Diwali DIY : Bangles Tea Light Holder

It's just a day to go for Deepavali, Indian festival of lights and I haven't done any decoration so far. I am down with heavy cold and severe lower back pain. In between I am busy in cleaning the house for the festival. Searching my crafts stuff I realized, I could do a quick craft for a tea light holder.

It's a tradition in Hindu religion, to gift bangles to the married women along with vermilion. This is something we women cannot refuse. Over years bangles have piled up in my home, some pretty some very dull. Often I donate them to my helper.  For our DIY today, gather some of your old unused bangles, strong adhesive(fevicol), some small golden/pearl decorative buttons/artificial stones.

Roughly arrange the bangles of same size, and start gluing each one on top of other.

In between make sure that your tower of bangles is straight and not slanted or in other shape. You can take break in between to make sure that glue has dried properly.

I managed to decorate with the items that I had in my home at the instant. On the top bangles I decorated with the golden buttons, gluing them.

I used approximately around 15 bangles for one tea light holder.

Finally place your bangle tower on the card stock, measure from outside and cut it.
Stick it to the base of the tower. This is optional step.

Wasn't this simple? Place the tea light inside and watch the glittering light. Have a happy and safe Diwali.

Update :
Adding this to Craft Schooling Sunday @ Creative Jewish Mom

Travellogue : Sigiriya Lion Rock Fortress, Sri Lanka

Thanks for your lovely comments on my previous post.
I was vacationing in the beautiful country of Sri Lanka and Thailand earlier of this month.
Our main trip was to Bangkok, Thailand, we had an opportunity to stay for three days in Sri Lanka. It was difficult to choose the places in Sri Lanka, as everything seemed beautiful, important, and we also had to consider distance from Colombo(where we our flight landed). Finally we zeroed on Kandy, Sigiriya and Dambulla caves. Last two are closely located, so you can cover both the places in one day.

We had booked taxi from Kangaroo Cabs from Colombo from India. As soon as we landed, we hopped on to this taxi and drove to Kandy first.

After exploring the Kandy city, we had a comfortable stay for a night  in OZO Kandy. Kids were so disappointed for our short stay here and didn't want to leave at all. We had heavy breakfast and started to Dambulla Caves at 7:45 AM the next day.

Driving in Sri Lanka is not that tough as roads are well maintained. Unfortunately the driver was very clueless of the roads and routes( forgive us Dilshaan), luckily we had offline google map of Sri Lanka and guided him well all the way.

After a tiring hike at Dambulla Caves, we started to Sigiriya around mid after noon. We were not sure of having lunch and more over there aren't much options for vegetarians like us here. We stopped by a fruit shop and had stomach full of fruits, cucumber and raw mango. I got to taste the dragon fruit which is scarcely available in India.

Although Sigiriya rock was visible from long distance, we had tough time in finding the entrance. Our driver, who while conversing with us in broken English said that last time he visited that place was when he was a kid but he was very confident of finding the entrance. After going round and round, we decided to be wise and asked for the Foreigners entry(there is other options for the locals)

The entry is free for the locals, and we foreigners have to pay a hefty ticket price. But fortunately, there is a discount for the SAARC countries and we ended up paying 2000 SLR for each one of us. You need to also show your passport at the entrance.

It looked very challenging to climb a 200 meters enormous rock on a hot afternoon but don't let it deter you. Most of the people prefer to either morning or late after noon to climb, and it's one of the most visited sites in Sri Lanka. When you enter you will not miss the beautifully landscaped gardens. On climbing further you will come across the boulder gardens and the terraced gardens. There are many little caves here whose walls were once adorned with beautiful frescoes.

According to Sri Lankan History, this site was selected by King Kasyapa for his new capital. He built his palace on the top of this rock and decorated its sides with colorful frescoes. You can still see the remains on top of the rock. The capital and the royal palace was abandoned after the king's death. It was used as a Buddhist monastery until the 14th century.
The steps are narrow and you need a lot of energy and water to reach the top.

While you are climbing, just before you reach the Lions Staircase, there is a mirror wall onto your left. Originally, this wall was so highly polished that the king could see himself on it. Now you can see various inscriptions on it, written by visitors both old and new. Few security guards were guarding it, preventing it from further damage.  At the same point you can take few spiral steps upward to see beautiful wall murals/frescoes. Unfortunately we were not allowed to click photos here.

After you have climbed half of the steps, you can see a small plateau, there is a gateway in the form of an enormous lion.

Further climb is the most challenging part of the climb and the stretch will definitely give you knee pain in the end. We have to carefully climb up a narrow steel stair case on the exposed side of the rock to the summit. You will also  see the grooves carved into the rock surface by the ancient builders to provide the footing for the original staircase that led to the top.

After the ascent, you can see forests every where around the rock. There were couple of ponds(belonged to the palace) on top which gets full in the rainy season. The usual pictures that we see over the internet are taken in the rainy season where this rocks looks out standing among the greenery that surrounds it. When we visited the ponds were almost dry.

After reaching the summit, and admiring a palace at such a height we stayed there for half an hour, and if you have patience you can go to each and every corner of this palace.

While we finished the descent, we bought few liters of cold water quench our thirst and refreshed ourselves at the rest room. There are few shops selling the souvenirs but do bargain hard before you decide to buy something.

Small hand embroidery on Kurta

I love crafting and more than anything else I love hand embroidery. I usually search for tops having some sort of hand embroidery. They are bit expensive and it's justified as it takes effort and time.

Few months back, I had bought  a block printed cotton fabric for getting my self a kurta stitched. I first give a trial piece to stitch before giving anything to any new tailor I want to try. As it happens with most of us, it didn't fit me perfectly. The plain and simplicity of this Kurta made me to try my naive embroidery skills.
I first drew triangles using free hand and a bright colored color pencil. Thus you see no two triangles same ☺ The stitch I used is Herringbone Stitch.

The top had a plain join like thing in the middle which ran till the neck. The filled triangles look more uneven as there was a long time gap in between stitching. It's not perfect but now my kurta looks wearable.

These are couple of cross stitch projects that I did when I was bored during our one year stay in Germany(some 10 years back). I wanted to do something similar. I searched for ready made cross stitch kits on Amazon.in but options were limited and I found it bit expensive. I guess they are imported. I wish my husband was smart enough in these things to get them from his Germany trips.

I am planning to start with this Volkswagen cross stitch project. Hope I put my plan to action soon. I am right now in the stage of gathering threads.

Source : Pinterest

So see you soon with another post.