Recently I had purchases some earring bases shaped like little bird cages, complete with birds too! So decided to use them to make some pretty origami earrings, with little stars in them.

Tried out a couple of colours and options and I must admit my favourite are the literary stars, made from the pages of an old book. Love the idea of recycling as well and these were so cute that they got sold out pretty fast!

The next option was using momigami paper. The crinkly texture of this paper adds an interesting dimension to the stars I thought. The royal blue earrings are made from this paper.

Finally I tried regular origami paper to make the brown stars. These stars blended well with the earring base. And once glazed, they had a nice shine to them too!

What do you think? Which are your favourites?

I enjoy making paper bags from a variety of paper. Handmade bags make great gift bags, especially when the paper used is handmade paper. I find that scrapbooking paper results in some very beautiful bags, such as the 2 green bags in the pic. The one with polka dots was a big hit, when I had used it to gift a friend. The other green one, with mangoes, I have kept it aside to use later on. The bright red and green one is, of course, for Christmas and is made from handmade paper. The green patterns have a velvety feel to it, which made it difficult to glue but pretty to look at.

The cream and blue bags were made from some very beautiful handmade paper with gold and silver designs on them. I love the richness that they add to the bags. A couple of satin handles, and the gift bag is ready for use! These bags are small in size (about 6 inches by 4 inches) and are ideal for gifting jewellery. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any more of this paper, so it is just 2 bags with this gorgeous paper!

The next pair of bags is also from handmade paper, but much thicker paper. The paper came with some beautiful self design and a slight shimmer. The bags were pretty difficult to fold due to the thickness. But once completed, they were very sturdy. The bag was so sturdy that I could have skipped the eyelets and directly threaded the handles into the punched holes! The only reason I went ahead with the eyelets was for uniformity. All my bags have eyelets and these were no exception :)

The next set were bigger bags (~ 8 inches by 6 inches), made from a variety of handmade paper. Here I experimented with the handles, using satin ribbons, rope-like wires, beautiful lavender-coloured organdy ribbon. Very pleased with this set too :)

Finally, I had some lovely polka dot gift wrappers that I converted into paper bags! The paper wasn't very thick though, so I will be able to use them only for the lightest of gifts, but still they are so beautifully attractive and I will be careful about who I gift them to!

Continuing from my previous post on handmade envelopes, here are more of these envelopes. I made a couple of sets of these envelopes with little origami decorations. The paper used, both for the envelopes and the decorations, is thick, handmade paper in antique gold and copper gold. Thick paper = simple origami! So I had to discard quite a few ideas I had. I am sure I will try more of these envelopes with slightly more complex origami decorations soon :)

The first of them have a little cherry blossom in one corner of the cover. The toughest part of folding these little flowers, turned out to be snipping off the corners, since I had to cut with multiple folds, without distorting the shape. Quite a task!

The last set of envelopes had a little origami hearts in them. The hearts were pretty simple to fold. And while the cherry blossom envelopes look lovely, I love the sentimentality of a little heart on the cover 💓

I am sure you are wondering whatever I have been doing for the past one month, without posting anything on the blog!

I have actually been quite busy working on quite a few pieces made to order. While making the pieces haven't been a problem, for some reason I am having quite a bit of trouble photographing them and posting pics on the blog!

These little gift envelopes are made from copper gold and antique gold handmade paper and decorated with little punched decorations and origami flowers and hearts.

In this post, I have added the envelopes with punched decorations. I'll post another one with the envelopes with origami decor. Punching tiny little decorations isn't that easy, I now realise! They are packed in set of 4, with 2 envelopes in copper gold and 2 of them in antique gold.