Garden Glamour

Home terrace-garden made glamorous!

 In a city like Mumbai, with all the space scarce, it’s a big boon to have an attached garden to our flats. And my aunt & uncle precisely have this absolute luxury of an outdoor escapade right outside their living room. But the outdoor space wasn’t exactly as beautiful as it ought to be. It always irked me that such a blessed space has not been done justice to. So luckily they were off for 3 days and the house was empty. This was the ideal time for us to do justice to the outdoor space that it deserved. And definitely surprise my aunt & uncle upon their return (hopefully with delighted notions).

 

So my wife and I embarked upon this garden transformation project. We had 3 days to complete it and boy it did look like quite a task before we started. We had loads to do, but the first question was - what to do? We definitely wanted this place to be lively and colorful and all lit-up. So that was our cue.

First we started to de-clutter that space (approx. 150 sq.ft.). Disposed off the old & worn plants and pots. Kept the good ones. We cleared out the space so as to get exact idea of all our design requirements and proceedings. We segregated our project into smaller units and one by one we started working upon them:

 

Fish Tank: My aunt & uncle had this big fish-tank which housed 2 piranhas, and by natural choice we wanted those 2 deathly beauties to be highlighted. On the wall where the fish tank lay, we decided to add some decorative element - by covering the wall with a long, colorful plastic mat. The colorful mat with its bold blue-orange-brown colors, became our color inspiration for the entire project. From behind the colorful mat we randomly popped out bulbs of a light streamer. This simple trick gave a brilliant lit-up starry effect and instantaneously drew our eyes to the delightful color-light-fish interplay.

 

Wall Gallery: Right next to the fish tank, there was still a half-empty wall. This half-wall we decided to convert into an artifact gallery of sorts. Our idea for this project was to keep it budget-friendly, yet evoke awesomeness. So we bought these wooden fruit crates. We stacked 5 of them into a kind of wall unit. Thus, each crate created a hollow that would hold our ‘gardenified’ artifacts:

 

 

11. On the top-most one we created a vignette using brass pots and decorative wood panels.

22. Next one we put dried flowers & leaves in a beautiful golden dish, and inclined it against a stone for better viewing.

33. Then in the third, we hung this round-rose bouquet. Simple and elegant.

44. On the right lower crate we kept this over-sized hand painted blue ceramic pot. Resting against it was a pair of garden tongs, whose handle was painted bright orange.

55. For the 5^th on we were falling short of ideas. So we simply filled up 3 empty mineral water bottles with mud. Painted its base blue. And skirted them with orange dotted ribbons. At times the most basic elements create the best visual effects.

With all these elements we created our garden wall unit. It had this beautiful rustic-colorful feel to it. Every element in it screamed for attention.

 

Sitting Arrangements: Right opposite the wall gallery and fish tank we needed to have our sitting area. They already had an old wrought iron seater. We just covered it with a jute panel and a couple of bold bolsters – and we were sorted. Behind the seater was a grilled opening to the foyer. So we simply covered that too with another seamed jute mat. Also made sure to let a few creepers fall in front of the panel, in order to negate its emptiness. In front of the seater we made a coffee table from the wood fruit crate itself. Simple!

 

Plants & Pots: Next was time to arrange the green bit. We put the large pots on the periphery of the terrace. Then layered the plants one in front of another as per size & scale. We also painted a few pots with bright orange and deep blue oil paints. Made sure that the posterior region was clustered with plants. Putting all plants together rather than scattered, always gives a more wholesome and more natural rendering.

Lighting: Here comes the trick to elevate any space. Light it up! And that’s what we did. The entire periphery of the area was laced with tubed LED lights. I always prefer the lighting in yellow-golden hues – they give such richness.

 

And that’s about it. It took us 3 long & tiring evenings to make sure we complete this project. None the less it was exhilarating, fun and contending – ‘cause we knew that the end result looked delightfully extravagant yet comfortable. A definite eye-turner, I say (so did the neighbors)!

Upon my aunt & uncles return home, immediately I get a call from them saying how much they loved the space and with all the complimenting around, we felt extremely proud and happy.

But the best compliment we got is that everyday my aunt & uncle without fail sit outside in their garden and enjoy a hot cup of tea to kick start a beautiful day from a beautiful space. 

The Clinking Chandelier

Glass bottles and golden ribbons make a clinking glass chandelier.

Glass, gold & light – these are 3 elements which can definitely up any house to give it a rich & glamorous feel. And in our next project we decided to take all three of them together. Time to exude exuberance.

Our starting point was whole lot of these mini-sized perfume bottles, which had abstract floral golden motifs on them. So golden became our obvious choice to supplement the bottles. The idea was simple: to bunch up the bottles together in random fashion, so that when they are slightly touched, they make this rippling-clinking noise effect. Music to the ears I tell you. And through the glass-bunch pass a hanging bulb, that would help give a shimmery reflect.

We used golden ribbons to tie the bottles at their neck and a holed utensil lid was used as our support a   suspender, from which the bottles would hang. The idea was just to randomly tie the bottles at varying     heights, so as to fill the bulk, yet let the bottles be freely inter-spaced.  
                                                    

Once all the bottles were tied, we suspended a light fixture from the center hole. And we were done!

The chandelier was such a quick work, as it just required tying the bottles and hanging them up. And the results are definitely quite richly dramatic.

In dark nights, the glimmer will cast. And with blowing winds, the clinking will last.

Tying and hanging is the easiest craft exercise to undertake. You basically require 3 elements totally – 1. A supporting body on top, 2. A suspender (rope/ribbon) and 3. Quirky elements that could be tied & hanged. A kid’s gym or a suspended fish-tank; the possibilities and themes to make are endless. 

Glow Willow from Below

A potted-leafless-branching tree, glows in a diffused-gold-bulbing undergrowth.

Leafless & lifeless branching trees have this ghostly beauty about themselves. The dendritic patterns & shadows create enchanting designs. I’ve always been spookily & creatively drawn to them, as I realize that these naked branches used just the way it is, can create quite a unique design experience.

The first task was to find the branch itself – which had just the right branching, just the right height and just the right strength. Boy! With an intense search of 13 days, 13 hours and 13 minutes – we finally found the perfect kind we needed.

Post getting the branch, we nicely cleaned it up - removed the years of dirt that settled on it. After the cleaning and drying, we touched it up with strokes of metallic gold paint. We painted it up to give our décor piece a more rich & suitable for home feel.

Once the branch was ready, we erected it in a simple cylindrical pot. The idea is to keep the pot as simple as possible, so that the natural beauty of the naked branch is not clashed with.

Our idea was to fill the pot brim with sprouting bulbs, so that the diffused light from below would subtly cast a golden-glow on the tree. In order to do that we firstly created a connection of the required 10 bulbs in parallel wiring (finally my class X physics come to use). The parallel connections seems at first difficult, but the idea is to just be sure that the same colored live wires are all connected together and the other colored neutral ones together, and all finally end in 2 terminal sources. Quite a few online tutorials are available to help better understand.

Post that we interspersed and injected these bulbs in a thick thermacol sheet. Being careful of the wiring always! The crate of thermacol & bulbs was then put around the branched tree. Since the wires are still visible, we put in small stones all over the pot and around the bulbs.

To finally reveal our masterpiece, just plug in and switch on the lights. Get aback… and absorb the beautiful-rich-soft-golden-glow of the haunted-leafless-branched-tree!

It is guaranteed to get you goose-bumps!

Always be careful when connecting multiple wires together. Be sure the the live and neutral wires never come in contact. Also wire-joints should be well connected and insulated. A quick and easy way is to twine the two ends of the wire and then add a drop of hot glue off the glue gun. Let it cool and dry. This will not only create a permanent joint but also create the required insulation.

Good Gold Times

Decorative golden plate converted into a decorative golden clock!

Good memories are made by good times, and good times are definitely made better by viewing it in a good clock! So all it takes is a good clock to make a good memory. As simple as it can be.

Let’s cut short the philosophy and focus on clocks!

Well, a clock apart from the elementary work it does of showing time can become quite an exquisite home décor article.

A couple of days back, we saw this gold-oozing, decorative serving plate at the local market. It was that kind of an item which drew your attention to it and made sure it never went away. So I bought the plate just with the sole intention of reforming it into a clock. Coz I knew that this one article would be enough to embellish any pale wall.

All we needed to do is drill a hole to through its center. Then put a time-piece from behind – (you can take from an old clock or just buy a new one). Lastly added the black hands in front – hours, minutes, and seconds. Time to tick on. Another look that can be tried is by attaching a pendulum to the clock. Time to tick on again.

As I thought, when we put this clock on a blank wall, the entire wall emblazoned with the solid golden beauty of the clock. It’s so cool to see that such small measures have such great impacts!

Good-gold times, ticking on…

If you have any old decorative plate, just drill a hole through its center, add a time-piece in behind and the hands in front. Hang it and that’s it; you have made a brand new clock which is ready to flaunt your walls.  

Stick & Tied

Stray wooden sticks, all tied up to make hanging lamps that’s very slick

A stroll through nature amidst the woods is so awe-inspiring. Every sight, every tree, every leaf, every stick has a story of its own to be told.

On one of our family picnics on the outskirts of Mumbai, my wife and I, withdrew ourselves into the woods. On our trail we found these stray sticks in abundance lying all over the ground. These sticks were long, slender, smooth & beautifully curved. Instantly our eyes twinkled (thinking but obviously of up-cycling them) and we gathered as many as we could.

We tried quite a few combinations to make the best looking stick structure. I wanted to play with the gorgeous natural curves of the stick. So eventually a curved pyramid was what decided it to be as it looked absolutely stunning. And a hanging lamp made out of it would totally steal the deal!

We first made a hexagonal base by tying around wool in the center of 3 wooden sticks. After that we tied one-one stick to each of the 6 ends of the base. And finally, we tied the top of the loose standing sticks in the center, taking advantage of the stick curvatures. So what we got was a curved-up pyramid stick cage. We still had quite a few sticks left, so we made two of these.

Once our structures were ready, to make the lamp we hanged a bulb through a transparent bottle and let it dangle within the stick cage. To add more texture to the lamp-fitting we wound around wool on the bottle (stain painting the bottle would also look brilliant)!

So our stick & tied DIY lamp is ready to be hanged and light up our living spaces.

Who knew that the story of these sticks would have such a consequential & gorgeous end.

Make sure your home has enough natural light in the day and enough artificial light for the nights. Lighting up your homes is the best way to remove any gloom, and a well-lighted home is always more welcoming and more stimulating. 

Barbed Reflections

A wreath of barbed wires to adore your reflections in the mirror

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the spikiest of them all?”

Barbed wires! This metallic-jagged ribbon was our latest inspiration. We see them everywhere – confining our premises and protecting any intrusions. If we see them closely, they are form an intricate and braided pattern; with spikes looped around periodically. We seldom realize that so much design goes behind these wires.

In our next project, our idea was to highlight the beauty and the intricacy of these barbed wires. We decided that a simple wreath wrapped around a mirror was all that we required doing.

 The first thing we needed was to find some barbed wires – and we found it lying abandoned and rusted right near to our building. We got nearly 10 feet of the wire. So we wounded the barbed wire into layered circles and cranked it in place with some twining wire (be extremely careful while handling barbed wires. Do wear thick hand-gloves for protection). The rustic, rusted look of the barbed-wire was looking brilliant in itself, so we avoided any further treatments or painting.

Next, we got a simple mirror - shaped circularly and sized so that it could be framed around by the barbed wire wreath.

 In order fix it up on the wall, all we required to do was to firstly hook up the mirror in the desired location. Once the mirror was put up, then we drilled another screw/hook a little above the mirror’s top side. Simply, then hanged the wreath on the screw/hook.

So what we get is a simple round mirror that is wrapped around by this rustic and spiky barbed wire wreath. It is somewhat an exaggerated piece of home décor; but with it hanged high and kept well out of reach – it would safely create outstanding visual curiosities that would definitely grab peoples’ attention.

I somehow, love the barbaric quality of this mirror. It traverses you into the world of dark fairy-tales where magic mirrors, evil queens and spiked potions prevailed.

Experimenting in our homes with various off-beat materials (like wires, pipes, ropes, etc.) would help create visual interests and they become definite ‘conversation starters’!  

Green Cascades

Planters randomly stacked upon each other to greenify your home

I was casually surfing online and came across this garden-scape which had a wrought iron stand for planters, that could be stacked vertically; it looked so cool and reminded me of space-constrained cities, which move vertically upwards to accommodate the ever-growing population. Quite a far-fetched comparison! But this idea would be perfect for our ever-growing population of plants at our front door. 

Before: Normal boring plastic planters

But I wanted to let-off the heaviness of the wrought iron, so I modulated the idea and purchased these plastic planters in ascending sizes. Spray painted the planters, to let go off the brown color monotony. Stacked them up one atop the other, in this vertical cascading form. Each planter was attached to another by with metallic wire joints. Put some plants in each one of them - we can put natural or artificial ones, depending upon your liking and your plant-maintenance skills!

After: Golden planters stacked vertically in a stumbling fashion

The final product looks very chic. It sits prettily on the window pane besides our home door. This is a really cool idea for space constrained areas; where more greenery can be added by going the vertical way up. Such a modern concept I say!

Let your home be an extension of nature by making sure enough green plants adorn it. Especially at the doorway, having plants make your home more welcoming.