Box of Treats

A couple of weeks ago I spent an evening making 50 of these pillow boxes for a colleague’s son’s birthday. He has a September birthday and September babies are irrefutably the best!

The name tag is a big silver chumki with a white circular price tag sticker. The bow is made from some stiff wire-ish twine that I found at a local stationary store.

Atul’s mom filled the boxes with some walnuts, almonds, toffees and a small laddu. I am amazed at the amount of goodies she managed to stuff into that little box!

Wedding Dress Favour Boxes

A friend of ours got married a while ago and we got together and threw her a bridal shower. Here are the favour boxes I made. It’s supposed to be a wedding dress as the blog post title ever so subtly suggests. The little purple dots holding the ribbon in place are brads from Michaels. 

An army of brides? 

For decorating, we used the pom-poms from my sister-in-law’s baby shower.

And update: the little fellow made his appearance last June and will turn one this year. Here he is walking around the house with his mommy making sure everything’s running on schedule.  

P.R.E.C.I.O.U.S

There is just one little girl in this world who I would do anything for. Just an itsy bitsy thing who makes my heart melt every time she says “aa-aaunty”. My niece, Shruthi, celebrated her 4^th birthday this October.

She loves twirling around in poofy dresses till she’s dizzy! So my sister decided that Shruthi would enjoy a ballerina themed party. Here are some details!

I really wanted to try the ‘Rose Cake’ in a light pink shade with the new Americolor food colours a friend brought from the US for me. So I used this opportunity and made one.

The ‘ballerina’ unfortunately didn’t come out as well as I'd hoped. I piped it out with melted white chocolate and dusted it with silver luster dust from Wilton. Though it didn’t look great, it was delicious! Obviously! It’s chocolate!

My sister made a gorgeous cupcake stand. Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures of just the stand.

The cupcake toppers and birthday banner is TomKat Studio inspired! I downloaded some of her free templates and changed them around to suit the ballerina theme.

I used some of the remaining toppers on straws for the kids. Also in the last minute I came across some party hats in pink. The kids loved them!

We found some white paper bags for party favours for the kids. The silhouette was my sister's idea. So pretty!

The cake was chocolate with buttercream frosting.

Shruthi loved her cake…

...and all the presents!

Gettin' Hitched!

A friend of ours got married this June. Her sister-in-law threw her a lovely bridal shower... and... I was in charge of  decorating! Well technically, I kind of kept asking if I could help and me thinks I put her in an awkward place and she couldn't refuse. So much for wedding etiquette huh? I wonder if they were planning to invite me in the first place... hmmmm.... food for thought.

Her wedding colour palette was ivory, brown and pink. I simply love damask and decided to use it on the paper products I designed for the shower.

And now onto a whole bunch of pictures with bad lighting. The bride-to-be was welcomed in with a banner that read 'Blessings!'.

Martha Stewart's pom-poms were everywhere. Obviously!

I love perfume bottles! The clear shimmering glass and beautiful shapes make me feel like a child at Christmas. I have collected a few over time and used them here to put in a couple of pink Dutch roses. The tall vases are drinking glasses with shiny silver pebbles and twigs. To add to all that shimmer, we (my sweet assistant a.k.a husband and I) strung little crystals (fake plastic ones) on them. The dry rose petals are from a whole lot of potpourri the bride-to-be supplied.

The glass votives with pink tealights were the bride's sister-in-law's idea. They were so pretty all lit up. This was one time I wished I had an awesome fancy schmancy camera.

And finally, favour boxes!

Birthday favour boxes

A friend's baby girl celebrated her first birthday last Saturday. I was asked to make pillow favour boxes and coordinate the colours with the party theme - white and blue. I also made the favours that went into the box: Chocolate Cake! 

I realized only much later, during a conversation with my friend, that neither he nor his wife had ever tasted anything I've baked and just went with their instincts that I'd do fine. I'm happy that they trusted me, but it's a pretty scary thought as well.  I'm so glad it all worked out!

Note to self: Samples, samples, samples... make sure your customers know what to expect.

Valaikaapu

I’ve had to put much thought into phrasing this post and realized that it’s actually pretty simple. We wanted to celebrate the awaited birth of my sister-in-law’s baby. Oh wait! Didn’t we already do that? Not the traditional way! So my mom-in-law hosted a Valaikaapu ceremony.

I’m not sure about the exact ceremony and there’s been a lot of debate about what it could mean to a Christian… but I know for a fact that we didn’t really care. It was an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the new life and thank God for this blessing. And what greater joy than being surrounded by people who’ve seen you in diapers huh?

I think my mom-in-law sort of made up customs… none of us were sure for certain… but the ceremony was beautiful, simple and meaningful.  And I’m sure my SIL loved it!

And who can say no to colourful bangles?!!!

My contribution wasn’t much this time around… but I did manage to squeeze in a few of my origami square paper boxes. They were big enough to hold a couple of bangles, a banana, some beetle leaf and nuts, a piece of turmeric and a rose.

  

So colourful! So pretty! Me likey a lot!!!

Baby Shower

Finally!

After dreaming of planning a small party for a really long time, I got a fabulous opportunity to organize my sister-in-law’s Baby Shower. Boy was I happy! I’ve browsed through so many ideas over the years and was just dying to have an opportunity to use them in a small intimate setting so that I can keep costs low and see how all those ideas stocked up in my head would translate in real time.

When the opportunity did come, stream lining the ideas down to a realistic number was the most difficult part. The rest came easy! I did have a ton of help from my husband and two of my SIL’s best friends. So it was all relatively stress free too. 

We decided on a late evening terrace party. I decided to go with paper pom poms and paper lanterns for décor. There is something so wonderfully summery and light about those pom poms that I simply adore.

Paper pom poms were super easy and fun to make. But those paper lanterns were a pain to even find in stores. When I finally did find them they had huge pictures of Santa Claus printed on them, but after some careful peeling off of the printed areas of the paper and sticking white tissue paper they were passable… when lit up.

 The party started late evening, so for lighting we used our Christmas fairy light set. Actually three sets of fairy lights. That and two lanterns had the terrace pretty well lit.

I love the idea of a wishing tree and just had to have one. I had a branch of driftwood lying around the house that my parents had picked up on a beach of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. It was perfect for the occasion with a shell holding the paper tags.

The ‘Celebrate!’ banner is a free download from The TomKat Studio. Initially I planned to design one but ran out of time.

For favours I made little pram boxes for Choco-Pies. My friend brought me a couple of boxes of brads from Michaels when she was visiting from the USA and I’d been waiting to use them ever since. So I used them for the roof of the carriage to help fan out the paper.  

That was super fun planning… can’t wait for when I get to do something like this again. 

Oh! And before I forget... there was cake! It doesn't look like much all butchered up in this picture... but it was a chocolatey world of D-E-L-I-S-H!!! *drool*

Pillow Boxes

As I had mentioned on an earlier post, there was a pre-wedding phase in my life when favour boxes became my sole obsession. So much that I made 800 – 900 handcrafted pillow boxes for my wedding. I did take the help of some friends eventually, but 80% of the work was done by me. Ridiculous I know! It went on till the night before the wedding day because I wanted to make 1000 boxes. I’m so glad I got that obsession out of my system.

Here are some pictures of some boxes I made later, when sanity returned and I had some time on my hands. These can be used as little gift boxes for jewellery, key chains etc.





And here’s a picture of my favour boxes taken by a friend.



At the end of my wedding day the only thing I apparently kept repeating to my husband was "Thank God we get married only once!"

Favour boxes for my bridesmaids

When it came to paper products, favour boxes were my first love. I initially came across favour boxes when I was browsing through the internet for ideas for my wedding.

After attempting various kinds of boxes using templates I downloaded from the internet, I eventually came up with these boxes that I presented as gifts to the best of my girlfriends who were with me on my wedding day. Some of them use them as jewel boxes which I think is a beautiful use for them. I use them to store little buttons and other craft items.