Fabric stories... Ikat and more!

Who says Mondays have to be dull and depressing?

I LOVE how fabrics can change the look of a space. I also love how a fabric can tell a story from the pattern of weaves to a craft process and a story of generations of artisans working together to create beautiful designs.

Sarita Handa is passionate about fabrics and it shows in the creations her company offers. From pastels to stark colors that can brighten your day and your room.

GO ahead! Be inspired...

Visit the Sarita Handa collection here. 

HAPPY July 4th!

Happy 4th of July everyone!
Enjoy the long weekend.. Hopefully this set will make your 4th of July just a bit more festive! This downloadable PDF includes sparkler cards, matchbook wrappers and straw tags. Simply print, cut, tape and voila – instant party!
Check out twig and thistle for the templates!

Dishoom!Preserving memories.

I came across this blog and loved the concept of what Dishoom is doing.
Preserving memories! 

Catch a memory and bake it onto a plate...

Dishoom is a Bombay Cafe in London. They have captured lots of wonderful stories from the original Cafes of Bombay and now are plating them up and sharing them in their cafes in London.


Here's what they have to say:

From the moment we arrive, we accumulate our own layers of stories and experiences, remembered events and remembered emotions. Together, they become our own personal narratives.

But for something so integral, so basic to who we are, memory feels so fleetingly ethereal. The fragrance of a little sponge cake (perhaps Madeleine, perhaps Mawa), the rich salty taste of butter melting on a bun dipped in hot chai, the sounds of a particular street, the soft touch of a companion’s hand, the wistful sweetness of a moment. The utterly unique moment is here, and then it’s gone. And the only trace left behind of its existence is an imperfect imprint on our minds.

How can we preserve this memory? How can we capture a feeling or a sensation, a poignant moment, before it fades like the morning mist?

But sooner or later, for all the love that people have for them, the Irani Cafés may all be gone. Faded away, unnoticed, in the rush.

In our own small way, we thought we could contribute to the capture of memory. We already pay homage to the Irani Cafés through design and food, but we thought we could go further and document and preserve actual recollections. We gathered stories from those who know and love the Irani Cafés – guests at Dishoom, the owners of the remaining cafés, others in Bombay and London.

We then literally baked these stories onto eighty of our plates (at 850C).

New Rule

You can check the stories behind each plate on their blog @ www.platewallah.dishoom.com

Kuddos Dishoom team! Keep sharing...

DIY: Papier Mache Easter Eggs

I came across this unbelievably cute papier mache easter egg DIY on Pinterest and followed through the links to only land on Megans's adorable blog called Not Martha. Megan has put together tons of DIY tutorials of some really useful, cute and fun things. I totally recommend checking it out. 

It would have been really hard to pick and chose one of those DIY's to share with you all but fortunately Easter's just around the corner so well that was easy. Sharing below a series of self explanatory images to hand make some adorable easter eggs for your weekend's Easter party :) 

Step 1: What you'll need.



Step 2: What to do with those materials



Step 3: Inflate the water balloons



Step 4: Apply starch on balloon and layer with white tissue



Step 5: Apply the colored squares while the balloon is still wet

Step 6: Hang dry overnight

Step 7: Next day, deflate the balloon using a pin prick and remove it from the cast. 

Step 8: Woohoooo! It's finally candy stuffing time!

Step 9: Slit the papier mache egg on either side of the opening and stuff with candy carefully. Don't worry we'll seal the slits with left over squares of the colored paper but before that insert a string loop in the egg to make it easy to pull it open. 

Step 1o: Tadaaa! 

You can view the entire tutorial in detail on Megan's blog here. If you end up making these, do share the images with us - we'd love to hear from ya! 

Happy crafting and Happy Easter!

Treasure Trunk at #Terressentials

This is our second post in the series "Treasure Trunk" featuring small businesses and our partners that carry treasures from around the world including some of our products!

Today we feature "Terressentials" owned by James and Diana,life partners and designers. If anyone ever tells you chemicals are necessary to create skin care products, Terressentials proves them wrong. Each and every ingredient in their products is 100% certified organic and is an ingredient the USDA allows in food.

After learning about their journey and looking at their lovely store you would want to hop in and take in just about everything. Its a feast for the eyes and food for the soul!

Here's a little something about their journey and their dazzling store in Frederick, MD.

The Terressentials journey began 20 years ago with Diana's startling diagnosis of lymphatic cancer at age 29.  Their intense search to assemble the pieces of the puzzle that would allow Diana the means to make a recovery from cancer and chemotherapy led them to discover the infestation of cancer-causing chemicals in their home, their foods and in their bodies. This unsettling discovery was the couple's break-through moment that illuminated the necessity of living a clean organic lifestyle. James and Diana's continued scrutiny into household and personal care product labels unearthed a tremendous, urgent need for completely natural, truly organic products to care for their bodies and was the catalyst that fueled the activist work of these original organic pioneers.  

The Girly Table

Love the colors

James and Diana began handcrafting soothing and rich organic personal care products initially for their own use and word quickly spread about the organic authenticity and effectiveness of their delicious organic personal care creations. Over time, the explosive expansion of the internet exposed the dark misleading faux organic labeling practices rampant in the personal care marketplace and sparked a large demand from many organic-minded people for the Terressentials products, and fed the organic growth of the small company.  Today, the Maryland-based company offers their own USDA certified organic handcrafted products to a worldwide audience via the Terressentials web site and through their two company-owned brick and mortar boutiques. 

Animal kingdom-the window display for the season

With their early formal training and careers in the arts and architecture, and their dedication to creating the highest quality certified organic handcrafted personal care products, it was a logical transition for James and Diana to choose to include an exciting array of distinctive organic gourmet chocolates and teas, and the brilliant artistic works of global artisans in their stores. A visit to a Terressentials store dazzles the eye and soothes the body, mind and soul with inspiring displays of beautiful fair trade and fair-made artisan crafts from the farthest corners of the world, and with evocative organic scents, sensations and flavors.  

Terressentials represent the kind of quality, concern and ethical practices all businesses should aspire to. Their website has so much to offer, priceless information, you may spend more time than you had planned.

Here are some of The Green Elephant products you can find at their stores! 
Bags/Jewelry Boxes/Scarves and many more!!

               

                         

Design Feature:Nurturing walls

I am a sucker for mud walls.Ask me if i want to live with glass walls or mud walls i would take mud in a heartbeat!
We here @ TGE come across artisans creating fascinating products day after day. So when i came across this book i had to share it with you.

For generations, the women of the Meena tribe in India's Rajasthan state have been decorating the walls and floors of their homes with a stunning form of public art both graphic and decorative known as Mandana painting, using a white paste made of rice and milk to paint intricate motifs on these mud-brown mud surfaces. This remarkable craft is passed down from mother to daughter, and the drawings themselves often depict maternal motifs of birds and animals with their young.

 The book itself is a piece of art, printed on thick brown craft-paper that mirrors the mud walls of Meena homes and silk-screened by hand in Tara Books' fair-trade workshop in Chennai. Each image in every book is thus an original print, and the pages themselves emit the rich earthy smell of artisan craft.

 There is something very moving about the way these humble women are driven to be creative, in a lived, everyday sense. It gives us much to reflect on what we take for granted as the provenance of art: for one, their painting is not the unique creation of any single individual but a tradition grown in a community. The work is not produced for a market, but for themselves, as well as the community at large. And viewed in the context of their lives, art doesn't seem to be a luxury that has to be bought by opportunities and free time. --Gita Wolf 

Between the breathtaking silkscreens you'll find vibrant full-color photographs that offer a glimpse of the lives of these extraordinary Meena artists and contextualize the Mandana artwork in its place in the local community, revealing a kind of authenticity foreign to our culture of conjoined art and commerce. Nurturing Walls sets ajar the door to a fascinating world where beauty, community, and tradition live in their purest, most inspired form.


PHOTO CREDIT: NURTURING WALLS

Spring is on my mind! Green & Ecofriendly

I came across really interesting products on Nao Tamura's post and thought of sharing this one that especially caught the eye. Dinner plates!

I would love to have my guests use these as plates.  It reminds me of huge banquets in the southern part of India – where diners eat in “batches” on fresh banana leaves. Designed by Nao Tamura, these organic, form flexible plates are made of silica sand and are microwave and oven safe! How cool is that!

In design, an object which has ceased to be useful can be recycled to begin life anew, in a fresh form.  We plan to introduce Eco-friendly plates this summer made from palm leaves. If interested, say tuned and share with us your take on using them at house parties.

Photo credit: Nao Tamura, www.naotamura.com