Tutorial: How to make Bollywood Baubles

I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t posted any tutorials in a while. Every excuse I can think of is weak, so I won’t bother listing them. Instead I’m making it my ‘End of Year’ resolution to design more blog makes …starting off with some fab festive filmi fun: Bollywood Baubles.

 You will need:

 Plain Christmas baubles (I bought a box in the £1 shop)

 A Bollywood magazine (cut out images of your favourite stars – small ones that will fit on your baubles)

 Bling and things…

Like…Glitter glue tubes

Loose glitter

Sequin trim

Sequins

Gemstones

Bindis

 Assorted collage papers

 Essentials

PVA glue

Scissors

Paintbrush or fine tip applicator (a container with a fine nozzle to make gluing details easier)

Get crafting: 

 1. Chop collage paper into shapes, try small triangles, squares and strips.

2. Glue these randomly on your baubles, by pasting PVA glue on the back using your brush. Ensure every corner is glued down, and smooth them out around the curves of the bauble so there are no lumps and bumps. 

3. Glue your Bollywood star in the centre, again, ensuring the image is fully glued down. Don’t worry if glue spreads out from underneath as it dries clear.Outline the edge of each star with a line of glitter glue.

4. Sit your bauble in an eggcup so they are easier to handle and get decorating. It may take a couple of hours to complete, as you will need to wait for them to dry before you can turn around to decorate the bottom section.

Ideas: Use a brush or fine tip applicator to add dots on the surface to stick on sequins, draw shapes and spots straight on with glitter glue, define edges, stick on sections of loose glitter and cut strips of sequin trim. There are no rules, bling it up as you wish! The paper shapes underneath will also create sections which will influence the design.

5. When dry, thread string through the top and hang them up somewhere in your home…they don't need to be on a Christmas tree, or displayed just for Christmas….I hang up some of my Christmas decorations all year round!  

And here they are closer up (click on the links to check out the stars in action!):

 Queen Rani Mukerjee

 

 The Big B Amitabh Bachan

 Sexy Vivek Oberoi 

Do you love Bollywood? Check out Bollywood Deewana’s incredible Bolly Blog and listen to Love Bollywood on BBC Asian Network with Raj & Pablo. And if you want make more Christmas decorations, I'll be posting another make soon, or come along to the All That Glitters workshop I'm running at The Geffrye Museum in London, on December 3rd. It costs £30, lasts the full day and all materials are included. 

 

Summer crafting highlights

Over the summer months I've been busy spreading the crafty gospel by running an assortment of crafts classes across London for children, young people and adults.


My favourite was the 'boho chic jewellery' course I ran back in July as part of the Greenwich Summer Uni programme which gives young people under 25 the chance to learn new skills for free through a variety of courses.


What I liked about the course is how my students were really inspired by my own work and used my love for bright colours and bling to create their own unique jewellery collections.


The student above became fascinated with acrylic stones and used them to make some amazingly sparkly items! 

Another one of my students who was just 15 created had a natural talent for design and composition and made this beautiful necklace, which I think is so much nicer than a lot of the hand made pieces you get in gallery gift shops.

On closer inspection you can see how she embroidered into each bead to add detail.

This student kept it more simple by adding anything and everything on to ring and earring findings.

On the 'Bollywood Crafts' course my students had the chance to make some of the projects that feature in my book including these gorgeous decorative bowls, handbags, books and photo frames.

One of the fun parts of running the courses was souring the materials. I picked up these rolls of sequin trims for just £1.50 each from Creative Beadcraft - superb value - you get 100m on a roll and if you buy 1m from a haberdashery they normally cost 40p per metre. 

I also ran a textile project over six weeks with mothers from a local school in East London in conjunction with The Women's Library. The project entitled 'My City' was an exploration of each woman's relationship with her local area. 

The best thing about teaching crafts is seeing students produce work they are really proud and getting inspired by their ideas myself! It's been a fantastic summer of crafting but I'm now going to wind down on the teaching front until next year.....come the Autumn, I have some other exciting projects to plan - crafts for my wedding!  

What to do with fabric trims!

My swag!

My sister and fellow blogger Tea with Digestives  recently showed off some fabulous trims that she claimed to have bought from £1 a metre in Walthamstow. Intrigued, I went down to the East End market yesterday and discovered a complete treasure trove of sequins, sparkles, rainbow colours, and shelf upon shelf of Indian trims. 

Where to start?

Disguised as a mobile phone repair shop called 'Wool Shop' (although it only sells basic Double Knit yarns), the store on the market is a long corridor of bling! There is soooooooooooooooooooooo much to choose from, you could be there for quite a while!

There are also rows of sequins, crystals, zips, threads and crystallised motifs. 

But what makes this shop so, so amazing, concept aside, is  the price! This sign is totally true! The trims range from 30p per metre to £4.50 for the most spectacular ones, a FRACTION of the price of places like Barnett Lawson Trimming (who as much as I love them, annoying  don't put the price on a lot of their trims and you get a shock at the till) and the overly extortionate VV Rouleaux who for moral reasons (they hike the price up soooooooo much) I will never buy anything from them ever!

As well as sequin encrusted, there are also some gorgeous mirror and machine embroidered choices.

I also bought a selection of jewelled motifs that were £1.50 each.




So now I have all the trims, what to do with them?


Here's my top 10 ways to use fabric trim:


1. Update clothes by sewing trim along the bottom of skirts and trousers, collars and cuffs. 
2. Wrap and glue trims around a wide plastic or wooden bangle to create a fabric covered piece of  jewellery.
3. Decorate the four raised sides of a notice board by gluing trim around it. 
4. Cover a blank canvas in strips of trim to make a piece of modern art. Either use different trims for each strip or create a pattern.
5. Cut off the thin sleeves on a vest top and replace with trim, make them the same length as the original sleeve and sew in place on each side so you can wear your top as before. 
6. Replace a ribbon with a trim on a straw hat. 
7. Tie up presents. 
8. Join strips of trim together with a simple straight stitch on a sewing machine to create a larger square or rectangular piece of fabric and use as one side of a cushion. 
9. Chop up lots of short strips of trim and sew on to the edge of a bag to give it a fringe, especially brings dull cotton shopper to life!
10. Buy a copy of my book 'Bollywood Crafts' it's contains instructions for 20 simple craft projects, most  which all use Indian trims!