Starbella Ruffle Scarf

Knitting or Crochet I have not done much in these 15 years. Knitting was done last during school days and  I had my hands on crochet when doing a baby blanket for my kids ( a blue for my son) and (a pink for my daughter ). After that, this is my next try on knitting making a ruffle scarf for me and my daughter.

My sister sent me this wool to try out knitting,  which got me excited and inspired from her to try this ruffle scarf. She has done many  scarfs either crochet or knitting. This wool is made from a company called Starbella Premier Yarns.   I went on YouTube and found the easy Tutorial  on how to knit this ruffle scarf. 

For a Friend

For Me

I have also created a similar one for my daughter (a smaller one fits her size). I'm working on another one for my friend...

  

Instructions from the  Cover paper :  

1. Cast on 8 stitches as follows: Pull out a length of yarn and open it up; insert right needle into each loop along top edge, working from back to front.
2. One-ball scarf: Knit across each row until 1 yard of yarn remains. Bind off all stitches.
   

Wave of Life - Mixed media Art

Being from Indian origin and having so many bangles always wanted to do something creative out of them. I got the perfect opportunity of making a mixed media artwork with them. The theme was simple, WAVE of LIFE. Wave of Life - representing Ups and Downs of your life. The Up point when everything goes well, everything is going very nicely according to your way, and sometimes its DOWN point in life where nothing works the way you want and you are having hurdles after hurdles to get anything done. 
So basically life is full of Ups and Downs.

About the Painting - Used a framed canvas which I had purchased from a craft store, painted the canvas with grey metallic paint to give its shine. Applied 2 coats of the paint throughout the canvas.  Glued the bangles in this manner. I had 2 sizes of bangles (The big one is mine and the inner size fits my daughter's). Two ways to look at the painting. One as a wave form going up and down, another way to look at it as a W for Wave.  I did not want to mix too many things as this was my first attempt with mixed media art. With a black sharpie pen drew waves with the remaining empty space. The below photograph is with the light effect on the painting and the above one without the lights. 

Many who had visited our house loved the painting and were asking their kids to do something with all the bangles (which don't fit them anymore).

Teacher Appreciation Week 2012 - by my Son

Teacher Appreciation Week for my Son's Teacher.

Its again this time of the year where we appreciate our kids teachers for all their effort. My Son loves to come up with ideas and since he is 8 years, I cannot influence him too much with my ideas also. He was very clear that he did not want to do the same as his sisters ideas, hence a different post as the gifts/ideas have individually come from them and are different.

Day 1 - Acrostic Bookmark- He has come up with an acrostic poem bookmark for his teacher.

Bookmark (Front side)

Bookmark (Back side)

 During my Son's birthday we had donated a book to the class. So he wanted to make a bookmark which his teacher will use for that book and later for herself, as she is reading this book to the class. He loves rainbow colors and he loves acrostic poems. Last year he has done acrostic for  "Teacher," he modified it to describe his current teacher and did a acrostic for Rainbow. So basically its a  "Rainbow bookmark for a RAINBOW (Acrostic) TEACHER (Acrostic)". My only help was for printing out for him and putting contact paper to the book mark so that it will not get dirty easily.

Paper fortune cookies

Day 2 - Fortune appreciation  - This idea came up when I asked my Son to come up with 10 things he likes about his teacher which in turn will turn into memories of 2nd grade. He easily came up with the 10 things, but we wanted the teacher to enjoy it in a unique way. Tuesday is the day where 2nd grade parents are providing lunch for all the teachers, so the idea clicked of presenting it in fortune cookie way. My son loves fortune cookies when we go to Chinese restaurants, so we decided to make it "paper fortune cookie" where his teacher can open it and read them. I have bought a take out box and filled it with these cookies and put a small note for his teacher. Initially idea was to make my son do the paper cookie but it was hard so I had to do them all. Got the steps from youtube.

Sail boat thank you

Day 3 - Sail boat Thank You -  During my Son's spring break, he painted a terracotta pot holder plate. He painted the plate blue inside with red rim, and Yellow outside with green rim. The colors were chosen by him and painted by him. Only the glazing /shine paint was done by me. The idea was to use this plate to hold the fortune cookies, but once this was done, he loved the piece and wanted to use it to do the sailboat for his teacher. So he finally learn to make a sailboat with a paper and pasted it to the plate. Since the plate looked too plain, I bought some fish stickers, he stuck them near the boat. On the sail boat he colored them with a sketch pen and on the base he wrote "Thank you for a smooth sailing of learning. It was Fun". Making of sailboat was much easier for him than the paper fortune cookie.

Day 4 -  Puzzle - I asked him to come with some puzzle for his teacher.  He had read about code word (i.e for each letter you assign a number) and instead of writing the letters you put dashes and a number for each dash (representing the letter). Since it was his idea I did not want to change anything. All I did was to stick it to a colored card stock and rolled it and tied a orange ribbon to make it look presentable.

 Day 5 - Gift Card Holder - My son wanted to give a gift  (gift card) which will be useful for the teacher. So I decided to come up with something nice for his Teacher. So I designed a Gift Card holder. Since Teachers keep getting gift cards, I decided to create one (which can hold about 12 gift cards). They can keep it in the car instead of carrying all the gift cards in their hand bags.  Hoping his teacher will find it useful.

My Son is going to come with the order (he wants to give) his teacher. I've just put them all up here in my own order.

My Son came up with some ideas and so did I with some, but I had intense joy in helping my Son do this for his teachers, as this is our only way to show our appreciation and gratitude for all their efforts and time they put in each and every day.

Watermelon Basket

I had volunteered to bring watermelons to my Son's school for the teachers lunch (during teachers appreciation week). So I tried out a new way to take the watermelons in a watermelon basket.

This was my first attempt to craft a basket out of the watermelon and scoop out the water melons into balls and place them inside the basket. For the handle part, peel out the skin, I cut out some carrots and watermelon balls into a toothpick and inserted the toothpick into the handle so the handle is not plain.

There are lot of information on carving  which you can refer on the internet to carve a basket (watermelon).

I'm very happy my Son's teacher very much liked the idea how it was presented and  I'm thrilled to try out something new after a very long time.

 

Teacher Appreciation Week 2012 - by my daughter

Teacher Appreciation Week for my Daughter's Teachers.

Its again this time of the year where we appreciate our kids teachers for all their effort. This time I wanted to bring it out from the kids with very little help of mine. Since my daughter has started going to school, and is able to follow instructions, this time it was much easier than last year to make her do for her teachers.

We made gifts for the 5 days but gave it all on one day. She wanted to do it all on one day. We chose middle of the week and decided to give it to her teachers.

Day 1 Bookmark  - My daughter reads very well, and so wanted to thank them with a bookmark.

bookmark (front side)

bookmark (back side)

This is a very simple bookmark. If you see my other projects, this bookmark (in red) is a blank bookmark bought from the craft store (Micheal's craft store). On the Front side I had stuck a blue card stock. The flowers you see were bought  from this craft store. It had pins attached where you can prick a hole and fix it to the card with that pin. So I wanted to keep it very simple. The backside of the bookmark, I asked my daughter to write a note for their teacher "I love to read, thanks to you that I read so well!". She drew a small little girl and wrote her name below that. So this way we both put in effort.

Thank you note

Day 2 Thank you Note - My daughter made this on computer with the software kid pix. She loves to work on kid pix software, so I asked her to make a card for her teachers.  She  chose a rose and she added the border design and wrote a thank you and  her name. So I only helped her by printing this out and sticking to another thick card stock.

Paper Clay Magnets

Day 3 Magnets - During her spring break, she was doing things with paper clay so we decided to do some for her teachers. So all the 3  (we had clay molds) which she used to get the shape. She painted them last week before giving them. My part was to help her paint  the glaze paint (the glaze/finish) on them. Then the star face was drawn by me as she had already gone to bed. Following day after they were dry I had to stick magnets at the back, so they can be used as magnets. So that was my part but making the clay magnet was my daughter's part.

Day 4 Thank You Card - She wanted another card (with stickers).

I asked her to draw something for her teachers, and you won't believe it, she came with this heart sign (With I love you written inside) and the thank you coming as the string, she made it like a balloon, which I was really taken back. This was done on a white paper, so we used it as the inside of the card (stuck it to the inside). The front side had flower stickers so we used one flower and wrote Teacher appreciation week , and she stuck some bead stickers on top and bottom. Very simple but she loved doing it for them.

Day 5 - Gift for the teacher - She wanted to give something which they will use. Packed it in a little pouch and put all the item/gifts in one gift bag.

My daughter came up with some ideas and so did I with some, but I had intense joy in helping my daughter do this for her teachers, as this is our only way to show our appreciation and gratitude for all their efforts and time they put in each and every day.

Valentines gifts - A bookmark and ILove made by kids

My kids are growing up to a point where they can do their own valentine craft ideas for their friends and teachers. I'm teaching them to make something creative for their friends.

A Bookmark - My daughter who is 4 years old, crafted bookmark with Popsicle stick, foam heart stickers and bead stickers. It was easy for her to do this without my help. The heart stickers (foam) come in 3 different sizes so she put the big on the top, little big in the middle and the tiny one as the third. In between the spaces of the hearts, she chose 2 bead stickers (which I use for my other projects with kids) and pasted them. At the back she wrote "For my friend" and in the front her name. She gave the bookmark, along with a pencil and valentine cards and sticker all wrapped inside a treat bag.

ILove - My son who is 7 years old wanted him to craft something with the candy as they exchange cards and candies for valentines. So instead of giving just card and candy we picked up this idea from a website. It was easy for him to attempt this one with little help. From a target store, we bought conversational candy boxes. He wrapped the candy box in red card stock. Then I had downloaded the ILove valentine play list and the menu dial and he cut them out and pasted them on the red card stock. Then we went and bought strings from Micheal's (thin wool) and pasted them to the candy box and the other ends to Hershey's kisses milk chocolate (as the ear piece). Turned out to be a cool idea.

For the teachers of both my kids we did the same ILove but attached a gift card. First we wanted put the gift card inside the ILove box, but in the end decided to paste with a tape to the ILove box at the back. All the teachers came personally to us not only thanked us but really liked the cool gift ideas.

A cake made with paper clay and a terracotta pot

This is one unique gift which I made for a friend for her 40th birthday ! 2 things which I made, one is painted a terracotta pot decorated with beads, then another one is a cake made with paper clay as this can stay longer ! Placed the paper clay cake inside the terracotta pot and covered it with a use and throw glass. So when she lifts the glass you will see the cake for a surprise. This was decided last minute the reason being it will be a nice surprise (no one will expect a cake inside a pot) for a 40th surprise birthday party !

Paper clay cake - I wanted to make something unique and since I'm not into baking cake (even though I like to decorate one) so decided to give a try to this idea of making a cake with clay and then paint and decorate it.

This is a 4 tier cake (4 for representing 40 one for each 10 years) - the 3 tier cake is made with paper clay and the last top layer is actually a gift button (made in plastic) representing the top layer of the cake. With the button packet I also got 4 balloons (made with plastic) so I glued them to toothpick and made them stand on the cake (for decoration). The bottom layer of the clay I glued 4 designs which are made of plastic. Painted the lower layer of the cake blue. The middle layer of the cake I had made some designs in the clay so painted with pink and purple and pink on the top. The 3rd layer I had painted the cake orange. Then I glazed the cake with the shiny glaze . I had to glue the 3 pieces as they did not stick on top of each other very well. Then glued the top 4th plastic gift cake as the top layer. I made round balls and painted them with metallic silver and glued them to the 3rd layer (not shown in this photo) of the cake as decorations.


TerraCotta Pot - Painted the clay with green metallic paint and the rim with golden metallic paint. This is the first time I've tried with metallic paint. Then I bought these beads which can be glued and did a simple flower design with those beads. The color of the beads were silver and golden , so I alternated the flowers with alternate colors. 4 flowers below and 4 flowers on the top (below the rim of the pot). Then wrote happy birthday in the middle with golden paint.

Pranay won 3rd in Year book contest 2012

Proud again of my Son for winning 3rd prize in the year book contest. This year there is a 3 way tie for the 3rd place and its very exciting to hear and waiting to see how its going to come up in the year book.

Year Book contest is a contest conducted by my Son's school open to all students every year. They need to draw a page telling what their school is about and if they win 1st it will be printed up in front page and 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th winner's page will be at the back page of their year book. But this time its only 1st , 2nd and 3rd (3 kids who won 3rd) !

Definitely have to give him credit for winning it again.

Details about his Drawing

At the top - He wrote the school name and the year (2011-2012) below the school name. He chose to write these in one color which is blue.

At the center - We had asked him to come up with something different from last time. So he came up with a theme from things he has seen or done. He came up with 10 things, since its difficult to put all the 10 items for the theme, we asked him to choose 5 best out of the 10 he had written down.
Here they are -
1. he had planted some plants in school, he got excited and drew a man watering some plants and trees and added the caption "Grow trees".
2. "No littering sign" he has seen in many places. He drew a park by adding slides, kids playing soccer and put that sign "no littering" in the park .
3. He had seen solar power/panel being added in some homes in the neighborhood so he added that by drawing homes and added "save energy" as the caption for that.
4. Then "save on gas" he has been hearing a lot. So from home he drew people either walking or biking to school and drew a school on the right hand side below.
5. "Helping the old" was the last idea in the center which he picked up from a book. He drew a boy helping an old man cross the street.
These 5 ideas basically describe his theme.

At the bottom - The main theme was written at the bottom which is "learning to make the world a better place".

Finally finished the page with some coloring as he did not want to keep the page white.

If you want to see last year's year book page he had won 4th here it is. Refer to "Proud of my son for winning 4th in YearBook".