Singara Chennai: Hues from the beach

Please don't be a health freak, the fish was fresh, the breeze was cool.

Girl on the beach, Sravanthi, the fish lover!

Ever tried writing "kadalamma kalli" in the beach?

Being a girl with little sea, jealous of them...

Fortune Teller

Fancy being Bharathiyaar for a day? 

For an eye which loves colours, chennai is a paradise!!!

Painted Face!

So artsomniac was digging the old photographs of yesteryear in her university and found this photograph of a facepainting competition she won last year...It was a theme competition, the theme was Change. She did a change in humans, change in seasons metaphor on a single face of Anju.

The design is inspired by the elaborate face paintings done for art forms from kerala like theyyam and kathakali.

A shot while the work was in progress...


face 1, face 2


face 3, face 4

purple wave shrug/muff

I have been working on this purple wave shrug/muff for the last two days. Today, it is complete. This muff can be doubled as a shrug as well; a weird shrug for that matter. Pretty, anyways.
Raw materials: 1) The wool material is leftover blanket piece after ria made a shawl from it. 2) purple buttons: general bazaar, button shop, rs 4 each. 3) purple wool, hobby shop, general bazaar.
Method: Ripped both sides of the cloth to get the effect. Did the design in running stitch, the wave design came as a free hand one; placed buttons in 10 different places.
Elika, my knit master was happy to model for me. Thanks eliboo!

The shrug/muff


The details







The button hole.


The single side shrug style.




the muff wrap style



the double side shrug style


The regular muff style

recycled writing board

Artsomniac has collected all the discards which came from the cable work in the uni. After the coffee table post and the coir stool post, here comes the final cable work discard material reworked. A writing board. This simple sketch is a montage of artsomniac's life.

What is life without a recharge? That too, student life = chotaa recharge.


There was a hole in the board when artsomniac found it. Must be designed to suit cable packaging requirements. However, a black sunflower found its way there. The black is Indian Ink with brush.


Train of thoughts....Train no 2724, A P Express which carries bundles of artsomniac's dreams...


Books, which she currently refers to for fun and for research... Tempara and Indian Ink with brush.


Artwork about a previous artwork. Must call this mermaid on a bottle, 'metabottle' or something like that :-) there! artsomniac just dispersed her literature student wisdom!!!!


Finally, a beautified, exaggerated eyed, retro haired, half of a self portrait. She does not think that this looks like her, other than for the stub of a nose part!!!


however, artsomniac really enjoyed doing this today....

Recyle bin decor part II : The coir stool

Artsomniac's interest in recycle furniture has reached a new level with the newest addition to the room, the little coir stool. The raw materials for the coir stool also came from the recent cable work in the hostel. Artsomniac has serious doubts whether she should get a 'recycle goddess' title! what thought!!

However, a detail of the raw material hunt goes like this. Artsomniac sets her eye on the cable bobbin which was found inside the mahalaqa hostel dump yard premises. The cable bobbin was not exactly that near the dirty dustbin, but artsomniac pushed the bobbin a little towards the dustbin to get the desired 'trash to treasure' effect while blogging. Such little stage managements are allowable, right folks? So, the raw material number one is at hand now.

The second step is to remove the sides of the bobbin, so that you have a neat skeleton of a cardboard cylinder.

Now for further raw materials, go on a field trip to the nearby town (Sitaphalmandi in artsomniac's case). Walk until you find a shop where you can find coir. A good friend (thanks annie ;-)) who enjoys paani puri and window shopping might come handy in such situations. Oh this is one time when artsomniac missed kerala other than for food. The quality of the coir in hyderabad is not comparable. However after a long walk, artsomniac and good friend found average quality coir for 2 rs 50 ps per meter in this shop. For this stool, we need atleast 10 meters.


The next step is to carefully wind the coir to the structure we have. It has to be tightly wound to get best results. The design will evolve when you try to save practical problems. So that is the tip for organic designs. Once the winding is done, you can burn the surface using a candle to remove the roughness of the surface. Also, this will give it an antique dark shading. So here, the second furniture project is complete.



better view







This goes really well with the coffee table.





And for all those who wonder about the strength of the furniture, I guarantee, this is quite strong. I have been using it for a week now and it is not showing even the faintest signs of collapse. :-)

flying bottle

One great idea from Artsomniac to people who are looking for dirt cheap home decor. This is a simple green wine bottle and the side feather of a peacock combined together... A series of green bottles in different patterns can be a wonderful theme way to decorate empty spaces in a thematic yet cheap way!


Artsomniac found this feather in the Osmania University campus during one of her morning walks... Artsomniac is waiting for more green bottles in her aqua home where she can keep all the peacock feathers of the past. MJ, are you listening? Take the hint! he he!!!

The coffee table post

So the coffee table is the new addition to artsomniac's room. That came as part of the christmas cleaning. This simple coffee table is made out of cardboard cartons artsomniac found lying around in the hostel environs. Recycle- Reuse being the life motto of artsomniac, a coffee table got materialized in one of those off moods. It took a day to do all the finishing work, but was fun doing this.



The room looks nicer with a coffee table kind of structure in the middle! This is my boho-den!



The brown packing plaster on the black chart paper surface gives it an old film box effect... The woolen thread came from a muffler which artsomniac ripped for ria...



And the best part is, the two cartons on top of each other is giving artsomniac a lot of storage space... The wardrobe looks neater and well organized with all the kurtas and formal clothes ironed folded and stacked whereas the trash, the unordered mess of 50 rs - 100 rs tees, pajamas and every scrap of clothing which does not need ironing or special care is dumped into these two cartons... artsomniac's wardrobe looks more sophisticated!!!!




A final picture of the coffee table!