Creation featured on Whole Port

This month has been a very exciting one.We have been busy participating in challenges and developing new products. Right now we have few orders to fulfill for our online etsy shop Navanka Creations. It is a wonderful feeling to be busy doing what you love.
Amidst all this, it was great to be nominated for Best blog for kids craft by one of the most popular magazines Parents here in US.
Recently, our Origami Chocolate bowl creation was featured on the Wholeport blog. Remember the Origami Chocolate Bowl for Creativity Expo challenge that I shared earlier on the blog.
It was wonderful to see our entry featured as one of the 6 selected pictures from the numerous entries by super talented artists.
This Origami Chocolate Bowl was published on their blog as well when they listed Origami creations.

Seems they liked the creation and the picture and they used that when mentioning the last date for voting for Creativity Expo Challenge on their facebook page.



We are delighted. Thanks Wholeport. Thanks to all our friends who voted and left wonderful comments on our personal facebook pages, on Wholeport blog, Wholeport facebook page and our blog. Your kind comments and votes are always appreciated.

2011 Parents Best Craft for Kids Blog Nominee

It gives us immense pleasure to get the nomination for The Best crafts for Kids blog from Parents Magazine for the year 2011. We have been a great fan of Parents Magazine for long. Its like an honor to be nominated.

Parents.com brings you the best mom blogs and dad blogs on parenting advice and tips, parenting news, baby and toddler development, raising kids with special needs, adoption, homemade baby food, craft for kids, books for kids and more.

We thought it is a great opportunity to share some of our all time favorite pictures. It does have some of the crafts made by all the kids we worked with or rather we had the time to take pictures of and some most liked crafts.
Please vote for us and help us be the winner. It will mean a lot to us.

To vote simply click on the badge on the right hand corner of the blog or simply click here.

Thanks for reading and following.Kudos to all the amazing kid crafters and their parents for encouraging these little artists. Its been an amazing crafting journey and is becoming more fun filled one with you in it.

Handmade Welcome Baby Girl Greeting Card with Paper Quilling

I made this Welcome Baby Girl greeting card as a custom order for a friend. She wanted a big enough card for atleast ten people to sign and write their message. So I made this card with a 8.5" x 11" card-stock folded in half.  Since the card size is non standard I also made a custom envelope for the card.  For the rattle and stroller I used crimped strips. For the lace I used Martha Stewart border punch.

I simply love quilled feet. They just look so delicate and adorable with tiny toes and remind me of the time when the nurse took my son's footprints in the hospital. I have been making a lot of baby cards  these days. Some for our etsy shop Navanka Creations and some for friends. Two of my girlfriends are expecting. Looks like will be making some more :).

Wooden Bead Necklace Preschool Craft

It gives me immense pride to share this craft with you all. This is my daughter's first attempt at bead craft. Both of us are so proud of this project.

I was just waiting for her to turn 3 year old so desperately that she gets to use things which are labelled as small parts, only for 3 year old and above. She was ready before that but still I was waiting.

This is one of the simplest crafts if you look at it. But, definitely a feel good craft for a preschooler. They do get sense of achievement after completing this.
I could see it is a little challenging for them.
It is very good for honing their fine motor skills.Also, they get to learn and experience patterns.
It can be tiring too, so its ok for parents to help in between just to help them to complete the project. To be honest, at the end of it my daughter was all worked up and the tiny fingers wanted rest, but the little heart wanted to wear that necklace as soon as possible. So I pitched in.


She got this cute box she got the other day from Joann, its a $1 box which comes with 4 crayons on top to color this little ballerina.
Once the necklace was completed she wore it. But she had a box ready to keep it safe.
I think it is great craft for kids.


Useful Tips:

1. Wooden beads were bought from Dollar Tree. Not all of them are perfect. Parents might want to sort the good ones and give to kids to avoid frustration.
2. For cording the beads your best bet is thin elastic as shown in the picture. I tried jewellery color cords as well as hemp meant for jewellery making, beading and crafting, but they are not great for little hands. The tip does not remain stiff for long. Craft needles meant for kids are too thick for this project.
3. The beads I bought had one sample elastic. More can be bought from sewing supply store. Walmart, Michaels and Joann have them.
4. For quicker projects you might want to make a bracelet.
5. For preschooler boys, you might want to get square beads in blue, black, red, orange or brown.You can also select a different box.

Cupcake birthday card

This summer we have been attending lot of Birthdays :). I made this cupcake card for my friend's daughter. She turned four and is very very sweet..just .like a cupcake! She had been telling everybody for weeks that she is almost four and is now a BIG girl.  The way she would bring up her coming birthday was simply adorable.

Here's a closeup of the cupcake.

I  loved making this card and am going to make one for our ETSY shop too. For those of us who are new to our blog, you can check out our ETSY shop Navanka Creations here .

Days have started to get shorter and I can not believe summer is almost over. Wish it stays like this a little longer :) .

Rocket theme birthday card

I made this one for my friend's son's 6th Birthday. I initially planned to make the card entirely with quilling but ended up making it with paper piecing and some quilling accents. I personalized the card with his name on the rocket / space shuttle. For the stars I used stickers.

I think this could be a cool wall art for a Boy's room also. I always find it hard to make creative stuff for boys..they need cool stuff and my first instinct is to make beautiful ( read flowery) stuff. With my son growing up, I do sometimes think of how will I make crafting fun for him. I think the best way to get boys interested in crafts is to incorporate their interests in the project..like sports, animals, cars etc.  For pretty and cutesy crafts...will have to borrow my niece :).

Toilet Paper Roll Tube Puppets

My 3.5yr old daughter is getting more vocal about her demands now. Whether it is what she wants to watch on tv or what craft she wants to do. I can definitely feel she is growing and that it is going to be a challenge to meet her expectations. One such afternoon was couple of days back when her summer camp got over. She insisted that she wants to make puppets and she wants to make them now. She was very much persistent in using these toilet paper rolls which, by the way we have been saving from ages to make some craft in future.
This is one of those unplanned crafts which was made as she wanted it to be.



Supplies you will need :
- Toilet paper roll tubes : 2 no.s
- Colored paper
- Tissue Paper
- Ribbon
- Markers
- Card stock
- Craft sticks
- Tape
- Scissors
- CraftGlue
- Foam brush
- Small plastic milk bottle cap

Her demands:
1. Puppet should be a boy and a girl.
2. The boy's hair has to be yellow.
3.Girl should have two ponies with ribbon.
4.I (my daughter) have to be the great helper to make it. Which literally means she will make it and Mommy is only to help.
5.Boy should have buttons.

Keeping those requirements/demands in mind. This is what we made. She was more than happy to play with the puppets that she made herself.

We ended up making one more puppet, a flower puppet. It is just foam flower stickers on the craft stick.

Hope the pictures are self explanatory.If you have any questions about this, please don't hesitate to ask. I will be more than happy to explain.

Paper Quilled Butterfly and Flowers

The day I tried quilling for first time I made these butterfly and flowers and that project has been proudly hanging in my corridor since then. One of my students wanted to make the same design and that's what we made this Friday. It was a fun project. She saw crimped strips in one of the cards I made and wanted to try that and I do think it looks nice.

This project brought back lot of memories of how I stumbled upon the art of quilling and how it has become such a big part of my creative life!

Cheers to quilling :)

Paper Quilling Khanda

The Khanda is one of the most important symbols of Sikhism . In the symbol the sword to the left represents truth, and the sword to the right represents the willingness to fight for what is right- dharma (religion). The circle in the middle means that there is only one God, never beginning and never ending. One of my students is a Sikh and we were quite excited about making a Quilled Khanda.

We took a printout of the Khanda symbol outline and traced it on a tracing paper. Then carefully we arranged all the coils pinched into petal shape to fill the outline. Then we transferred the finished Khanda on white cardstock. I have to tell, it took us quite some time and patience. Its tough to get a seven something girl to make so many coils. It took us two sessions to complete the project and I did chime in to make some coils :).

She is planning to make a few of them and gift them to her relatives in India when she travels there this winter. I am sure they will be touched to receive such meaningful handmade gift. Here is Sirjan with her beautiful creation.