I painted the clay gold. Now it looked pretty descent.

I hope you like it. 

DIY name plates

 Here's a blog post dedicated to my lovely sister. She has made some really amazing name plates. And I will be sharing with you how to make your own. Here's the list of things you will need:

• wooden plank/ cardboard
• dental powder
• glue
• acrylic paints and brushes
• m-seal
• rubber moulds (optional)
• varnish

So to get started, cut the plank in a desired shape, it could be square, rectangle or oval. For texture on plank, make a paste by using dental powder and glue. There are two kinds of dental powder available in the market: yellow and white. She used yellow one. After the paste is ready, apply it on the plank and let it dry for some time. Then using any sharp tipped/edged tool, make patterns on it. My sister chose to make horizontal lines. But any pattern works fine. And she used crushed stone kind of material on the borders. You could even use sand. It gives a nice grainy look. Now allow it to dry completely.

Now to write the name and make shapes she used this m-seal compound shown below. And glued them onto the plank.

Here is how the board looks with the name and shapes. She made the ganesha idol using a rubber mold. She filled the mold with dental powder paste and let it dry.

After everything has dried, she painted it with black acrylic paint. And let it dry.

Now to add colour, she used different metallic paints. After the paints have dried, she sprayed a coat of varnish. Now all we need is to let the spray dry. Here is the final product. Its so colourful and amazing.

I  loved  her creativity in this. It has come out really beautiful. Makes me so proud of her :D 

T-shirt makeover

I wanted to give my plain T-shirt a new look. I hand painted it writing a quote I found on Pinterest.

I used silver paint for this. Here's the end result.

♥ on a canvas

This one is a really simple one, takes very less time and looks very pretty. To make this, you will need :

• a canvas
• red acrylic/water colors
• a paintbrush
• few white paper sheets
• a pen/pencil
• pair of scissors

As shown below, I have painted the whole canvas red. I tried to paint it uniformly so that there are no patches. In the image you can notice some but that is okay as it gets covered by the white paper roses.

The second step is to make the white paper roses. These roses are very easy and fun to make. I drew this circular swirly pattern on a piece of paper. It is preferable to draw this with a pencil and not so dark. 

Now I used scissors to cut it like this.

Now its the fun part. Take the outer edge of the swirl and wrap it around a thin stick. I used the end of my paintbrush. 

Wrap it till you reach the inner most part of the swirl.

Now carefully remove the stick on which we wrapped it.

And there you have it, a cute little white rose.

I made a lot these roses for the canvas.

Pretty, aren't they?

Now all we need to do is draw a heart shape on the canvas with pencil, again not very dark. And once you have the pattern, start pasting these flowers on it. Apply glue on the base of the flower which is the center of the swirl. Don't worry about the pencil line of the heart. The flowers will cover it up. Once the outline is done, start filling the inner area of the heart. Try to glue the flowers close enough to not show the gaps on the canvas.

And here you go :)

If you like you could write a quote or some greetings on the canvas. This is a great project for Valentine's day. And as a variation, you could keep the canvas white and paste red paper roses on it in heart shape.  

Children can make this project too. They could use  different flower shapes instead of heart. Paint the canvas pink, purple, blue etc.  Or its a great gift if they want to keep the heart shape and present it to their loved ones on mother's day, father's day or on birthdays.