Color Culture - Pink City

Here's a post I did for Etsy's CraftingInColor team about color and culture. Way back, my family lived in Jaipur for about six years. The city left an edelible mark on me, and this a tribute to all my Jaipur memories.

Have you ever hesitated to use pink in your work? In the Western world pink can sometimes have a negative connotation as being frivolous or effeminate. In India, it is generally celebrated in all its manifestations, making its mark even in architecture!

Just take a look at these majestic buildings of Jaipur, the country's famed Pink City. Back in the 1700s, the Maharajah who built it had the palaces painted pink to emulate the sandstone monuments of the Mughals.

To show you just a few-

The Palace of Winds:





City Palace buildings:







Not pink, but I couldn't resist including this magnificent Peacock Gate:



I love the detail in these peacocks - hundreds of years old, and now back in vogue!



And here are some gorgeous pink patchwork rustic Indian wall hangings, sparkling with sequins.





In jaipur even the elephants are decorated!




Handmade puppets for street shows...




This type of jewelry is called Meenakari.




Colorful parasols in the marketplace - fit for a princess!




And some Jaipur-inspired art from AllPosters.



Jaipur artisans also make lovely blue pottery, but more on that later.

Pictures courtesy gangesindia.com, saharaglobal, travelpod.com, href="http://www.allposters.com/">allposters.com

Lara Cameron

Although it seems there's a small clique of fabric designers with a huge following, I am sure there are tons of indie artists we know little or nothing about who also do wonderful work.

I came across one such designer and just looking at her fabrics makes me so happy! Australian Lara Cameron's website says she is "a designer of all sorts of things - visual identities, promotional materials, websites, and last but not least textiles."

It was really hard to choose from this multi-talented artist's work, but here's a snapshot:


















And here's what she makes with them:

Bags and cushions


Moo mini cards


Moo note cards


Moo stickers


Notebook covers


Letterpress cards


Beautiful, simple and inspired by nature - aren't they lovely? Check out Lara's website and her blog for more about her. There are many, many more goodies there, along with insights and tutorials.

Fused plastic fantastic

Fused plastic? When I first heard that term I thought it must be some long drawn out funky process that I wouldn't be able to do. Surprise! It's only a matter of using a hot iron on the plastic (under something stick-proof, like wax-paper, of course). So a few weeks ago I played around with used plastic bags that we end up accumulating even though we use cloth bags for grocery. These are thin, thin bags, with some writing on them in black. They are the ones on big rolls under the fruit and vegetable counters.

So anyway, I fused a bunch of bags, making an 8-ply fold for each bag and ironing them together. The result was a delicate, translucent, pliable plastic. I made a bowl out of some ( maybe I can take some pictures of that when our camera feels up to the job) but from the left over pieces I made these:

I wish I had better pictures, but here goes:

OK, this picture is REALLY grainy...


Can you see the cut out plastic house? There's some of the writing showing through, which looks pretty cool.


I embellished the house by stitching all around it as well as stiching a door shape on the front, drew some tree branches, and sewed on a random, connected ovals crochet piece I had previously made. It's now a cloud!

And here's the second one I did. Here the fused plastic is the cloud, which I made by simply cutting little circles and then sewing them on to the paper in an overlapping pattern.


With more mehndi-like embellishments:


These were so much fun to make. And I liked the fact that I used up some of that plastic! Do you have a recyling story to share?

Songs in white - A2D guest post

White, I thought. Peace and hope and joy. Comfort and lazy mornings. Dreams and quiet nights. Clouds and mountain snow. Star-like flowers.

White is lovely to live with.

So here it is: the White Collection. Rooms to dream about, rooms to dream in.

Read my post for Addicted2Decorating for what inspired this collection.













These pictures are from my files and I no longer know how I found them. If you happen to know the source(s) please let me know so I can properly credit them. Thanks!

Peace, please!

The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -- as soon as we quit pretending we're small or unholy.
Author unknown

Image from Alxa

Featured

On Etsy today:

The Whatever Is That Department

I still have no place to paint.
But
I
can
sew

A
little
(a very little little)

An alien onion? A funny hat? A long-handled stress-buster?

You decide!

Fab find from Etsy

I stumbled upon PaperAffection's amazing jewelry and ornaments, all made with origami!

I chose her beautiful blue creations, but there's a rainbow of lovely colors in her shop. And this is what she says about them:

While items are made of paper, they are quite durable. They will not tear because the gloss hardens the paper and makes it plastic-y. I’ve dropped items millions of times without worry. I’ve worn items on a rainy day and so far, so good! Your piece should last a long time. Do treat them with the same amount of care as other fine jewelry – don’t wear it swimming, on a roller coaster, or step on it and it should be fine. If you do run into cases where something goes wrong, do let me know and I will do my best to remedy it.





Just lovely!

Write, right?

Yes, I could just write (on this blog), but it's no fun without pictures, and my @!#!#$ camera won't cooperate! It was acting really moody to begin with, and then DaddyBoy went and dropped it, twice in about 10 seconds, while we were visiting friends I hadn't seen for a year, and really wanted some pics of their little girl with our own little BabyBubble. And he's never clumsy! So I have things to show but uhh...not really, unless you have telepathic powers.

So I'm ending up not making all those posts I wanted to share, the ones I wanted to fill in for all the time I was away. Guess we'll have to go shopping.

Anyway, more importantly, the sweet little BabyWorm is turning into R2D2! She's walking! YAY!!! And it is so adorable to watch her do her robot walk. It's funny how one day she was tottering a few steps before falling down, and the next day she was walking entire room lenghts, turning and navigating. Wow! She still resorts to crawling when she wants to get somewhere really fast, like when I'm playing catch with her, or when KittyCake is :)

Featured

Two of my yellow creations were featured back to back on Etsy.

Cookies!

Our camera is on the fritz again, and is being really difficult to work with, but I managed to snag a couple of pics of these chocolate chocolate chip cookies that came out yummier than they look! I was really thrilled because I'm not a cookie person, although I frequently bake cakes.

The original recipe has TWICE the amount of chocolate chips in it, but these were still really choclatey!

The cocoa and the flour together reminded me of those unbelievable candy cane glaciers.

I'm back!

It's been almost a month that I last wrote. A few things happened that just stilled my heart for the longest time, and I felt frozen. I really did. Frozen at my very core. The Mumbai attacks (read Arundhati Roy's telling article), and news reports of cruelty resulting in the death of two little girls, one in the US, one in Canada, apparently by their own mothers, were among other stories of horror and hopelessness.

How do we find it in us to inflict fellow humans, let alone children with such violence that we kill them?

Such reports numb me beyond words. And I react by withdrawing into a shell. Not a good strategy - it doesn't really help me, and it certainly doesn't help anybody else. I know what I should do is find means to fight this injustice that so enrages me, but I feel too paralyzed to do anything, and that makes me feel even more pathetic. Some day, I hope I have the courage and the composure to lend my voice to the cause of kindness and justice.

Until then, I take solace in the the thought that if the world is still surviving, then surely there is more good happening here than evil, more benevolent people walking among us than those who wish to do harm. Something, somewhere is redeeming us.

I have a bunch of post titles saved up for in between, because although I could not write I did make things now and then. Mostly I spent time with my family, finding comfort in their presence, and reminding myself how much I have to be thankful for.

So I'll be filling in the gaps soon. If you are reading this, please share how your year is ending, what you learned, and what you hope for.

REAL e-know

I've been too shy so far to post any pictures of my family, but here's one of DaddyBoy deep in the white stuff after a huge snowstorm that hit Niagara. It took him a good half hour to get the car out. I took the picture from the BabyDonut's point of view, who was watching with great interest from the mesh-part of the kitchen window. She was thrilled to see all those huge chunks of e-know!