Friday, August 27, 2010

DIY Look Alike Wind Chime

Weekends..weekends..weekends...!!! They are so short:( Y is that? I wish there would be 2 more days in weekend. Whatever! Weather in florida is so unpredictable. It looks like its gonna be so damn hot down the day and all of a sudden ,BOOM and it starts raining cats and dogs. Just hoping it wont rain in the coming long weekend. By the way, my son Ankush has got his first tooth. He smiles and I can see a white pearl clinging up there.

This is a tutorial for Look alike wind chime which I completed yesterday.Of course its a look alike coz it doesnt really chime! I used hollow tubes from kitchen towels, shower curtain rings, artificial stones, beads, ribbons and of course all the necessary stationary.

You need to cut the kitchen towel tubes into pieces like this. Simply cut the tube lengthwise and you get this.One was enough to get six such pieces.
     

Next, you need to stick colored paper on both sides of these. I used black and white alternating on 3 of them, i.e back and front both.

Next , you neeed to cover the shower curtain rings with any ribbon of your choice. I used all in all 8 rings .

After sticking the colored paper, use beads/stones/ embellishments on them for decoration. I used these stones.

Join the cut paper tube and shower curtain rings with beads as shown. I used a thread to join them. I tried joining them with strings but it was hard to do so. Hence stuck with the good ol' thread. Join 3 such pieces equidistantly to a ring.

To hang it, you need to take 3 equal length of thread strands, join it equidistantly to the ring  and  place a knot by tying all 3 strands together half distant away, and the other end can be used to hang it as seen in this pic.

I made 2 of these . If you can get something that looks like a really big ring, double the size of the shower curtain ring I used, all 6 could be put into one, which would look awesome. So here's how I made this hanging.

This is what I had for lunch today. Penne pasta with kale and chickpea:) slurrrrrpppppp!!!

Monday, August 16, 2010

DIY Home Decor [1] , a bread and a cake

It's the 15th of August today and a very Happy Independence Day to All.I do feel very proud to be an Indian. Also, Im sure most of us are still whining and complaining about all the socio and economic issues in India. But Hello!!!! Its our country ,We need to change and help others to change, right? We really need to come out of all our old ways and practices , think practically and move ahead. Ahem..Ahem...Guess I need to write a different post on  this topic;)Lemme stop here about this,NOW.

I love decorating my house, especially glaming up the boring and the pale white walls in my apartment. Ufffff...Ooooooooooooooh .Ankush (my son) has removed the space bar button and we are finding it so difficult to type:(( ;)  Coming back, So I have a number of small budget, reusable products home decor projects in my mind. So thinking of posting a series of DIY's. But I'm gonna be real slow and here are the first ones.
            
                I found this set of Construction Paper at Michaels. Its an amazingly cheap product but a very interesting and handy product. Just use your creativity and you can get a million ideas. But my only problem is with the colours. I don't really like the available colours. I would have loved more softer colours, but considering its mostly used by kids for their school craft projects, its a Thumbs Up! Hope I can find an alternative paper just for the colour sake.



Ok, So I am not gonna give a step by step tutorial here, but the picture says it all. This one ,I stuck on the wall across the front door. All you need is the construction paper, a thin cardboard or any paper to stick them on, scissors, glue , sketchpens/markers ,double sided gum tape and your imagination. I cut thin strips of blue and white and pasted it randomly to give the background. And I used pieces of ribbon here and there randomly. Since I wanted to stick this across the front door, I used the WELCOME theme. Just cut brown and green squares for the letters and stick them over the stripes. You can cut any designs you like or paste other embellishments and stick it over this. And its done!!!

This one here ..NOT a good pic:( But in real ,it does look good:) So you need construction paper,double sided gum tape ,scissors , a thin cardboard (I used my cereal boxes) and of course your Imagination! Cut circles of 3 different sizes and colours from paper and thin cardboard. paste the paper over the cardboard.Cut thin circle strips of white and paste it over any circle as desired.Now arrange them as per your likes and paste it over wall. What I exactly had in my mind was to make a 3 or 4 ft long of this continuous design with light blue, dark blue and few tiny circles of black and white in between them arranged randomly. But so bad , cudnt find the appropriate colours:( So ended up doing it like this! Anyways,It still looks gr8:) Only If I had more time I would have cut circles on white sheets and painted them  to my hearts content.



This is the apple and banana bread I baked the other evening which came out well .Its a super fast recipe which got prepared, went into the oven and baked out in an hour. Yummylicious!! but hubby dear did not like it:((He wanted a spicy bread,not a sweeter one. "Next time Honey!"

This is my first ever fondant cake I prepared for my Bday, which didn't really turnout as I wanted it to. First of all, I didnt have much time with my son around. Secondly, Phew.......fondant is toooooooooooooo hard to work with for first timers. Thirdly, You need to make all your fondant decorations a day or 2 earlier to let it harden up. And blahblah blah...really lots of things I didn't knew before trying it. I know,I know , too many excuses!!! But the best part of it is that, I gottu learn all these and of course it tasted awesome:) That's what hubby dear said;) He loved the cake and he's here pinching my arm as I write this:) hmmmmmm..Learn from your mistakes.

Waiting to make my next fondant cake on my hubby's bday.