Thumbelina evolves.......

Hello All,

The idea of Thumbelina started with an order where a girl we've known for long wanted something on the lines of Monalisa set. It's not in our fabric to repeat designs, so we started racking our brains for some new idea. After almost a week of thinking, a brain wave struck, where an unused (and largely ignored) bust became an inspiration.....we created a face using a mold but did modifications to the face to make the eyes look enchanting. Sculpting must be one hell of a task and we realized it as we worked with just the eyes of the dame! Our dame became the centre of a gigantic flower in pale yellow gold, with reinforcements at the back to keep the flower strong (oh yes, at Art'zire, we are manic about the strength of the pieces being made)........the bail was modified accordingly to sit properly over the floral centrepiece (compared to the earlier one, where the cut was straight).

The basic idea started forming and then, the colour scheme of the template saree solved the rest of the puzzle for us.

Yellow and purple together can conjure up only one image that fits to a T.........pansies. These little flowers look adorable as they grow in bunches and look like smiling children about to play a prank on you......

We chose pansies, all right but the size we were working on was SO small that we went back and forth with how to handle the polymer clay as such small scales. After trying all kinds of combinations, we settled for yellow surrounded by purple and plain purple as the combinations we'd work with. Painstaking work involving serious focus led to the bunch of pansies that adorned both the bail and the flower. The fairy at the centre was allowed to keep long hair ;) which also became the loop for our dangler at the base.

The final step, namely the make-up of the fairy turned out to be a daunting task in its own right! The eyes are about 5 mm wide and 2.5 mm high. Make-up in double shades on the eyelid seemed like the miniscule dissections one does in the high-school. A 00 number brush also seemed to be overwhelmingly big but then we pulled it off and she ended up looking every bit as alluring as we intended her to look :)

So, here we go, Thumbelina for everyone :)

Handling Casting Resin - A series of free tutorials

Hello All,

Here is a series of tutorials for using resin on paper jewellery. The resin is available with A1 Craft Supplies. You can contact them for purchasing the resin. Art'zire want to specially thank Richa Kapre of Rock, Paper and Scissor for her generous contribution to the knowledge in resin-handling.

My humble request to all users of resin: Resin handling is an exercise in patience. Hurrying the process with cause blotchy results. Please do read the instructions on your resin packaging carefully.

Part 1 - Preparation of surface for applying resin......

Very often, you are likely to encounter surfaces that have painted and drawn patterns on then. It is always better to cover the surface completely with a clear drying glue (like Fevicryl Fabric Glue, Camlin Crafty Glue or Faber Castell White Glue). Always allow for COMPLETE drying of the glue before you apply resin.

Part 2 - Mixing Resin

Mixing the resin is the most crucial of all steps in the handling of resin. Unfortunately, very small things can be the make-or-break factors while handling resin. This video shows how one can mix resin. The key is to be patient and work slowly.

Part 3 - Applying resin on Enclosed Surfaces

Resin has most commonly been used for 'filling' up enclosed surfaces to create a "cabochon" like effect. This effect needs resin to be 'filled' in spaces. Though it may sound trivial, these very bubbles (in extreme cases, many small or large bubbles) can bring about "fogginess" to the resin coating and lead to bad finishing.

Part 4 - Popping the Bubbles

No amount of handling carefully can ensure zero bubbles. Fortunately, Richa has worked very hard at developing techniques to dispel these little jewellery spoilers :)

Part 5 - Coating a 3D surface (e.g. a jhumka)

One of the most common question we've been asked so far is, can resin be used to coat quilled jewellery. We'll answer it with a very reserved yes. We don't really know if it can be used on all types of quilling jewellery but it can be used on quilled jhumkas. How? Watch :) [Information courtesy: Richa]

Part 6 - Cleaning a resin coated brush

Since application of resin to a 3D surface needs a brush to be used and one wouldn't want to lose the brush, cleaning of that brush is imperative. Here is the video for how you can clean the brush after using it for coating the 3D surface(s)

Part 7 - Getting "Concave" effect on an enclosed surface

Part 8 - Getting Concave effect on an unenclosed surface

An ode to a relationship

Hello All,

We take to writing after a long time..........and take to it with a beautiful thing to announce. A1 Craft Supply has been our choice of suppliers for a whole host of craft material, for quite some time now. Reason? Simple! We are into customization big time and A1 are the only suppliers who bend backwards to get us our quirky requirements to us, in time, every time............don't believe us? See the Jodha jhumkas........they had no idea what we were going to do with such small half pearls but they put their faith in us and searched Heaven and Earth to look for what we wanted. We needn't tell you that Jodhas turned out to be our most popular ever series of jewellery...........

So, when A1 placed and order with us, we got going AND loved doing it. Here comes our version of their logo.........

Some work-in-progress pictures too..........

Sending our heartfelt gratitude to A1 Craft Supply, in the form of the skills we can pour into their order :)

- Art'zire Team

Thewa on Paper

Hello All,

Yes, we come back after an eternity! Because this is one chance we loved getting. Our client sent us an image of her engagement saree and never imposed anything on us, except that the earrings had to be jhumkas! Now, these are Godsend opportunities and we capitalized! Using a traditional jewellery making form, Thewa, as our template, we set about to create a customized piece for our client. And lo! This is what resulted :)

Needless to say, we enjoyed the process thoroughly and wish our client a very happy and long married life :)

We @ Art'zire

Personalized frame for a car-lover

Hello All,

A personalized Birthday frame for a guy's birthday, who loves cars and bikes :) Commissioned very lovingly by his sister. After about 20 hours of effort, here it is:

Thank you for your order Pooja.....

Art'zire.....

PS: A more detailed post here

Seattle Skyline, off to Seattle.....

Hello All,

Art'zire, in collaboration with Rock, Paper & Scissors, proudly presents our biggest creation so far...........

Seattle City's skyline..........

And here is the "trivia" about the painting.......

Total number of hours of work: 368
Area: 5.5 feet by 3 feet
Total number of quilling strips used: ~ 27000 (if joined end to end, they are about 8 km in length)
Creators: Richa Kapre (Founder at Rock, Paper & Scissors) and Pritesh (Founder & Artist at Art'zire)
Time taken: ~ 25 days

Some more snapshots

Since we have been working incessantly on this giant painting, we beg for a little break before the nitbits and a whole lot more elaborate post comes up on Quilling Me Softly............

Thanks Suchitra & Satish, for giving us this opportunity..............

Happy Quilling

Richa & Pritesh

A jumbo tutorial video by Art'zire........

Hello All,

Here comes a jumbo video tutorial by the Art'zire team (Pritesh & Divleen), jointly with Hobby Mela, explaining a few things........hope it is a useful one :)

VIDEO

Due to some technical problem, we are unable to add the video directly from Youtube, hence the link.

Enjoy Quilling :)

Pritesh (Founder & Artist, Art'zire)