A Teeny Weeny Grasshopper

Hi Friends!

Hope you are doing well and enjoying . 

I am back after a long time. Was not feeling well and had lot of of other things to attend to. Didn't have the strength  or time for blog.

It is either very hot and humid here or raining heavily- either way it is difficult to cope with. Yesterday, we had a heavy downpour. It was sudden and so much rain accompanied by those ear shattering thunders.

Within no time entire city was heavily flooded. Luckily we got back power after an initial cut of half an hour.  We had to struggle in the rain to clear the drain holes constantly as the rain and winds dumped garden debris chocking the flow of water near drain covers. Oh Boy we just saw it in time or else our house would have been flooded with water. 

It rained steadily and heavily there after for nearly 3-4 hours and thereafter less heavily but still lot of rain.  More rain foretasted today and tomorrow also.

Well enough of my ranting. 

I wanted to share with you this teeny weeny Grasshopper. Just look at it. I caught it on my camera just few days back when I was chatting with my plants early in the morning.

It was just so tiny and so cute. I find all babies cute-human, animals birds or insects. don't you? Look at its eyes. I think it was dozing off. I am not sure whether it was just born or  may be few days old. 

It is first time I saw anything so tiny. 

Do you know what a baby Grasshopper is known as? Well I didn't. So I googled it. It is known as a "

"Nymph".  

Well the word nymph  brings to my mind an image of a beautiful maiden, roaming around the woods and sitting by rivulets or such things. :) Imagine a baby Grasshopper being called Nymph. 

Well it is slightly drizzling here and heavily overcast. we are bracing ourselves for another downpour.

Bye for now. Keep an eye on my blog. Got lot to share; provided there are no power cuts and my net connection works...

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Greetings To You All

Hi Friends!

Been away for so long.

Just peeped in to say HI!

Wishing You All a Very Happy Dassehra.

Wishing you Health, Wealth and Happiness.

I really Miss you all....Will be back soon....

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Design Your Bindis - 4

Bindi - The Forehead Art - Part 14

Hello Friends !

Here are some more simple Bindi designs for you to try.

Hope you like them...

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Hello There

Hi Guys. Been away for long time. 

Annual (final) Exams are going on for the children. My niece completed her exams on 16th. Xth class exams are going on. Many of my students need my guidance. So I have to be available 24X7 on Whatsapp. Technology has many advantages too, which the present generation knows how to use.

Since Maths is one subject which is mostly hated and feared, I have to be available to my students, to help then with their last minute preparations. I have a tough time convincing, cajoling and what not so that my students do well in their math exam. Inspite of our  hard work, they still are nervous about this particular subject. I am not able to completely take away their fear for math. Xth being board exams, students and parents are both nervous. So I am busy most of the time.

Well I also start my summer sessions and next academic sessions from now itself. So there is so much work, enrolling new batch, interacting with parents and so on. 

So am not able to post much. 

Here the summer heat is raising day by day. We are preparing for our New Year next week. Money is again a problem as most ATMs don't have cash since last month or so. It is once again like in de-monetisation time. So we are spending every paisa with much care and only if absolutely necessary. 

See You all soon....Hope you are doing well and preparing for the summer holidays and travel.

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Fairy Birthday Card

Fairies and Castle in Clouds

Yes Fairies and a Castle in the clouds - that is what one of my little friend wanted in the birthday card. So she chose the elements and I helped her make the card.

I am always making and creating things in urgency with not much time on hands to plan or think of some creative elements. So I end up creating simple and easy ones.

I used a slightly textured, baby pink card stock , A4 size as base. After folding it, I glued on the blue glitter self adhesive tape.

Then added the fairy stickers and the castle. These were self adhesive 3D stickers. I stamped the Happy Birthday sentiment using blue stamping ink onto a piece of pink card stock with rounded corners. The edges were touched up with pink stamping ink using cotton swabs. This was glued on to the card using double sided dimensional tape.

Then A bit of cotton was fluffed up and added as clouds near the castle, to give a feeling that the castle was somewhere in the skies beyond the clouds. The card was finished within half an hour under the stern supervision of the little one.

The little one's favorite colours were blue and pink -it is quite obvious from the above :) but they are my favorite colours too.

My little friend was happy and elated withe the card. Shhhhh! The card was created by the little one...I only guided her. 

Hope you too like the card.

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Design Your Bindis - 3

Bindi - The Forehead Art - Part 13

Here are some more Bindi designs.

I have used, an oval, tear drop and few small circular bindis.

Hope you try them. You can vary the sizes of the bindis.

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Easy and Simple Cards

Hello there! Hope you are all doing well. Here the temperatures are slowly soaring up as we are approaching Shiva Ratri- the official day from which our summers start as per our traditional calendars. 

I am still busy cleaning and organising. Phew! Lots to do yet. My garden needs attention. I need to repot and do lots of cleaning up amongst other things. Well this is a never ending process.

Here is one card which is very simple and easy to make. 

I used A4 size baby pink  lightly textured card as the base. I could not capture the colour correctly. No matter how I tried, it is showing peach colour. Any pundits here who can give me some tips on how to get perfect photos? please do help me with some tips and suggestions.

I used two types of glitter self adhesive tapes. After folding the card, I stuck the two tapes as shown below.

Then I added felt flowers with smiling faces. I stamped out the sentiment in black ink on a pink card stock, touched up the edges with pink stamping ink and glued it to the card. Lo the card was ready.

This was done in just few minutes. I needed a card urgently and could not think of something which was much complicated.

Materials Used:

Baby pink textured card stock - A4 size
Glittered self adhesive tapes
Felt flowers
Small piece of Pink card stock
Sentiment stamp
Black and Pink Stamping Inks
Glue, double sided self adhesive tapes

I have many cards in various stages of progress. Mostly, I am stuck with stamping part- which is not one of my favorite things to do. With temperatures soaring and power cuts now and then it is difficult to attend to so many things at a time.

Keep watching my blog.....

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Design Your Bindis - 2

Bindi - The Forehead Art - Part 12

Here are some more designs for you. Very simple ones.

I have used circular, drop shaped and oval shaped sticker bindis. You can use bigger or smaller sizes of these bindis as they are available in different sizes.

Hope you like these designs. Watch out for more in my next posts.

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Friday Free Pattern- Valentine Day Special

My Heart Beats For You...

Here is a pattern I am posting for you on Saturday rather than Friday. Sorry for the delay. I have to attend to all my pending matters, held up due to the demonetization. I wanted to embroider the pattern before posting. So It took me some time.

Since Valentine Day is fast approaching, the theme of the pattern is centered on it. 

I first drew the pattern and digitized it. Then printed it out. 

Since I was stitching it on a hand kerchief which was made of fine cotton, I could place the design under the cloth and easily trace it.  

This is how it looked after tracing it with a pencil.

First I started with the heart. I stitched the outline in Chain Stitch. Then filled it using buttonhole Filling Stitch. Then stitched the flourishes on either side using, Stem Stitch.

I have used red coloured Pearl Cotton thread from Anchor - single strand.

So my embroidery looks like this.

You can use other stitches, threads according to your liking. I feel this pattern looks good on hankys, blouses, shirts, -sleeves and pockets, kids garments, small bags or purses, pillow cases, cushion covers. 

Here is the free pattern

Just try it out and please share your work. I would love to see how it turned out. I hope this pattern is easy to down load and print and the size is also OK.  If there are any issues with downloading and printing, please mail me. I am not well versed with digitizing drawings. I tried my best.

Hope you like it...

Please Note:

• These designs are my own creations.
• All images and text in this post are copyrighted and all rights are reserved.
• You can use them for your personal use only.
• If you use them, please send me the pictures of your work using these patterns, which I will post on my blog
• OR if you post your work using these patterns on your blog or site please link to the original pattern here on my blog and let me know about it. I would appreciate that very much.
• If you want to share them please attribute the work to me, with link back to this blog.
• Please do not re-publish or Post the patterns or my work on your site or blog or any where or distribute my photos or text.
• I hope you will respect my request.

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Design Your Bindis - 1

Bindi- The Forehead Art- Part 11

One of my friends asked me for a simple design, easy to create in a jiffy. These days every one is using sticker or self adhesive Bindis. So I have used to them to create these designs.

Here are some Bindi Designs, using sticker Bindis. They are very easy and you can experiment to find your own favorite one.

I have used a medium sized round or circular Bindi,  small circular bindis and oblong shaped small bindi- all  in maroon colour with black edge and all are self adhesive (sticker) bindis, readily available in the markets. 

 This is a simple round bindi- maroon or dark red with black edge.

 Here I have added a small bindi in same colour.

 Here three small bindis in triangular shape with a big one.

 The same with reversed triangle

 Four small bindis with big one in the center.

 I have used small ones - 5 of them as semi circle under the big one.

 Here I have added one small one on the top to the previous design.

Here, I have used small bindis - 8 of them to surround the big bindi in the center.

Hope you like them. Watch out for more designs......


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Cupcake Birthday Card

Hi guys. been a long time. I am battling with termites. Yes. I have lost many of my old books 😭. Most of my dolls, which I use for the Bommala Koluvu, during Sankranti were completely damaged. 

Dolls made of cloth, wood or paper or such materials were completely eaten off. Dolls made of clay or plaster of paris were damaged beyond repair. That is, they are covered with grime or tubes or trails-I don't know what to call them. I cannot wash them, as they get damaged. So I had to throw them away.

A few of the dolls made of glass or ceramics, I could wash them with a lot of hard work. But they were not damaged. So I lost much of my doll collection. Now I have still one or two trunks to clean up. I got so depressed with all the damage and grime, I put off my cleaning. 

Before I could take it up again, we were hit by demonetisation. Going around the banks for depositing and withdrawing money was a real tiring task. So or the past two months all our works stand suspended as we don't have cash to pay.  We had to struggle a lot. We had to cut off much of our spending, even for our daily needs.

Now it is getting better. But still people are wary to spend money. Market is also very dull. Hmmm...

So there it is. In between all this, we had our festivals, birthdays and anniversaries to celebrate, which could not be celebrated much because of the money factor.

OK now here is my card, which I made for my niece's best friend for her birthday. Here again, I had to make do with what I had, as market was very dull at that time and I did not have much cash in hand to spend on craft materials.

Yellow part is the background on which I placed my card for taking photograph.

Now here is what I did.

I have used white card stock and on it cupcake printed paper as back ground fot the cup cake. Here are the steps:

• Folded the A4 size white card stock
• Cut the cup cake patterned paper to required size 
• Glued it to the card stock
• Glued the sentiment printed ribbon on to the card
• Glued the rose with the leaves on the ribbon added to the card
• Cut the pink corrugated paper in cup shape.
• Cut the cream coloured hand made paper in a semi circle shape(almost)
• Cut the chocolate sauce part from the dark brown handmade paper.
• Punched out a small cherry from dark pink metallic paper 
• Glued the chocolate part to the cream coloured semicircle
• Glued, the cherry on top of the chocolate
• Glued the coloured crystals to the cake.
• Now glued the cup to the cake part
• Tied the pink satin ribbon to the cup-secured it with glue from under side of the cup
• Tied the bow on the surface of the cup and glued it.
• I attached the cup cake to the card with the help of dimensional tape to give it a raised effect
• Finally attached the butterfly sticker on the cup cake.

It looks yummy isn't it?

Hope I have not missed out any part. I was really happy to find the sentiment printed ribbon in my stash. I am not so good with stamping yet. Especially, if I have to add a sentiment to the card. Slightest mistake can ruin it. Moreover, many of the coloured inks, don't print well. Using black may not gel with all cards. So there it is. It is one of my best cards so far....

Materials Used:

• White card stock A4 size
• Cupcake patterned paper
• Dark Brown Hand made paper
• Cream coloured Hand made paper
• Pink metallic paper.
• Pink corrugated paper
• Pink satin ribbon
• Sentiment printed Ribbon
• Butterfly sticker
• Rose with leaves sticker
• Small Circle Punch
• Coloured crystals
• Dimensional tape and glue

Hope you like it.

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Rangoli - 342

Ratham Rangoli - Chariot Rangoli

Rangoli 342

Follow the dots from the Design. The Kalasam in the Center can be drawn with the help of dots or just free hand drawing. The leaf toran is also extra and free hand drawing. This has swastikas in chain rangoli. 

This ends the Dhanurmasam Rangolis. Hope you have liked my Rangolis. 

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