Home Sweet Home

I did this layout for If its Groovy Home Sweet Home Challenge!

I had a lot of fun making this layout. Chennai is my home town back in India! It is a colorful place with lots of traditions, festivals, foods, beaches! This layout reminds me of home ! So many fond memories!! Chennai is gateway to the South, and its culture is distinctly different from that of any other city in India. Tamil tradition and culture is essentially the celebration of the beauty, which is exemplified through dance, clothing, and sculptures.


I started out with a white cardstock. Stuck the photo. Then I decided to use my water color pencils and used a good old toothbrush to spray the color on the paper. I covered my photo with a scrap piece of cardstock. You can see the close up picture to see the result. I like the soft colors of the water color pencils. It came out pretty cool. I made tabs of different colors for writing down what's special about my home town! The different colors signify my colorful hometown! Then just stamped on the layout for the title,accent and the border. All the stamps are by Fiskars. Love these ones! Very simple and quick layout. Hope you like it!

Finally I got it!

I spent hours..HOURS trying to create and cut the text on my card! It is a very intricate, delicate font! I saw the video on how to do this in Klo's Classroom. The video was just over an hour. I probably saw the video 10 times to get this right! I have been working on it for a week. It was tearing the paper, tearing the mat....just not going right! I finally started all over again today and figured out how to cut intricate and delicate fonts on my pazzles! My mat is a different story all together! It looks like it has been through thousand cuts :P.I was so exhausted that I even cut the mat instead of the paper!
I cut the birthday cake on pazzles too. It is a file from the pazzles craftroom.



One more new thing about this card is the Stitching! I sew on the card with my machine! I found it difficult to control the speed and go in a straight line! But I love the results..I need to practice sewing on paper...rough paper this time ;) wasted 3 cards!
Added some twine to the card.
It is probably the hardest I have ever worked to make a simple birthday card! But I learnt a lot about the inspiration software. It was fun!

Anurag's First Haircut!

I love doing the first layouts! They are so special. The first bath, solids, haircut, out in the stroller! So many stories to tell...I love double page layouts..you can get so many pictures on them! I usually don't print pictures smaller than 4X6. I try to crop them to a 4X4 if possible. Although, I am thinking of printing them at home in the future. So I can get different sizes. My layout is based on a sketch by Allison Davis. I forgot all about the certificate he got after his haircut. So as an after thought, I just added that to the layout. I usually pull the colors of my pattern papers based on the colors in the photos. That way they go well together. So, If the picture has a lot of yellow. I won't be using too much yellow based pattern paper. Just a bit, but try to bring out the other colors from the picture and one or two bold colors. I like to focus on the photo and not the papers. To select pattern paper, I would put my photos on the pattern papers and see if I get distracted by the paper or not. I hope you like my layout!

My First Pazzles Project!

I made a few cards using my pazzles! They came out pretty neat. I learnt how to make these after watching Klo's Marathon Video 1 in the pazzles craft room. I probably saw the video 5-6 times before I got it right! It is not an easy machine. It does have a learning curve. But I think, if you take the time to learn it, it will be totally worth it! I am loving it!

Winner of Orange blog hop!

Winner picked out by random.org is commenter number 2!

Aspromised!

Congratulations:)please send me an email at viji.lg dot gmail dot com with your addy! Sorry for the delay.

Welcome to the Fiskateers Orange Blog Hop! If you have come from Diane's Blog ,you are in the right place. This is a stop on the Orange Blog Hop where members of Fiskateers, a community sponsored by Fiskars, are sharing their passion for crafting. If you didn't, you may want to hop back to the Fiskateer Blog and start at the beginning.The blog hop starts on Saturday, October 1st and ends on Sunday, October 2nd,2011. Each blog on the hop will be doing an orange project using a Fiskars tool and some will be giving away blog candy! My giveaway is at the end of this post. Keep reading for details.

I made a very fiskateer-y card. Using the Fiskars Texture plates, I made the background for the card. I thank Cheryl(Lead) for sharing the awesome orange/green ribbon! Looks like it was made just for the orange blog hop!




Here is the prize I will be giving away. It is one of my favorite tools! The fingertip control swivel knife :).


One winner will be picked at random. Leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway. You can become a follower if you would like, but its not a must to be elgible to win the candy! Winner will be announced on Monday, October 3rd by 9:00pm CST. Next on the hop is Cindy be sure to stop by and visit.

Dust Covers!!

I made a dust cover for my big shot . I found a video on youtube by cherylswindow. It was very simple to just follow her and make the dust cover. I used an infusible lining underneath.



Then,I saw a beautiful dust cover in pazzles craft room which inspired me to make one for my pazzles. The pattern was originally designed by Roxanne. She was so nice and gracious to upload the pattern online for everyone to use! I used her pattern to make mine. I changed it a bit because I was not comfortable sewing the reversible dust cover. So I put a infusible lining underneath and used the measurements from the pattern. It came out beautiful!!Thank you Roxanne for the beautiful pattern.

So now I have two matching dust covers!:)If anyone needs the link to any of the patterns, please leave a note! I am so proud of myself:D

Ifitsgroovy Stamp Challenge!

I loved this challenge. When I first heard about it..I was thinking how am I going to do this now!! But it really forced me to think out of the box. I looked through all the envelopes I had saved from the cards and letters I have received. I found this very cute heart stamp. I decided to use this stamp and looked for an old photo of me and Sid back in college. We were much in love that time..We still are ;) LOL!

I used Pastel Pink DCWV cardstock as my base and inked it up. I love inking!! I used both the stamp and the negatives of the stamp to make the title of my layout. I chalked around the stamp to get the white blocks with postage border to write my title in.


I had tons of fun working on this layout! I hope you will give it a try. Looking forward to see what you all come up with!

The sketch I used is from 52sketches52weeks. They have awesome sketches.

Supplies: Fiskars Sure Cut Deluxe Trimmer, DCWV Pastel Cardstock, Frances Meyer Pattern Paper, Crafter Workshop "Dots all Around" Doodling Template, Nestabilities Classic Circle, Sassfras Flowers, Buttons, Red Chalk and Ribbon from my stash, CTMH Red ink, Fiskars Pink Ink.

Simple Stamping!

I made these for ifitsgroovy.....just sharing on my blog again!

I wanted to show you how to make some very easy cards. I love stamping and it is a fun way to create your own pattern paper. I looked through my stamps, selected a few and just started stamping. Then, I added some ribbon and stamped the sentiment. I had a plain orange ribbon, so I stamped the little flowers on it to match my pattern paper. This was my first experiment with stamping on ribbon and I really liked the way it came out. I am definitely going to do more ribbon stamping in the future. Let's see what stamps you have hiding in your treasure and get stamping!

I finally used my sewing machine!

I have had the sewing machine for 5 years! It has been sitting on the shelf and looking all pretty;)

We have decorated Anurag's playroom in Transportation Theme. All I needed was a pair of curtains with cars,trucks and trains. I looked in the stores,looked on amazon and found one I liked! They were 100$!!! I was like now that is a ridiculous price. I decided that I will just have to stitch one! My singer is an auto threader and I had difficulty threading it the first time ..way back in 2006. I never tried it again...just had a HUGE mental block! Anurag's baby sitter showed me how to thread it recently. We measured the window,cut the cloth and I finally stitched the curtain all by myself! I am so happy..more importantly Anurag loves it! I had some cloth remaining, so I stitched Anurag a pillow cover..he totally loves it! I made one more pillow cover with basket balls,soccer balls etc! He loves sleeping on his pillow. It costed $30 for the cloth with the backing! I got 2 panels, 2 tie wraps and one pillow cover out of it and a huge smile from Anurag :-) So totally worth it!




I used to stitch dresses when I was in college on my moms hand operated sewing machine. I am enjoying my machine now:-) I need to figure out how to stitch on paper! That would be awesome!