Punchcraft Flowers

Hi,

Good evening friends!!

Last few days have been filled with experimentation for me. I have always loved flowers and this fascination is seen in most of my projects. Be it quilling or decoupage or even painting. I just love flowers

Lately I have been seeing a lot of work done with die cut flowers and punch craft flowers. I do not own a Die Cutting machine but that has not stopped me from wanting to make them

So recently I decided to invest in some punches for the flower shapes. And I was set to go. Except I did not know how to make the flowers after punching them. Thus my search started in finding tutorials. (I must confess I am not too good at this activity and don't spend too much time.)

A few months back I had done a project of beaded candles (Click here) after following up on Dr Sonia's Blog. I decided to go back to her blog to get some inspiration and hopefully a tutorial. And as luck would have it. I got not one but two tutorials that I was able to try out with the punches that I already had.

Daisy

This is been inspired by the post by Dr Sonia on Handmade Flower Bouquet Tutorial. She has used a Die cutting machine for her flowers. I on the other hand, have punched out my daisy on a white cardstock.

I then coloured it with Distress Inks and shaped it with my flower shaping kit. It almost looked like the flowers in the tutorial that I had seen. Making a hole and inserting a pollen with glue and my flower was ready. 

Here it how it looks.

I tried the same with a round flower punch but I was not too happy with the look of this one. Here it how it looks..

Thus I need another look for this punch flower. Here is the tutorial from Dr Sonia Blog that I  loosely followed - Paper Rose Tutorial. I say loosely followed because, my cutout was around 1 cm only so was not possible for me to make buds by taking the petals separately.

The left was the punched flower petal. I made small slits to the same (on the right) so that it was easy to curl the petal. Coloured it with the choice of Distress Ink and shaped it using my flower shaping kit. I have used four petals per flower and have curled two petals inward and two outward. 

Finally have stuck them together to form tiny flowers. Here is how they look in different colours. 

I tried another look with just curling them inward and sticking three petals. As there was no bud in this I stuck some glitter balls to the same. 

Here is how the flower looks. I have attached it to a gift tag along with two punched leaves.

Hope you have enjoyed my little experiments with punch craft flowers. Will share more flowers in the future.

Wishing you a lovely day. Do leave your precious comments on this post.

Beaded Candles

Hi friends,

In this post I would like to talk about beaded candles and decorating a candle in general. When I got into crafting, along with painting, one of my major passion was candle making.

There is a lot of satisfaction in making a candles and seeing the colours set and emerge. You can never predict the outcome. But like many people who loves candles I must admit a decorated candle is a beauty and very tempting to have. 

Thus started my quest on collecting items for decorating my candles. And let me tell you even a simple ribbon can jazz up a candle beautifully.

Here are a few examples

Then a year back I suddenly got the idea of putting beads on the candle as decoration. (Actually I had seen a few candles coated in beads on pinterest and they looked beautiful) The idea sounded fun and looked super easy. Just put glue and put beads on top and it will stick.

But it was a hassle and a complete mess. Candles are usually round and of course I had chosen a round one. and the glue went everywhere and only a small portion could be done at a time. Wax is not an easy medium to stick on. So each patch would take hours to dry and then some beads would come off so the same patch had to be done over and over again

Though I did manage to complete one candle I was tired with it and it was no fun at all. Here is the picture of the candle done. If you see carefully you would still be able to see some places where the beads did not stick properly.

Then sometime around last year, I was just browsing through the net looking at ideas and new projects (I had just been introduced to the concept of paper crafts and was still learning about it). That is when I stumbled upon a post by Dr Sonia (She has this wonderful blog with so many tutorials that it's mind blowing)  and I was introduced to the something called the tacky tapes. There is a picture of her daughter putting the tape on a glass and putting beads onto that. 

That got me thinking. Why couldn't I put tape on the candle and then adhere the beads to it. I decided to try it. Thus I found a vendor who was willing to courier me a tape. And I finally tried it out. And voila it was so easy. I could do it in 1/10 the time. And if the beads didn't stick very well I could just press a little and they would stick or add new ones. I did choose bigger beads this time as I wasn't sure how it will do with smaller beads. 

Doesn't it look beautiful.

Hope you enjoyed this little information and the loved the candles done by me. Do let me know if you want some more additional information on candles.

Also do visit Dr Sonia SV Blog for some wonderful creations and tutorials

Nameplate

Good morning!!

I have finally finished the nameplate for my front door. 

I have been married for more than four years. Ever since we married my husband has been urging me to make a nameplate for our front door. In the first year of marriage we visited many shops and exhibitions in the quest of finding a perfect nameplate. But with no luck. Everything we saw and found was something we had seen on someone's door. And I did not want something that was common. 

I wanted something in earth tones, with a vintage look and at the same time I wanted a floral element. At the same time I wanted something simple, nothing too fancy. Tough.... you would say.

Well at some point I decided that I would make us a nameplate. So I kept trying things and art forms but nothing seemed to click. Every couple of months my husband would bring up the topic of the nameplate and I would look sheepishly and tell him "its work in progress". 

But between my other projects and commitments, I never got around to getting it started. A few months back I had ordered a few printed tissues for decoupaging. And there was this beautiful tissue which had a perfect vintage look and it was vibrant at the same time. It was perfect.

I found a piece of wood at home and guess what it was the perfect size, primed it and put base coat. I tried to get the exact shade of the tissue but couldn't but I was still happy with the colour. Once the tissue had been decoupaged to the wood, I added a darker shade on the side for the names. Once the tissue and the painted area was perfectly blended in I stamped a script stamp in the background in places to create a texture. Finally added some gold antique and bronze antique paint in places with a sponge. 

This is how it finally looked 

All that needed to be done was to paint our names.

And voila my nameplate is ready. Ready to be hanged. 

Do let me know what do you think about it 

Oil Paintings

I come from an artistic family. In the sense that both my mother and grandmother both were heavily into crafts.

I guess that was also a need of those ages. Not everything was found as easily in shops as it is in today's world. Also there was no internet. Thus granny made a niche in embroidery.

My mother on the other hand took things in a very different direction. Not only was she skilled in all forms of embroidery but she also did oil painting and bobbin lace (will share her projects of bobbin lace in a separate post). She did paintings for a few years and then with me keeping her busy slowly the brushes and the paintings got locked away. And forgotten.

My real love and appreciation for oil paintings started when I visited Lucknow and saw the paintings of the Maharajahs which seemed to be looking at me as I walked past them, even after more that a 100 years of them being painted. And it just grew when I saw the collection at the Salarjung Museum in Hyderabad, which has oils from just about every corner of the world. It actually has separate halls with art work from a different countries. A true treat for the eyes.

In the last four years both my husband and me have motivated my mother to start painting again. And slowly it has become her passion and hobby once again. Now every weekend is spent in front of a canvas board with oils. 

Here are some of her recent work.

Indian Village Scenes

Bunch of Flowers

Will share her other works also from time to time...

Thanks for taking your time to go through this page... Would love to hear from your end too

My Love for Candles

Hi Friends,

This is my post about candles. Yes before I got into any other form of crafting I got into making candles. Thus my first with candles. My husband loves having candles in the evening. And yes we do have candle light dinners very often. 

My very first candle was in a beer can which I had cut open to to make a mould (Though I have made one in school which refused to come out of the plate on which the mould was kept). This time too it was not a great success considering it leaned on one side but it did get me excited. Over the course of the next four years there were many experiments and many successes. Below are some of the candles that I have made.

Will share with you the simple process of making candles in the coming posts.

Enjoy till then!

P.S - Yes they are a lot of photos and I do hope you do enjoy them

Introduction

Hi!

Welcome to my blog.

I am Maansi and the creator of the products and crafts here listed on this page under the header Artfire Creations.

To give a little introduction about myself. I am a MBA graduate and a  HR professional by profession and a crafter by heart. I wont claim that I always wanted to do crafting. But I do admit that I have seen handicrafts and arts all my life thanks to my super talented mother.

Four years back if someone would have told me that I would be crafting as a hobby and also as a profession, I would have laughed. But being married to defense guy (who loves his wife making something creative) on the move and having taken a long planned break from the corporate sector it was a natural choice. Even then I would never have thought it would be such a success. But being in places where at times, options are limited and wanting viable and beautiful pieces is what prompted me to take up creating home decor items.

Why a need to start a blog?

I am mostly self learned and have learned a lot from my mistakes. Also I being a restless soul want to experiment with every form of art and craft, I have dabbled with various forms of art. But what I have found is even though you might enroll in a class you still don't learn everything. 

There are a lot of things that you would stumble upon when you do something wrong. And in my case being away from main hub of the city created another challenge - no classes available. Thus a long journey of experiments. 

My sources of learning have been my mom, who is an expert in many of the traditional crafts, a lot of books, internet and Youtube. What would we do without Youtube. Of course a few of my crafting friends have also been great help and inspiration along the way. 

So I want to share the experiment that I do, successful or unsuccessful (yes they may turn out not in the way you wanted) and then you learn something new. And I hope that this knowledge would be used by others in their own projects and learning.

I do have a facebook page where you can check out the creations I have done till now. The link is www.facebook.com/creationsartfire/

Happy Crafting!