City crafters suggest some interesting new ideas to channel your creative energy

If happiness is handmade, crafting should be made more popular! Crafters in the city suggest some interesting new ideas to channel your creative energy and include your kids in some fun activities during their vacation.

Manveen Kaur, co-founder of Hobby in a Box, recommends sponge painting. “Use a stencil and paints and use sponge to apply paints on the clothes you like. Sponge is easy to use and mess free so you can do this activity with your kids. Also, the texture sponge painting yields is great. Washi tape crafts are also in this season. Use colourful washi tapes (designer tapes) to upcycle your pencils, notebooks and photo frames too. You can mix and match different tapes to create your own patterns.”

For those who love mason jar and wine bottle crafts, you could indulge in some spray painting. “With my daughter’s birthday coming up next week, the two of us have been painting mason jars to hold straws, napkins, etc. So we have lemon yellow jars and watermelon inspired ones. All you need is a bunch of old jam bottles, spray/acrylic paint, a paintbrush if you plan on painting the jars from the outside, and maybe a green ribbon to tie at the neck of the jar for that fruity look,” says Roshni Sharma, a stay-at-home mom.

Suma Noronha, owner of Bottles Up and mother of a three-year-old, says, “Summer holidays are here and it’s a task to keep kids occupied indoors so why not get together with your kids and paint a wall of their room with chalkboard paint so they can use it to scribble on and parents can use it to write down summer holiday rules!”

She also suggests: “Buy a cement birdbath at any roadside nursery and paint it with a nice summery bright colour or even better, work on them with broken pieces of tiles to make your own mosaic design or just go crazy with patterns, the birds won’t mind. It adds life to your balcony and the birds could do with more water during the summer.” Archana Jain, proprietor of Mithilah Srishti-Cradle of Creations suggests CD recycling this summer. “Clear out old/damaged/unused CDs that you don’t plan to use in the future and cut them into small pieces. Stick these on canvas and you’ve got yourself a lovely décor element. Another easy project would be to wind rope around old glass bottles to give your living space a vintage inspired getup.”

If you’re looking to add colour to your living space, why not get your kids to paint the wings of your table fan in different colours for that rainbow effect when it’s switched on.

If your kids have wax crayons leftover at the end of their school year, melt these crayons to create a colourful wax candle in a shot glass. You can even repurpose old tins and use them as lanterns for your balcony by punching holes into the tins, painting them in different shades, and placing a tea light candle in each tin.

There are so many more crafts that are trending this summer and otherwise too. From knitting, and jewellery making to clay modelling, and greeting card making, there are really a gazillion ways to express your creativity.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Neeti Sarkar / March 30th, 2015