Wednesday, May 23, 2012

CONTEST TIME - Its all in the Painting!


CONTEST TIME!!! :) :) Yay!!

During my visit to Turkey last year, I came across this house with beautiful tiles, in colours like blue, red, black and yellow against the light green door! Contrasting with these lush colours was a flower pot with bright yellow wild flowers planted in a simple bucket! How could I not take a picture?? :)
Now here goes my contest! Can anybody paint this picture and post it on my Lively-wood by Sunday May 27th? Anything would do, pencil, crayon, poster or acrylic colours! Just anything! That one artist will win a beautiful surprise from the LAND OF TURKIYE!COME ON....prove the ARTIST in you! :)
Can't wait!

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Recycle....is it a part of everybodies life?

When people like us re-use and recycle, the world will change, ain't it? Now you may say that how many times am I going to write about it on my blog...I say..over and over again! This time I shall talk less about how I have recycled and talk more about how a lot of people around me have done the same..in their own little way.
Kanchan, one of the most creative lady I have ever met in my life runs an apparel business with ethnicity and a deep reflection of our culture in her patterns. It is called Design Kreeda. She not only designs clothing but also works around other imaginative ideas. Lets see her plan on a broken chair she salvaged for a long time. She says " I love some of my furniture dearly but when it is no more in a usable condition, I cannot throw it. I couldn't throw my favourite chair away! So I decided to use it differently... I was in my study room, searching for some small note and wanted to buy a pin up board to save them all. I decided to buy a boring pin board. I thought and turned around only to see my poor little broken chair shoved under the cupboard. And volila! This broken chair was converted into a pin board!"
I don't know Vasudha but I have seen her work. She seems to be a very imaginative gal with her blog full of beautiful and most importantly doable things! I asked her if she wanted to be a part of my recycle post and she agreed. Thank you so much for sharing your work. Anyway I picked this really nice post on 'The art of Decoupage'. She says that she has a chestnut trunk which she thinks is easily 75 years old and sort of damaged. Since she had mastered the art of decoupage, she decided to use it on this trunk as well. Laced with pictures from a calendar, the trunk looked gorgeous and original. This whole makeover took her about 3 days to complete. Using the used was her contribution to the old and new!
Rutika is my very young friend whom I worked out with. She, I thought was one of the most sensible and nice people from a whole bunch of them. She is also one person who loves experimenting different things. She says that she picks up a lot of fancy liquor bottles. She tries using them as juice bottle or vases. These bottle featured in the post had a lovely shape which inspired her to make use of it for summer juices. Hence, she put up some simple polka dots with cool colours and got a cork of stainless steel and converted it into a bottle for serving juice/water.
Another inspired and creative buddy of mine Aditi is always up to something. Though a physiotherapist by profession, she enjoys creating new things all the time. Well I think her innovative juices keep her going and she does come up with unusual things like pen stands from corn tins, tissue paper dispenser out of liquor boxes, photo frames out of shirt cardboard etc. She says, "RECYCLE has a synonym called UPCYCLE' which has always been an intriguing and interesting pass time for me. Now though I refer to it as a pass time it is much more than that. When I recycle stuff, it is usually made of the things which are lying around at home- unnoticed, unseen or under utilized." The most fascinating thing she made were beads. Can anybody guess what they are made with? They are'PAPER BEADS'!" It is the best way to utilize all the envelops, wrapping papers, pizza menu pamphlets, advertisement pamphlets, old magazines or news papers. She makes fancy necklaces, earrings, bracelets, etc from them!
My architect friend Aloka and her husband bought a new apartment last year.There was a lot of old furniture in it that the earlier family did not take along. She says, as architects they were not enthusiastic about it because it did not meet with our design sensibilities. Moreover, as per our new furniture layout, many fixed pieces were positioned in the wrong place as seen in the first picture. Since they believe in re-using, they decided to re-position and work around things which already existed. And voilĂ  the kiddie room appears larger, the white colour helps it look light and breezy. There are dashes of colour that liven up the space without making it feeling dingy.
From the above examples, lets assume that recycling is a part of many lives. It isn't all about only being creative, it is a contribution you make to this world. In this post, I want to highlight and thank all people who have chipped in their ideas and have spread awareness.