The Gandiva Bow - Art Journal Layout

Hello crafty friends,

I am back with another art journal layout today.  I was so happy with my previous one which I made of Lord Krishna ( you can check it out here ) that I decided to pick inspiration from one of our epics, The Mahabharath. 

In Mahabharath, one of the central characters is Arjun ( my son is also named as Arjun :) ) and he is a highly skilled warrior. He is an are archer and his archery skills are highly detailed out in the epic. There was no one to better him ( set aside Karna and Ekalavya, who were tricked never to overshadow Arjun ). Setting aside all these, in his own merit he was a great warrior and he received the powerful Gandiva bow from Varuna and the sound of Gandiva is said to have sent fear to the enemies on the other side. 

So here is my take on the Gandiva bow, sketched and painted using pearl colors and fineliners. 

I have used Mudra's Arrow chipzeb to denote the array of arrows that came from the bow. 

I had this stamp from Itsy Bitsy which is a swirly pattern and almost looked like a bow, so did some shadow stamping using Ranger Archival Inks.

By the way, the background is done using Itsy Bitsy Color splashes , Distress oxide inks and some stenciling using icraft stencils. I did the background after painting the Gandiva bow. I thought i was going to ruin it, but somehow made it work by a bit of masking using copy paper.

 

I finished off the bow with some rhinestones and of course, you can't have a bow without the string!. It looks and feels so good in real life. This is what makes art journal so inviting to me. The look, feel, textural elements and connect you have with it, because you are making it for yourself is matchless. 

What is the Gandiva without Arjun's names! Some of his names are written in Hindi. They are Gandivadari Arjun , Partha, Dhananjaya, Vijaya. 

Let me know what you think of this project!

Entering this to the below challenges:

• Mudra Craft Challenge #34:
• My Time to craft
• Crabbie Moments of Craft
• Fusion Card Challenge
• Aud Sentiments

Products used:

• Mudra Chipzeb in Arrows
• Itsy Bitsy Color Splash - Hot Pink
• Itsy Bitsy Color Splash - Tangerine
• Itsy Bitsy Switly Stamp - I believe this set is retired
• Gelly Roll No 10 White
• Ranger Archival Bright Tangelo

Krishna Journal Page

 Hello there people!

Finally i am writing back on my blog after more than 2.5 years. My last post on blog was on Nov 2017! Whaaaaaaaaaaat ????? 

Even though I was very active on my Instagram profile and could not manage both, I always missed the long detail rants that I can have on my blog that I was unable to express on Instagram. 

During this lockdown I have started doing journal pages to start using up my supplies. There are so many artists who have super beautiful and complex journal page layouts, but my style always depends on the mood on the day that I am working. Some days it is grunge, some time it is fun and quirky and sometime it is a take on India, Hinduism, and deities, murals and related stuff. 

This page is a take on cute achukuttan or Krishna, Whenever i feel not in a great mood to craft or sketch, the best thing for me to do is sketch him out. Because however you sketch or whatever mistakes you make, he will always turn out beautiful and charm you and your day!

I prepped the base ( just couple of copy papers folded in 2 and glued together) with gesso and applied acrylic paints with a baby wipe. I did a few stenciling of brick patterns but I really did not like that look and blended over it with distress inks to try and mute it. 

I then free handed Krishna and painted him in yellow and blue. I was thinking what to do with the peacock feather. I did not have one and wasnot sure if would get it right by painting. That is when my eyes fell upon Mudra's chipzeb in paisley pattern which was waiting to be used on my desk. I grabbed a couple and embossed it with Wow Iridium Glitter and added it as his head gear. I love how this turned out!

I love adding sentiments on the my journal pages. So added Om Namo Narayana using a while gel pen on a black cardstock and added it. 

I felt it still lacked some border, so I reached out to the Peek-a-boo designs paisley stamps and picked the small shell stamp. I have had this stampset for a couple of years but never used this particular stamp. How was it so meant to be that Krishna's layout had to have a conch shell border!! Divine intervention or not, it was made for this project. 

Let me know what you think about this project. And hopefully i am more active and blogging again!

Linking this up to the below challenges. 

Mudra Craft Challenge #34:

Products used:

• Mudra Chipzeb - Paisley
• Peek-a-boo designs Motifs stampset
• Fevicryl Hobby Colors for the background
• Distress Inks
• Ranger Archival Black Ink
• Gelly Roll No 10 - White Pen

Happy Teachers Day - A Day Late...

Hello there fellas,
I promised I would come back with a set of Teachers' day cards for you.
So here they are!

The supplies are from different Manufacturers, but mostly from two dear Indian manufacturers Craftyscrappers and Mudra. Konica and Varshita and two wonderful souls and I wish them all success at their entrepreneur life.

Let me know what you think of this fellas!
Linking this to the following:
The card concept: withered florals. I have incorporated flowers with distressed and withered feel to it.

Linking this to the Path of Positivity Challenge #51: Teachers deserve a lot of love and this is an attempt to surround them with art and love!!!

Mudra First Birthday Blog Hop


Hello and welcome to our “First Birthday Blog Hop”! 

Yes, Mudra is one year old this month and what an amazing journey it has been so far. And this month, we want to celebrate our big milestone with you because it wouldn’t have been possible without your support. We have so many fun things lined up throughout the month with lots of chances for you to participate and win some cool prizes.

We wanted to start the celebration today by bringing together our amazing creative team and few of our friends to share some of their beautiful creations with Mudra products.

We have an amazing line-up of projects that you sure are going to love!

I have personally loved Mudra from the inception of Varnas's creation banner and it has been a amazing journey for the Mudra team.

     

RULES:  z

- Follow Mudra Blog

- Like Mudra Facebook Page

- Follow us on Instagram 

- Subscribe to your Youtube

- Visit all the designer's blog hop post and leave them some love.

- After finishing the blog hop, add your name in the inlinkz in Mudra Blog Hop Post.

PRIZES:

To celebrate, Mudra is giving away a beautiful pack of crafting supplies from Mudra to 1 WINNER, selected from the comments across all of the blogs in the hop.  You have until Wednesday, March 15th at 11:59 PM IST to enter, and the winners will be announced here on Monday, March 20th.

One Additional Goodie Bag to a random participant sponsored by The Craft Shop, Chennai. 

And to sweeten the deal, some of our designers in the hop also have giveaways, so make sure to leave comments on all the blogs for a chance to win!

    If you have come from Ruchi Crafeteria,  you are on the right track. You can check out the complete list of participating blogs on the Mudra Blog. 

     So let us get onto some fun cards using Mudra products, shall we!!

I have three cards to share for you all today!, all the celebrate something!

Here are they first :)

 First card: Starry nights :)

        For this card, I wanted a distressed night sky background and created this effect with various Distress inks and some archival inks. For the stars, i splattered on gesso. 

The lotuses were stamped and colored using Lotus Blooms set and akashiya watercolor brush pens. 

The sentiment is from the peacock set and encourages you to celebrate the beauty in you and personify it. 

Second card: Celebrating Love

This is a simple water wash background in soft pastely shades and some focal point background using some darker shades. I stamped the LOVE word using the super cool alpha set from Mudra and adhered the panel to some black card base and made some fun border pattern.

Third card:  Celebrate

This card is very generic and can be very quickly customized to create specific occasions. 

I stamped the Celebrate sentiment from the brushed sentiments set and the floral border using the On the special Dat' stamp set with some basic coloring. Here too i wanted a fun colorful background look and did a water wash effect. 

Here are the stamps that i have used from Mudra :)

Hope you enjoyed the post for the day.

Your next stop in the hop is the wonderful Rajni Chawla 

Have a fun hop fellow friends :)

Lots of love 

Uma

Farewell!

Hello friends!!!!
Wish you all a very happy new year with great hopes, love, joy and fun! We bid farewell to a wonderful year and it was right in time I did a farewell card to one of my colleagues. Here is the card!

Farewell Card - Stamping using Itsy Bitsy and Mudra stamps, MDF frames and some MDF Alphas

Farewell Card - Stamping using Itsy Bitsy and Mudra stamps, MDF frames and some MDF Alphas - A closeup

The inner card with some fun sentimerns

Inner card where the fellow team members can write their wishes

Another look

I created this card using two pieces of A4 size Cardstock to make a card designa nd covered it with pattern paper and washi tapes. For the front, I adhered some shimmer pink card stock and wrote out the sentiment "Farewell" and name using some alphas.

Then I prepared the sentiment base for the focal panel by a distressed CS and stamped Hello, You are amazing and adhered a MDF die cut frame on. To add some bling, added a pearl border and glitter butterfly.

For the insides, I cut out some basic fun die cuts and panels in black and white with some encouraging sentiments.

For the team members to convey their wishes, I created an inner card that said Best wishes and a blank inner space to be filled it.

Hope you all liked this project. Linking to the challenges below.
Paru's Card making CHallenges: Anything goes:

Country view challenges: Anything goes:

Beautiful butterflies

Hey fellas, Hope you all had a good thanksgiving :)
It must have been a long weekend for all those folks in the US and the UK and elsewhere who celebrate Thanksgiving :)

Anyways it was a pretty much routine weekend in my place and here is a quick card that I created.

And the envelope

:

I love this stamp set absolutely. This is from Mudra and I am totally in love with this one.  it has two beautiful butterflies that I have stamped in mild tones and kept the color palette to a minimum.
The sentiment just adds on nicely and it will be a perfect card for your mom or sister or your girl friends.

Here is the envelope and the back of card stamped with the same set :)

Entering this to the following challenges:

Mudra Create your own background:


Love all!

Vintage Shabby Chic style Wall Decor

Hey Blogger Pals!
I am sharing a mixed media layout/wall decor that I made for a trio of best friends. Here it is first!

Handmade Vintage Wall Decor for friends!

Handmade Vintage Wall Decor for friends!

This layout depicts the everlasting friendship of three friends from college and I thought what better way to emphasize than to have their names on it.
I have prepped the layout mdf with a coat of Camlin Texture white and stamped the leafy stamps from mudra. I painted over the stamped images using Acrylics. Once done, I added mdf laser cut embellishments of partial gate and corners.
For the name, I used mdf alphas for the first letter and stamped the rest of the name using Mudra Alpha stamps.
To create a messy layout, I distressed the panel with Picked Raspberry DI and stamped some mixed media stamps like scripts and honey comb from Itsy Bitsy, The sentiment stamp on the top is from Craftyscrappers and it adds such a nice touch :)
Finished off the layout with few flowers and leaves (from Hibiscus stamps - Mudra) and added the 'bff' for eternity :)
The back is kept pretty simple with a tag space for personal message.

Handmade Vintage Wall Decor for friends!

Let me know what you think of this guys!

Entering this to the following challenges!
Aud Setiments: Vintage + sentiment

Path of positivity: Friendship

Added!:
This piece is selected as a DT Delight for the Path of Positivity Challenge: Head over to view more

:)

Happy Birthday!!

Hey, there blogger pals :)

I am sharing a fun and simple card today that you can quickly make. One of my first supplies that I got when I started making cards was distress ink Mini kit #1. This kit has some fun colors that blend really well.

For today's card, I used picked raspberry, mustard seed and spiced marmalade to blend into one another in the card, offset to left. Once the blending was done I stamped a circular stamp using picked raspberry ink in random locations.

Finally, I finished off the card using the Happy Birthday sentiment from Mudra and mounted the panel onto Kraft card stock.

Let me know what you think of this fellas!

Supplies:
Distress ink mini kit #1
Sentiments from Mudra
Circular stamp from Itsy Bitsy
Ranger Archival Black
Kraft & white card stock

Entering this to the following challenges:


Pink & Main: #14: Fall or Halloween

Inspiration Destination : ANything goes #106