Office Clip Bookmarks

I had seen some office clip bookmarks a long time back on an art blog, but never got around to making one.

Until today afternoon. I saw a purple office clip lying around on my computer desk, and I had recently purchased these stickers from a handicapped person in a local train.

I stuck two stickers of the same type on either side of the clip and I had made a bookmark in seconds! :D

That brought a storm of ideas to my mind and with some more stickers, waste card paper, bindis and mod podge, I came up with these :

This is how they look from the back:

The first one from the left has my initial on the back :)

And the third one from the left is sort-of a message: "U hold the key" meaning, you hold the key to all that goes around you. A dose of philosophy :P

This is how they look on the book:

This says a lot about a "bookmark" (a footprint always leaves a mark behind..) :

And this I made by sticking stickers onto one another:

 Front:

Back:

On the book! :

Will be making some more, in different ways hopefully.. will upload as and when I make them! :)

Gel Candles

Had posted this on my regular personal blog during Diwali. It is more apt on this one. So here you go.. some "gel candle" making made easy :)


All I needed is some assorted glasses, gel wax, wax dyes, wicks, aromatic oil, opaque acrylic all-surface paints and embeds (beads, magic balls etc.). I got all of this from a shop in Crawford Market, Bombay.


You need to coat the wicks with wax first so you heat a little wax just enough for the wicks. I didn't have a microwave then, so I used the double boiling technique.


Double boiling technique: I filled an aluminium vessel with some water and kept it on the burner, then placed a steel container inside it which had the wax. You have to make sure the water doesn't enter the steel container though i.e. the water shouldn't mix with the wax.


I wish I had taken pictures while I was making the candles so you could have had a better idea of all of this. :(


Keep stirring the wax till the bubbles reduce and till the wax melts. You can now put in the wicks at once but don't let them stay in for too long. The wax solidifies in seconds so you can take the wicks out in less than a minute to get fully coated wax wicks.


You can now proceed to making the candles. You will need to heat some more wax (as per the size and quantity of your containers). Gel wax is reusable so it's okay to overestimate. Once the wax melts, you can add a couple of drops of the dye you want and keep stirring. The quantity of dye you add depends on how dark or light you want the colour to be but to be safe, add a little of it first because the wax catches colour quickly.


You can now start pouring the wax in the container while keeping the wick inside. You can use a setup like this so that the wick stays in the center:

This image has been Googled for.

If you don't want the wick in the center, then you can just leave it leaning against the container. Don't pour the wax all at once. For scented candles, the aromatic oil has to be added just before adding the last layer of wax. This is so that the scent does not evaporate. So you can fill 3/4th of the container with wax, then add a couple of drops of the oil and pour in some more wax again.


Also, this is the part where you can get creative by adding embeds. I used magic balls and beads. You can add shells too- they give it a whole different look!


Magic balls are balls which grow in size when you soak them in water. I added some of these magic balls while pouring in the wax i.e. I added them in between layers of hot wax. Some I added after pouring all the wax, but I later noticed that these balls were shrinking back to their original size when exposed to air so it's better that if you're planning to use these, you put them in between layers of wax.


Beads can be added after pouring in all the wax just when the wax is still in the liquid form. They'll automatically stick to the hot wax. You can also add beads in between layers of wax- it's all upto you.


Lastly, you can paint these glasses/containers using acrylic all-surface paints or stick some stickers on them to make them look attractive. I used paints, star and heart shaped stickers, satin ribbons etc.


And this is how it all looked like in the end:

You can notice the size of the magic balls in the first container here. Some of these balls are slowly shrinking to their original size due to exposure to air. So it's advisable to add them in between the wax if you're planning to use them, to retain their enlarged size. The white and some coloured beads have been added at the end when the wax was still hot.

Cheers!

You don't feel like lighting these after making them though because you don't want them to melt after you've decorated them so well :D It's fun nevertheless!

Bookmark

A few days back, I gifted a couple of books to a friend. These books were ordered from Flipkart. They've started providing bookmarks with every one of their books now and they're pretty interesting too. The bookmarks have a word on each side; these words are homophones, meaning they sound the same but are spelled differently. I liked how they've come up with this.. and it gave me an idea to make a bookmark myself. It'd give me something interesting to do plus it'd add a personal touch to the gifts- something I always love doing. So I removed a bookmark from one of those books, kept it for myself (:P) and began making a new one.

Materials used :
Cardboard,
White card paper,
Blue satin ribbon,
Purple card paper,
Silver sparkle pen,
Black marker,
Flower embellishment,
Bindis,
Glue,
A flat paintbrush,
Mod Podge (Glossy).

First, I took a plain cardboard and wrapped it with white paper with some glue to make it stay. I didn't have to cut the cardboard to the size of my bookmark- I just found one luckily that matched the size. After drawing a border on both sides with my silver sparkle pen, I got some embellishments from the nearby stationery shop. He is so fond of his stuff- one person who genuinely doesn't mind whether people buy his stuff but he wants everyone to have a look at it. I like going there just for his enthu. Anyway, so this blue flower really stood out from the rest of his embellishments and I decided to use it right away.

After sticking it onto the cardboard, I thought of writing something on the card. There was a quote I read on "Reading" some time back- Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.  ~William Hazlitt


Googled for Old English fonts and wrote the quote on it with my black marker. For quotes, calligraphy pens always work better than any other pens or markers. I couldn't find my calligraphy pen though, so had to settle for the marker.

I turned it over and started working on the back side. I cut three small purple flowers out of purple card paper, and stuck it onto the bookmark. Next, I made a small bar code with the black marker at the bottom right, and wrote my name and price.

My brother had got me three bottles of mod podge long back: glossy, matte and shimmer. As the description on the bottle says, it is a glue, a finish and a sealer! A dear friend, Sakhi introduced me to it and I have fallen in love with it :) I used the glossy one as "finish", meaning, I painted all over the bookmark- on both sides that is, with a flat paintbrush. My brother got these bottles from Michaels. In India, you may try looking for it in Hobby Ideas or any other well known craft shop.

I left it to dry for a few minutes, and stuck a blue satin bow on the front. Next, I stuck three silver bindis onto the three flowers at the back. And my bookmark was ready!

handmade by anu
mrp : priceless

Do feel free to comment and share more such bookmark ideas with me! :)