Have you seen Liz Kinder’s work? Once you do, you can’t stop raving about the pots. Liz Kinder is a ceramicist based in Philadelphia. When I see the pots, the first thing that appeals to me are the extraordinary shades of blue and green - electric blue, turquoise, lime green, teal blue, and copper sulphate blue. Look at this work in white clay. The clean lines, simple patterns, rich colors come together so beautifully making it look incredibly easy. But it’s not. After trying to paint on white clay this weekend, I can tell you it just looks simple.

What’s amazing is in her porcelain range, you can find contrasting colors blending seamlessly with the curved white lines.

I painted an earthen pot at home last week inspired by this range. The results aren’t very good but I would like to try again. It was fun mixing colors to get different shades of blue and green. How an extra drop of yellow in blue can change it to green while what you wanted was a bluish green.

Earthen pot in electric blue

Just another view

The weekend was just perfect: good food, visiting friends, retail therapy, a dip in the pool, late-night couch- potatoing and finally, getting dirty with colors at Claytopia.  I heard about Claytopia a few weeks ago from a friend. So,  Saturday afternoon I decided to take my husband and son along to this place.

Claytopia

Claytopia is located on 6th Main, Indira Nagar just a few meters off 80 feet road (the lane opposite Spencer’s).  It’s again one of those old and nice Defence Colony  houses that has turned commercial.  Claytopia is a studio where you can paint your own pottery. They have scores of pre-molded earthen pieces made out of white clay. The price of the piece you want to paint is displayed so it’s easy to choose. The bisque ware, as they call it, range from simple ones  such as coasters, mugs, and magnets to tough ones like plates, and funny ones like T-Rex and Mouse.

This is how it works. Go around the studio to see the various pieces on display. You are free to pick any piece you like for painting. Once you choose a piece, a table is set up for you with all the essentials: color palette, brushes of different sizes, a bowl of water, stencils, stamps and sponge. Don’t fret if you are not familiar with techniques such as sponging or stamping, you can ask for help. You are given a choice of only three non-toxic underglaze colors  and they are are very diluted as the clay is highly porous.

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What is your most favorite place in your apartment/house? Are you a green-loving person?  Do you dream of a home with a backyard, a vegetable garden, front lawn, and a courtyard full of potted plants?

I love to start my day sitting in the balcony with a hot cup of tea and newspaper. And, I prefer to do it before the family wakes up.  Those 10-15 minutes of blissful silence in the company of plants. But, the same look can get boring; so I rearrange plants every once in a while or add something new.

A few tricks that’ll work if you are striving for a new look to your balcony without spending much:

1. Rearrange - Move all your pots to different corner. Change the order in which they are lined. Try various combinations until you hit a satisfying one. Take some inside the house.

2. Paint - If you have smaller terracotta pots, don the paint hat. Take out your brushes, get into the mood of the season, and splash your pots in an array of colors. Nothing more eye-catching than a colorful cluster.

A KC Das Dahi Handi turns into planter

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This is a guest post from interior designer Elaine Griffin. I had featured Elaine in December.

Today, she shares some decor tips for shopping off-price retailers. What good is a post without eye-candy for inspiration. The tips are complemented with a few images of Soul Homes complex designed by Elaine from the March edition of Elle Decor.

1. Hit the store early and often.  It’s true that new merchandise comes almost daily.  And dahling, when you see something you like, buy it at once – you can always return what doesn’t work out, but short of robbery, you’ll never get your hands on it again if someone else snags it while you’re making up your mind.

Simple but elegant room..love the colors

2. Hit the road, Jack(ie).  If you fall in love with something that you need multiples of but can’t find them in your store, check out the others nearby (or afar, if you’re really smitten).  There’s a great chance that its twin is lying in wait for you, since merch tends to be fairly uniformly distributed in the region.  And again, time is of the essence.

Pot as a stand

3. Think out of the box and go beyond the obvious.  Sure, a seven-drawer chest looks great in a bedroom, but it would also be stunning in a bathroom (maybe with a candlestick lamp on top for a little evening glow) to hold towels, beauty tools, and luxurious lotions and potions.  Ditto for a Chinese ceramic garden stool perched next to your tub.  Tiny bejeweled enamel doodads destined for dressing tables are divine as elegant dining table objects.

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Mosaic is the art of fitting together small pieces of colorful tiles, stones and other objects to form an image or a pattern. Mosques, monuments, and buildings of cultural and spiritual significance in the Middle-east use them liberally. In fact, the recently opened Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the largest in the world, has a 18,000 sq-mt courtyard in marble mosaic.

The Abu Dhabi Grand Mosque

Closer home, this is something you can pursue as a hobby.  Fevicryl’s Hobby Ideas has a started kit containing mosaics, a board to stick on and a glue medium. Mosaics have the inherent quality to bring color into a room. The piece of art need not be very big but it can still transform and bring freshness to a boring room. Create your own pattern with the kit and see how it goes. Once you are familiar, set yourself free and try your hands on wide range of things from the pots in your garden to trays in the kitchen and photo frames. Leaving you with some images for inspiration:

On a pot

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Any regular viewers of Vir Sanghvi’s Custom Made series on NDTV Good Times here? I happened to see the last five minutes of a episode on Friday night and liked the custom made candles on display. But, missed getting the name of the designer.

Anyways, I spotted an elegant range of scented candles on Facebook called Illuminati Candles that I wish to share here today. According to its creator Lauren Paxton, these are gel scented candles with an average burning time of 9 hours.

This one left me starry-eyed

With blue beads

Dolphins

I think it’s an idea worth trying out if you have the gel candle making kit. The hobby ideas kit won’t work because it’s not transparent.  With fancy assorted glass containers and different colorful objects used for suspension, you can have your own range of scented candles for a party.

Images:

Lauren Paxton on FB