Kundan embroidery jhumka ;)

Hello All,

I have to start with, I am feeling mighty please with myself! :D Yesterday night was an unusually happy night where a pretty risky experiment paid off!

When I had a phone conversation with my supplier and a very dear friend Neha, of A-One Craft Supply about buying some half pearls, I am sure she wondered if I was right in the head! Asking for half pearls THAT small is kind of insane! ;) But she persisted, hunted them down and bought me the most marvellously useful craft supply........Neha, I owe you a zillion for this one :)

I have to thank my clients who don't even blink at allowing me to experiment wildly with various materials and processes :)

So, here goes, yesterday's R&D result..........a kundan embroidery look jhumka

The first trial is shown here (which didn't turn out great but then, if you do enough work, you'll eventually get there :D)

Thanks Ketaki and A-One Craft Supply, for making these possible :)

Happy Quilling

Pritesh

PS: If my posts inspire you to create something on similar lines, I feel highly flattered. But please, do respect the effort I take in conceptualizing and executing, please give a direct link to my work when you are inspired by mine. Thanks for understanding........:-)

Quilled National Bird.........

Dear All,

Quilling a peacock had been a long-standing dream of mine :) So, when Shital asked me if I would do a peacock, I jumped but almost immediately followed panic attacks. For anyone who has seen a peacock up close, figuring the plume colours out is like trying to count the number of cells in out body! It's a spectacularly beautiful bird, and correspondingly difficult to quill!!!!!

Here we go with the finished project :)

Stage 1 was simplified greatly by Shital by providing the base on which  the peacock was to be made. And Stage 2 stumped me for quite some time. The correct blue was impossible to find in shimmer texture. I scoured the old city markets but the correct blue seems to have disappeared from the face of this Earth! Bless Fevicryl, they keep coming up with products that have often been life savers for my craft needs!!!!!

The latest (HEAVILY recommended) range of sparkle paints came to my rescue. The hues in these paints are brilliant and affordability? Ah, Fevicryl style, they are extremely reasonably price :) So, I took the waste paper left over from paper cutting for text strips and painted sheets after sheets in the blues and greens. I wish I had taken photos of that too! Thanks to high humidity, the papers took forever to dry and forever looked soggy from all the paint......

To make the body of the peacock look 3D, I resorted to Panduro air-dry clay. I'm no clay expert, so please excuse the undulated surface! :D I randomly cut out another waste paper (left over from sample printing) into  peacock body shape and adjusted clay to the shape.

Making the peacock body feathers was the most strenuous part of this project. I used my Martha Stewart teardrop punch for punching out really small tear drops of the sparkling blue paper. Then started the arduous task of fringing these teardrops with a width of ~ 0.3 mm. My eyes are probably hurting because of this strain ;) But after about 300 of these, the upper body of the peacock began to take shape :)

Peacock doesn't really make your life easy! :D It's "flying wings" are random shades of black, white and brick red. My empirical methods came to the rescue! :D I drew random lines on white paper and thus resulted the flying wings of the peacock :)

The plume "base" was again air-drying clay, flattened to provide a shallow base for the feathers to rest on top.

It was the GREEN of the feathers that took maximum creativity! Phew! I have used Sparkle Pearl Green by Fevicryl as the base. On top went hints of Sparkle Pearl Blue and Sparkle Pearl Violet. The slightest tinges of brownish are Daler Rowney Bronze acrylic paint, which was used by dabbing a cotton ball in the paint and then tinging VERY lightly over the feather. This "process" took almost 15 iterations to get right! My room looks like a peacock has been beaten to death there, with so many "feathers" lying around! ;)

The "eyes" of the feathers are made out of 1 mm strips hand-cut out of 120 gsm beige shimmer paper. The tight coils were shaped and then, coloured from top. The colours remain the same, except green, which is Pearl Green by Fevicryl.

The rest, I think, is pretty self-explanatory. :) I HAVE TO thank my feedback system here :) 

The first in this list is Pri, who communicated right at 6 am or so (IST) and planted the 1 mm strips idea in my head :) You're a DARLING lady! You have no idea that I owe you my career :)

Second is a very what-you-see-is-what-you-get lady, who has never let me down. She always provides honest feedback, whether I like it or not ;) So, a MILLION thanks Ketaki

My life line, my baby, Baba always has been a pillar of strength, the one who managed to talk me into quilling, in the first place! :D As always, her feedback was forever available, so that Didi never wavered from her task at hand :)

One lady who has never failed at giving me feedback, that too in detail, is Manu. She diligently writes back, not just with feedback but also, suggestions about what and how I can use to make my projects better. 

And yeah, thanks to other people who put up with my incessant Whatsapp messages! Thanks Tarun, Sanasi, Meg, Yamini! You guys mean a LOT! Keep twisting my ears whenever you feel I'm losing focus :) 

Happy Quilling

Pritesh

PS: If my posts inspire you to create something on similar lines, I feel highly flattered. But please, do respect the effort I take in conceptualizing and executing, please give a direct link to my work when you are inspired by mine. Thanks for understanding........:-)

Making paper quilled/punch jewellery water resistant

Dear All,

I get so many queries about water-proofing paper jewellery (in spite of posting a detailed procedure in Indian Quilling Guild) that I decided to write this post. I would've loved to post a video/photo tutorial but it may have to wait a while.

For quillers in India specially, things like Diamond Glaze are not easy to come by. So, here goes the process (specific to materials available in India, I'm sure quillers in other countries will be able to find analogues easily).

Step 1: Making the jewellery itself. It is an important step for making jewellery sturdy. You'll need to use your judgement in gauging whether the piece is sturdy. I am hopelessly obsessed with the jewellery being able to withstand stress (like my son pulling at my earrings). Make the piece "sturdy" before you think of water-proofing.

Step 2: Give a coating of a "water-soluble glue". It should at least be water soluble when wet. You can use Fevi-Gum (available for Rs. 5 in ANY stationery shop). Make sure you coat all crevices etc properly. Synthetic bristle brush works best, camel hair brush is a little difficult to handle due to variable length of the hair. Allow this to dry properly. I am biased towards Fevicryl Hobby Ideas Fabric Glue. It's more expensive but I prefer its consistency compared to Fevi-Gum (which I find more runny). But it's purely a personal preference.

Only glue coating is not likely to make the jewellery water-resistant as PVA (poly vinyl acetate) glue "swells" when in contact with water. It looks ugly to say the least, and the jewellery will be disfigured forever. Fevicryl Hobby Idea Fabric Glue however, is OK by itself. It still remains "sticky", so I won't recommend glue layer alone (unless you want all your paper jewellery to become ONE single lump, all earrings mating with each other! :D

Step 3: This is a crucial step and takes most time (not for coating, but for drying). Use a good lacquer varnish. My recommendation is Asian Paints Touch Wood. But practically any varnish should do. Again, use a synthetic brush to coat the jewellery. You WILL see some discolouration but don't worry, if you've done the glue coating properly, this discolouration usually vanishes after drying. Varnish needs overnight drying, so plan properly. If you are enthusiastic about a glossy finish, you can put 3-4 layers (which means coating them for 3-4 days). It lends a pretty (not my personal favourite still) glossy finish that is harder as well.

Please prepare properly for handling varnish (gloves if you are particular about not getting your hands smelly, I personally don't care). Work in a well ventilated (preferably with an exhaust fan) fan place. Use some organic solvent to clean the brush (kerosene works fine for me). Keep a scented hand-cream handy, you'll need it to get rid of the strong smell varnish will give to your hands. Try tying a wet cloth over your nose, organic solvents, when inhaled, are BAD for women of reproductive age (please take my word for it, I'm a PhD in Chemistry and I specifically know the side effects)......

I hope this is comprehensive enough. So, if you know someone who wants to how to make the jewellery water-resistant, please share this link. It is very difficult for me to write individually to people who ask. I end up feeling bad not replying........

For those who want images and details of the waterproofing material, here is the link

Happy jewellery making :)

Pritesh

PS: If my posts inspire you to create something on similar lines, I feel highly flattered. But please, do respect the effort I take in conceptualizing and executing, please give a direct link to my work when you are inspired by mine. Thanks for understanding........:-)