Peeking through the glass-holding hands with Indian folk arts

That was a Sunday afternoon. A summer afternoon. Those long afternoons of India when you want to stay inside and don't even want to peek through the glass window. On one such Sunday afternoon, I, A and J sat together and made friends with a new kind of activity called - glass painting. When I was a child I painted on glasses but using acrylic colours, glass paints were not that easily available at that time in India. So the effects were different. Thanks to my mom that I always had a stock of acrylic colours along with crayon, sketch pens or water colours to dabble them on fabric, glass, empty tins, egg cartons, stones and on anything and everything available around or outside of the house. Colours and their different textures attracted me always. I was curious to see how does the readily available Camlin glass paints (non fuss paints available in plastic tubes) could be used on glasses. How different the effect will be from acrylic paints? I had many emptied pickle/pasta sauce glass and plastic jars. I washed them and dried them. Also I was very much impressed by the folk-art craft works, done by artsy craftsy mom, specially the gond, alpona, and the warli art forms. I was excited to do and share all these with J and A. So our Sunday afternoon started with the mission of combining colours, art forms and glass as canvas. How did it go? See it for yourself!

 1. Trying it out with - Trial and error. Painting for the first time on a bottle surface!

 

 2. Playing with colours and patterns, also optimising the hold on the painted glass jars.

3. Together, they talked, discussed and found out way to hold the jars while painting them.

4. Can Warli men be created on a glass bottle? The struggle...

5. Peek-a-boo through a painted glass - alpona and gond...

6. Warli men are dancing!

 7. The creation and the inspiration...

8. All four of the personalised glasses with no labels and new make-overs, standing together holding their hands (invisible for many)

 

And I must say, this became one of the memorable summer Sundays for me! 

Glass painting - A perfect, non fussy way  to bond with a child for a busy parents, older sibling, uncles and aunts or grand parents. 

Sunday Afternoon- Paper Batik

Five days, of the week i.e. from Monday to Friday we live a  minimalist life, our lives circle around going to Work/School, coming home, basic cooking/homeworking, regular washing and cleaning and then a little elaborate bedtime with some storybooks and talking about the whole day. Saturday flies between swimming  lessons (for my daughter), shopping, cooking, socialising  and weakly cleaning. Finally it  is only on the Sunday afternoon when we Mother-Daughter duo get some unplanned free time.

It is like those little extra pocket money we used to get sometimes from our parents just as a surprise. In this 3-4 hours of time gap often I am tempted to have a solid after-lunch nap (Bhat ghum in Bengali) and my daughter wants to see T.V (with null interruption from her Mum).

But there are some days (trying to increase the number!) when we also try to do something different and funny together. No studies, No TV, No nap, No chores but something else.

Her best friend accompany us sometimes.

Last Sunday we tried some

No fuss paper batik

We manipulated little bit on the method according to our choices and needs but overall it worked out nicely.

Two girls and I enjoyed a lot colouring with crayon and then making a crumble of our hard work!

It was Valentines day so my daughter decided to draw a walking heart and her friend drew houses, streets, flowers etc.

I remain sticked to conventional flowers for the first one and then some geometries later on.

Finally we made cards by sticking the pictures on construction papers.

We chatted  and laughed a lot while doing our work and I was feeling happy that I need not to say for the first time in the whole week that "hurry up 'J' we are getting late"!