Diwali decor - DIY kids

It's almost here! Diwali - the festival of lights. There are a lot of eco-friendly choices I wish to make this year.
No ceramic diyas. Upcycled and recycled lamps and decor as far as possible. Unpainted terracotta figurines of Lakshmi and Ganesh as always. No firecrackers if the kids can be convinced (!!). But unlimited sweets, lights and fun.

The kids got to work and made a few DIY lamps. I got some terracotta diyas and the kids painted them. Here's what my little artists made -

I've been cleaning and storing all the glass bottles that find their way into our house with jam and honey and other stuff. The intention being to upcycle them. Finally I got the kids to upcycle a couple of them to make pretty lamps. These are very simple. We just applied some random glue spots on the bottle and wound different colors of thread around it. A tealight in the bottle created magic.

My son took to photography after art. Look at these cool shots with interesting perspective.

The threads or ribbons can be wound in a better manner for a more neat finish. You could create symmetric patterns too if symmetry is the thing for you. I just let the kids do it so the bottle ended up with equal amounts of thread and glue :)
We did another experiment and the bottle turned into an interesting "Potli" tealight holder. :) Its red crepe paper wrapped around the bottle and secured with a rubber band at the top. We could use colorful ribbons or golden threads too. The ends of the paper have been trimmed with a design scissors.
We opened out potli and it became a flower lamp. :)

We put some masking tape on yet another bottle and painted over it with acrylics. After the tape was removed, the little tealight did wonders to our home. It would have turned out better only if we could have chosen better colors and had the patience to wait for the paint to dry before removing the tape. But we are kids! And just 2.6 and 5.2 years at that!

My friend Vinaya tried her hands at a couple of DIY decor items. She was kind enough to share these great pics here.

You can find the instructions for these pretty paper flowers here.

Isn't this Lantern made out of an old cardboard box looking gorgeous? And its pretty simple to make. The box has been cut into equal sized pieces and stuck together at right angles and alternate blocks are colored in different colors. This is a great DIY Diwali and Christmas decor idea that even kids can try. Thanks Vinaya.

I might just come back again before Diwali with more decorations as my head is brimming with ideas at the moment. Maybe some non-kid decorations this time. Happy Diwali!

And I'm authorizing myself on behalf of my kids to send this post to Paint Party Friday hosted by Kristin and Eva and Show and Tell Saturday #28 at Artists in Blogland.

A butterfly themed b'day party

Here's a post that's been lying in the drafts half completed for long. I had to post this before talking about my  next themed party. I'm dying to talk about it.

I planned and threw a semi-themed birthday party for my daughter's 2nd B'day.  She really didn't have too many preferences of her own till then and I'm not too fond of extreme girly themes like Barbie and Princess etc. So I decided to go for a neutral theme. The theme I chose was "Butterfly".

I have a friend and neighbor(SM) who shares a lot of my interests and we take up most projects together.
My son, SM and I made some very simple invitation cards with butterflies on them.  We fan-folded 2 different colors of crepe paper and stuck them down in the center with a ribbon. The crepe papers looked like wings and the ribbon strip like the body. We split the ribbon on top and curled them to make the antennae. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take pics.
These days I'm pretty charged up about conserving our environment. (Again SM shares this sentiment and is in fact a Phd in Environmental Sciences and is almost an activist when it comes to reducing the usage of plastics) So we made goody bags from old newspapers with a rope for the handles. And I was so proud of them! :) My SIL, who happened to be around also pitched in for this.
Along with some return gifts like books, I also put some butterfly shaped goody pouches in them. Now this was an interesting idea I found on the internet. They were so simple to make yet so cute. I found it here which was taken from here. And this is how I made mine -

Ek titali...
(One butterfly...)

I bought small zip pouches and filled them with different toffees and candies and some Cadbury's Gems. I folded the bags and put colorful clothes clips in the middle. The tutorials I'd refered to called for googli eyes for the butterfly's eyes and pipe cleaner for the anternnae. I didn't think I would find them anywhere closeby so easily. So I used small back sticker Bindis (The colorful dots and circles that Indian women sport on their foreheads) for eyes :). 

Ek, ek karke...
(One by one...)

Now came the tricky antennae...  Since I made them late into the previous night, I had to make do with the stuff I had available at home...Finally I just rolled pieces of crepe paper, folded them in half and stuck them into the clothes clips. What do you think?

Anek titaliyan!
(Many butterflies!)

The cake - I had this idea I had seen somewhere for an easy butterfly shaped cake. My first (actually second) attempt at making and decorating the cake myself for a party. I decorated it with the stuff available easily here like colored sugar and Cadbury's Gems.

Butterfly shaped birthday cake

While I'm at discussing cakes, I thought I could share a pic of the muffins I had baked for the party. ;)

Vanilla muffins with chocolate frosting

And it was such a coincidence that a number of gifts my little one received had butterflies on them - a frock with butterfly motifs, a lunch box in the shape of a butterfly and a toy wrapped in a butterfly print paper!

This was all I could manage in the short time after I decided on the theme. But butterfly themed ideas kept coming for a couple of weeks after that. :)

My next attempt was slightly bigger in scale - A "Save the Earth" theme for my son's b'day last month. I'm dying to talk about it....so that's saved for another (long) post.

Ah it's already Saturday morning! So here's my entry for Paint Party Friday...a WIP of a Kerala Mural painting. Just the sketch is done. I have to start filling in the colors now. Since its Saturday, I'm also linking this to Show and tell saturday #25 at Artists in Blogland. This is a first for me although I've once participated in the Monthly challenge hosted on this wonderful blog.
(I wasn't able to capture the pencil sketch properly so I used the auto correct options of the photo editor which made the sketch clear but gave a photocopy look to it)

Krishna with Gopis