Paper Quilling

Paper Quilling has become my latest passion and hobby. It is always amazing to see how the small papers can turn into a wonderful art. I came to know about paper quilling when google chrome came up with new design templates. I fell in love with the design created by Yulia Brodskaya.

Paper Quilling is a very old craft. During the renaissance period it is said that nuns used to decorate the books with paper quilling. Paper Quilling is originally originated from China.  

After that I got a new book “Art of Paper Quilling: Designing Handcrafted Gifts and Cards” by Claire Sun-ok choi. We can buy this book from amazon, flipkart.

This book describes about all the techniques and guidelines which an amateur should need to know. I personally didn’t go to any classes to learn about paper quilling. This book and lots of online materials helped me to start my own venture Ani Creations.

I started creating Paper quilled earrings. In our apartment mela it became a huge hit and I thought why I don’t take this to next level. I created my own facebook page Anicreations.chennai.

Next for my friend’s sister wedding when we were planning to decide what gift we should give, my mom suggested why don’t you make a framed paper quilling. And I did one of the projects with butterfly and flowers.

The paper required for this quilling can be of 10mm, 5mm, 3mm. 3mm is suitable for all kinds of projects. And it gives a beautiful finish. For the first time learner 10 mm or 5mm should be good as it will be helpful for having a grip on the project they are doing.

The basic shapes which will be needed to do a simple project can be tight roll, loose coil, teardrop, and marquise.

There are also lots of good blogspot which one can refer if they are interested; Inna’s Creation has lots of amazing projects. Below is the link for her blogs.

http://increations.blogspot.in/p/paper-quilling.html

In Chennai Quilling papers are available in all craft shops. In Adyar RK shopping Centre and Anada paper mart has quilling paper. Learn this art and enjoy it.

Schezwan Egg fry

I am a great fan of Chinese cuisine. Any time when I am hungry, the food items which comes into my mind are Chinese foods.

Making Authentic Chinese food was difficult until Ching's came to India. They have variety of sauces, Noodles, Soup Mixes, Instant Noodles, Sauce Mix.

Recently I came across their Schezwan Stir fry sauce in one of the grocery shop. It was an amazing sauce. It was so easy to use and it can be used to create variety of dishes.

If we mix the sauce with yogurt/ mayonnaise, Schezwan dip is ready. This dip was wonderful with nuggets and other fried items.

This stir fry sauce can be used as spreads for pizza, omelette and also can be used for making fried rice and noodle

The other day while I was doing experiment in my kitchen I came up with my own recipe - Schezwan Egg fry. It tasted good so I thought I will share the recipe with you.

Ingredients:

Ching's Schezwan Stir fry sauce
Spring Onion for garnish
Onion
Capsicum
Garlic
Eggs
Vegetable Oil
Salt

Preparation

Cut onion and capsicum in length wise. Heat the wok. Add oil and in high flame add Onion, Capsicum, Add 2-3 table spoon of Ching's Schezwan Stir Fry Sauce.
In another pan make egg scramble, while beating up the egg add little salt and pepper.
Add the Scrambled egg to the wok and stir it, garnish it with spring onion.
Your Schezwan Egg Fry is ready.

It was a very easy recipe but the taste was amazing.

My First 3D Neuschwanstein Castle Puzzle

 3D Puzzle - Cubic Fun - Neuschwanstein Castle

I needed a castle for decorating for one of my cousin wedding. I was looking everywhere for nice castle which can be used. The moment I saw the Neushwanstein Castle I fell in love with the castle.

I was searching to buy this castle and I came across 3D Puzzle which you can assemble on your own. As I am a puzzle lover I thought let me try it. Cubic Fun has lots of great 3D puzzle. As I am from India, Amazon was not shipping this product and it was very costly. I searched so much and found that, the product is available in FirstCry for a lesser price.

http://www.firstcry.com/frank/frank-3d-puzzle-cubic-fun-neuschwanstein-castle/1820/product-detail

I got the product within two days and I was really impressed in speedy delivery. I started assembling the product right away and it took three hours to complete it. The end product was very stunning.The instruction was crystal clear and very easy to assemble. 

Front part not yet completed

only the front part to be done

Half way through

End Product, the doll I added for classic touch

Daisy Christmas Greeting Card

We will see how to make this wonderful daisy greeting card.

You will need

Thin card in two colors
Craft knife/ scissors
Glue

Step 1

Take a rectangle card( I have used green color, you can use any dark color) and fold it in half. Draw the daisy pattern onto one half and cut it using craft knife. If you don't know how to use craft knife , make a hole in centre of the flower and cut the flower out.

Step 2
Cut a piece of red card to the same size as folded card. On the inside of main card, glue around the cut out areas and place over the red card.

You have made a beautiful daisy Christmas card. If you wish you can paste bright stones in the centre of the flower.

My first ICON in GIMP

I always wanted to use photoshop and learn photoshop. Because of its cost I didn't buy photoshop.

I was browsing and came to know about GIMP - GNU Image manipulation program :) Wow its free and it has many cool features of photoshop.

I successfully created my first icon, though it is not of professional quality... it was pretty good :)

I M in love with GIMP :*

To download GIMP please visit

www.gimp.org/downloads/

For tutorials visit

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

And you can also download lots of free bruushes for GIMP and use them too.

Dry chilli chicken

Dry chilli chicken

My younger brother wife gave me this Dry Chilli Chicken recipe :) it was very tasty. I am sharing this recipe with all of you.

Thanks prassi for this wonderful yummy recipe.

Ingredients:

Chicken small pieces - 250 gm

Onion 1

Ginger garlic paste

Soya sauce 2 tbspn

Tomato sauce 2tbspn

Green chillies

Capsiscum ( bell pepper)

Garam masala

Chilly powder

Preparation:

Marinate chicken in salt, chilli powder, lemon juice for thirty minutes.

Cook the chicken in pressure cooker or microwave it.

Pour oil in the frying pan, add chopped onion, Ginger garlic paste,

green chillies, salt, garam masala. Fry them.

Once the garam masala smell is diffused and the onions are cooked then add tomato sauce,soya sauce.

Fry the chicken till it becomes crisp.

Before 5 minutes add capsicum  and cook it. Dry chilly chicken is ready.

Enjoy this dry yummy chicken :)

Jlpt N5 Owarimashita

Wow today I attended JLPT N5 exam. Previously JLPT N5 was similar to N4.

The major achievement or rather disaster is I didn't go to any training centre to study japanese. I downloaded materials from net and downloaded iphone application to study japanese.

So my knowledge for grammar is really poor :)

There are some changes in the question paper. Main change is in grammar and reading section.

First section which test the kanji scripts was the same and it was easy as usual.

In second section, Grammar was not simple sentence pattern, instead paragraphs were given and few words were missing in the paragraphs. We need to select the right answer.

ufff reading and grammar section was really difficult (muzukashii desu :) ) and the time was not at all enough at least for me :)

One of the question was like what time the person prefers his appointment and in which day. hmmm thats what i understood after reading the passage. Not sure if that was what actually asked in the question.

Listening section was made easy and third mondai section was what phrases would have been told by the person in that situation, like boy goes to sleep what he would have said to his mom and dad.

I am sure I will get good marks in section I and III but there are lots of chance in section II I will score bad marks. And this time one should pass in all the three section. The pass percentage for N5 is not published yet.

I hope the pass percentage for section II will be only 50 :)

For my next exam I am planning to enroll in some japanese institutes, now i should start searching for good institutes in bangalore.