Thursday, June 17, 2010

Kaleidoscope


     I have always been fond of kaleidoscopes, but never though of making one. This summer camp at Avvai my friend kavitha taught the students to make a kaleidoscope.( I taught one class of paper art:))).After she finished the class she still had material for two more kaleidoscope. She gave me material to make one for myself .For a long time the mirror strips were in danger of being broken to pieces,lying by themselves on a shelf , then one day I sat down and got it done.
      The materials required are :
3 strips of mirror.
1 triangular glass piece. 
glue
cello tape
butter paper
wrapping paper
cardboard
small beads or broken bangle pieces...




        Join the three mirror strips as shown with the help of cello tape.

    
      Stick the triangular piece of glass on one side also with tape.




Cut a card board into strips with length and breadth a little bit bigger than the mirror. 


      Stick the card board strips on top of the three mirrors and join the edges with tape.The card board should be stuck in such a way that the extra length of the cardboard pieces should stick out on the side where we have stuck the glass piece.So that we get a small space over the triangular glass.


      Put some small shiny objects in that gap and close it with a piece of triangular butter paper piece. on the other side of the kaleidoscope stick a triangular cardboard piece with a hole in the middle.(Feeling the butter paper to be very thin , I have placed a piece of card board strip on top of the first triangular glass along all the three sides and fixed another triangular glass piece over, that is, the shiny objects are between two triangular glass pieces and over the second glass piece I have stuck the butter paper).



      Wrap the whole thing neatly with a wrapping paper. Your kaleidoscope is now ready .

Monday, June 7, 2010

Water colours



      This is my first water colour painting . I must have done it some thirteen years ago . I was just beginning to learn to paint with water colours. I gave this picture to my mom and this vacation I got to take a picture of the painting.Many years ago the picture fell off the hook and the paper inside tore ,that is the line on the cat.
   Now I hardly paint except during the Navarathri Golu when we have to create scenes for our stories.