An Upcycled Valentine

I have been crazy busy with work and family and have found absolutely no time to craft. I have however been going through some old projects that I had done and photographed. A lot of them can be found in all my books, The Ultimate Guide to Upcycling, Crafty Cans and Perplexing Plastic and The Christmas Guide to Upcycling and lots can also be found on my blog.

For those of you who are reading my blog for the first time, I am a mixed media artist with degrees in Mathematics. Don’t ask how that happened, it just did I love to use materials that would otherwise be thrown away in my art. Things like soda cans, plastic packaging, plastic bags, fabric

All my books!

I am so super excited! All my books are now available on the Kindle. You can download them through the links shown in the sidebar on the right. Oh! and Amazon Prime members can read the books for free!

All three books are based on upcycling techniques. Turn soda cans, plastic packaging, fabric scraps, old books and magazines into works of art. Everything from cards, frames, scrapbook layouts, bags, ornaments and table decor!

The Ultimate Guide to Upcycling can also be downloaded for free if you sign up for my blog.

 

How to make a Smash Book the Upcycled way Part 3

Here I am again and I finally found some time to work on my Smash Book! The upcycled version looks pretty cool and I started work on the first page yesterday. I am going to talk about some upcycled embellishments over the weekend but I thought it would be cool to share what I did for my first upcycled smash book page with y’all!

Yesterday was an amazing day. I had lunch with a team at our company and also found the time to shop and get an awesome pair of shoes while waiting for our order to arrive I had a lovely evening with friends and followed up on some very interesting projects at work. Got a few

Decoupage Steampunk Desktops

Nopes I don’t mean computer desktops. I mean old fashioned writing table desktops. The ones we used to sit at and do our homework or write letters or make the occasional jigsaw puzzle I love desks and I have a beautiful one that was given to my older sister by our grandmother and to me by my sister. It’s quite old fashioned and

My Book of Inspiration

We all have lists of projects that we want to do. Some we find in magazines, others come to us in dreams, many more flood from blogs that we follow or blogs that we love I have an ever growing list of projects I want to make but I find that most of the times I forget about the ideas because they are in many different places, in word files, on sticky notes, in sketchbooks, all over the place and when creativity strikes I don’t want to dig for ideas, I just want to create, altered books, artist trading cards, smash books, upcycled treasures…

Therefore I have resolved to make a book of inspiration. Have you noticed that since the new year has started I have been all about making scrapbooks, organizing memories and generally getting my crafting life in order? I love the new me, hope it lasts… My book of inspiration will have clippings from magazines, sketches of ideas that I dream up and printed pictures of anything that is found on the WWW. Finally I will have all my ideas in one place complete with notes and doodles so that I can start on a project whenever the mood strikes.

You can choose to have a physical book or sketch book or you can also take pictures of anything and everything that catches your fancy, and that you would like to try your hand

Strathmore Online Artist Workshops and Internet Blessings – Part 2

I wanted to attend a few art and craft classes and have wanted to for a long time. I do craft a lot and learn techniques from books or by experimenting but I have attended very few classes. Both my Masters degrees are in Mathematics and so I never really got a ‘formal’ art education. I wanted to take a few creative classes in 2011 but never found the time to do so and even though just 11 days have passed in the new year I can already see piles of work on my desk and long to-do lists for the year and I know that this is going to be a busy busy year on many fronts, especially at work. I work at a software house and our timings run from 9:00am – 6:00pm on a good

Strathmore Online Artist Workshops and Internet Blessings – Part 1

A lot of my previous posts have been centered around the new year and the memories and moments associated with the old year (I have been working on my 2011 smash book and a new upcycled version of the smash book for the new year). I had some time to go over all the resolutions I had penned down for 2011 and even though I was not able to keep even half of them, I still felt that the year went well because I learnt a lot and did manage to find my way through to 2012

In my opinion resolutions are a way of keeping yourself on track but sometimes certain things that you feel you should do turn out to not be so very useful or totally  irrelevant depending on the course your life takes in that year. So even though my resolutions were very relevant in the beginning of 2011, I felt that as the year progressed either other things popped up that were more important or that some of

How to make a Smash Book the Upcycled way Part 2

So I finally got done with my Smash Book 2011 and here is where you can see final pictures. I started on my own version of the Smash book too a couple of days ago and since I had the weekend to play around I did make some progress.

My upcylced version of the smash book was supposed to be made using only recycled craft items or things that I was going to throw away. In the last post I talked about the many materials I would use. From mailers, to old magazines, to old scrapbook paper and printed photographs for the pages to soda cans and plastic for the

The Smash Books craze and how to start a smashing upcycling adventure! Journey’s End Part 6

I am finally done with my 2011 Smash Book. I just have to add a little bit of journaling but I will do that as and when the mood strikes me. I have a pen and the book ready for whenever little things pop into my head. I also still have a bit of place for extra odds and ends

How to make a Smash Book the Upcycled way Part 1

I am sorry for disappearing for the past two days. I was busy ripping out the smudged photographs from my 2011 Smash Folio. I am finally done and have replaced all 130 pictures . That is such a relief. The smudges on the pictures were really bothering me and despite telling myself again and again that the project was supposed to capture memories and did not have to be perfect, the slight smudges still bothered me and there was no way out but to replace them. So replace them I did. Now I am free to move on to my Upcycled smash folio for next year.

How do you make an Upcycled smash folio? First you identify what you love about the current smash books and set out to mimic that