Threads of Thoughts

I’ve been sharing my experiences from the summer camp organized by the Cantonment Board High School, Deolali. I taught the students art and craft and had a lot of fun with them. This post is about my last class with the kids, where I taught them a really quick, easy way to make a pop-up birthday card.

The kids had a lot of fun making cards and they were quite fascinated by the idea of a pop-up card! They were all geared up to add final touches to all their creations over the two weeks and display them at the final day exhibition. 

More about the exhibition and closing ceremony of the summer camp tomorrow! 

Here’s another post about my craft class at the Cantonment High School’s summer camp.

I’m traveling, and that’s the reason my craft class posts have been a bit delayed. Before I could post more about these classes, my first animation video was up on its new YouTube channel and in all the excitement about sharing the video, I almost forgot that I was supposed to write more posts about the craft class! 

After warli-art, came cross-stitch. We had the school provide us with 12”x12” pieces of matty cloth and embroidery threads. I taught the students the most basic stitch called ‘cross-stitch.’ To start with, I taught them how to embroider a temple style border. Here are some pictures from class -

This class went on for two days as most of the students took time to learn the stitch. Some of them had taken their matty piece home and brought it back the next day with some good stitching. The best of the lot was Chanda’s piece - 

I really appreciate this girl for being the most enthusiastic participant in my craft classes. Chanda lost both her parents when she was really young and she lives with her grandmother and elder brother. This little girl does all house-work at the tender age of 12 and still manages to do all her homework perfectly, be it regular school or the summer camp classes!

The most exciting part of the second day of my cross-stitch class was a group of boys trying to learn the stitch! I remember all the boys running away from my first class because I said I was going to teach ‘jewelry-making!’ Before the cross-stitch class too, most of the boys left. But this bunch of boys seemed interested, so I gave them a piece of matty cloth and started teaching them - 

Here are some pictures of the boys attempting cross-stitch (they borrowed Chanda’s piece to figure out how it’s done!) - 

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Well, the boys took their matty piece home with a promise that they would work on it and bring it back the next day. Guess what! None of them turned up for my next class!! I wasn’t disappointed, though. It was something I definitely expected!

The next class was conducted by my sister-in-law Sachita. She taught the kids to make decorative mobiles and wall-hangings using popsicle sticks and colored paper - 

Here’s the extremely easy but beautiful ‘bird-house’ mobile made out of colored paper and string -

The students were pretty excited about to make these at home. Each of them took some sheets of colored paper and popsicle sticks from me before they left class, and came back with some awesome work the next day - 

Two of my favorites were these -

I love how she’s added a bowl of bird feed. Quite innovative!!

And in this one, the girl used the birds that she learned to make in her origami class which was also part of the summer camp.

I love how the students came up with their own ideas after every class and made such beautiful products each time!

A few posts ago, I had mentioned a new assignment that I’m working on. Apart from the hand-painted shoes and t-shirts that I have been working on, I started work on something very different from anything that I have done before.

Lucid Lane Designs, a creative digital media firm in Nasik, approached me with their new project that involves creating animated nursery rhymes for the YouTube channel kids4kidsTV. The rhymes on this channel have been sung by kids for kids to learn. Lucid Lane wanted to try out a new style for their animations and asked me if I could come up with something different in terms of illustration. 

I started working on the project with ‘Old Mc Donald had a farm,’ a rhyme that all of us learned as toddlers. Since I had never worked on animation before, I took my own approach towards the illustrations. I have used different kinds of media (water colors, pencils, oil pastels, fabric and paper cut-outs) to create the characters and backgrounds. 

Here’s the first rhyme that I worked on -

(if you have an internet connection fast enough, do watch the video in HD on full screen)

I have worked on the illustration, whereas the team at Lucid Lane took care of the animation with some inputs from me. Do let me know what you think of my first attempt! 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel so that you can see more videos from us! 

After first two classes where I taught the kids some newspaper crafts, we decided to teach them to make coasters with Warli Art. Warli Painting is a tradition carried on by the Warli tribe living in the mountainous and coastal regions of the Maharashtra-Gujarat border. Unlike most other ancient Indian painting traditions that use vibrant colours and depict mythological stories very intricately, Warli paintings depict everyday life using really basic shapes in just one colour - white, on a plain mud base. The style is similar to pre-historic cave paintings.

When I asked the students if they knew about this art, one of the girls quickly came up and drew this on the board -

The other students too, seemed pretty excited about this class. I had carried some drawings that my mother and I had done at home and showed them to the students. I drew some of the figures from those drawings onto the board so that the students could learn how they are drawn -

Sujata madam helping some kids with their drawing - 

The kids were really happy to learn this new art form. Here are some pictures of them drawing -

Some of them used the figures I had drawn on the board, while others came up with their own innovative forms once they knew about the basic style of Warli. Here’s what they drew - 

I’m back with the next post! As the title already says, this post is the second part of my previous post. So after the newspaper coil earrings and pendants, I figured the children would be interested in learning more stuff that could be made from the same material.

The next assignment, was again something I learned in the paper course at Srishti. This one involves weaving with folded strips of newspaper. The woven surface could be used to make many different products such as baskets, pen stands, folders, etc. I decided to teach the children to weave a simple square basket. 

To make it easy for them to understand how it’s done, I wove a basket out of colored sheets of paper at home, the night before my class and showed it to them before I started teaching. 

Some children recognized the technique, while the others seemed eager to find out. None of them had tried it before and were every excited to learn. 

I quickly demonstrated the weaving technique in class with folded newspaper strips and here’s what the basket looked like.

The children then started working on their own baskets. A lot of them were  very quick and had started weaving even before I had finished my basket. Others observed me keenly and went back to their desks to start work.

Here’s one of the fast learners trying to finish weaving her basket before the class could end!

And here’s a picture of a basket that one of the students worked on, at home and brought to class the next day.

This class sure was a lot of fun, just like the first one. I shall write more soon, about the classes that followed :)

It’s been 10 years since I passed out of school and yet the beautiful memories of my school days are fresh in my mind. I’d give anything to go back to school and re-live those years with my closest friends and the most wonderful teachers ever! I changed two schools and both, though poles apart from each other, were amongst the best schools in town at that time. We had really good teachers, a lot of extra-curricular activities such as music, art craft and of course, sports. But not all children are as fortunate as my friends and I were.

Even today, there are thousands of children in our country who don’t go to school because their parents cannot afford it. Some fortunate ones who do go to school, do not have the luxury of a huge playground, or a music room or an art studio. But they have the thirst to learn! They are creative and eager to explore! 

Our little hometown called ‘Deolali’ used to be a British Army camp and the prestigious School of Artillery, was moved here in 1941 from Kakul, now in Pakistan. The Deolali Cantonment Board maintains a High School along with various other small schools in an around the area.

The Cantonment Board High School that was built in the 1930s has been a guiding light to thousands of students over the years and continues to do so even today - 

The students of this school hail from less fortunate households and may not be able to benefit from the numerous hobby workshops that take place in the city during summer.

In the recent years, the school has been organizing a summer camp for their students every year. They invite interested people from different fields to hold workshops for theatre, music, yoga, art and craft and many such activities. My mother has been involved with the summer camp since its inception and has taught the children warli painting, making bookmarks, paper bags, greeting cards, etc.

This year, I’m spending the summer in my home town after many years and thought this summer camp would be the perfect way to utilize my mornings which are otherwise spent lazing around in bed! I replaced my mother as the ‘art and craft teacher’ at this year’s summer camp held by the cantonment school and I’m accompanied by her colleague Sujata ma’am and my sister-in-law Sachita.

Before the summer camp started, all of us planned some assignments for the children and got all the material that we would need in class. My first class with the children was very exciting. The first experience that I had as a ‘teacher’ brought back so many memories from my own school years. The moment I entered class, the students stood up and sang “gooood morniiiiiing teeeaacher” in that very same tune that I remember we used to greet our teachers with. I couldn’t help but snigger!



We started with a really simple assignment, that required the most easily available material - newspaper! As a foundation student at Srishti, I was part of a course where we learned to make different objects from coiled newspaper. We made bowls, baskets and trays as far as I remember. Using the same technique, but in smaller proportions, I thought I could teach the kids to make simple jewelry. I taught them the simple coiling technique and how to make earrings. And they came up with their own ideas with respect to colors, embellishments and more options of products. Here are some pictures from class -

Most students asked for extra earring hooks and wires which they could take home with them and make more jewelry. I was really impressed with the ideas that they had come up with. All they needed was a direction, a little guidance and they could create so many different products!

The girls were quite fascinated about wearing their own creations and didn’t shy away from my camera - 

So that was my first day as a ‘craft teacher’ at the Cantonment Board High School! There’s a lot more coming up about the summer camp, so keep a look out for more posts :-)

It’s been very long since my last post and there are so many things I need to write about! But I’ve made a promise to myself that I’ll post my work here more often. 

Recently, I’ve been working a lot more on hand-painted canvas shoes  and t-shirts. And I’ve also started work on a new assignment, something very different from the work I have done before. I’m trying out my hand on illustrations for animation videos of nursery rhymes for Lucid Lane Designs. I shall post more about that soon. I’m really glad that I’ve made some new friends at Lucid!

This evening, I’m going for a party that one of these new friends is throwing for her birthday and I made these earrings for her :)

I’m writing after a really long time. I’ve done so much work since I last wrote, it’s going to take really long writing about all of it. But for now, here are some pictures of the latest work that I have done.

I recently started something new. Well, not exactly new. I already used to paint shoes. But only for myself or for my friends. Now I have started selling my hand painted shoes. I recently had a stall at Kitsch Mandi in Bangalore, where I displayed my shoes for the first time. I got some orders there! And I have even started a page on Facebook.

I got an order for a Super Mario themed pair. Here are some pictures! (click on the  link to see more pictures of these shoes and more. Don’t forget to like the page!)

I recently bought a red tee.. And as I’ve mentioned before, I hate plain tees. So I thought I’d paint it! I saw this on a potter fan site and decided, this was it!

So here’s how the tee looks - 

Then I decided to pose wearing it!                                                        

                                                    Weasley is My King! :P               

                    I paired it with my Gryffindor muffler (which I crocheted myself)                            

                           That’s me saying ”I make my own potter merchandise!”                                    

                                     And that’s just me posing! (I love it!)                                                        

I have been making frequent visits to Raja Market to buy material for my diploma project. That place is just amazing! You get anything and everything that you want for craft. I could shop there all day if I could! So yeah, while I go there to buy stuff for the project, I end up buying a lot of stuff for myself. I like making jewelry. And the material I find there makes me want to keep making more! Here’s the latest bunch of earrings that I made -