Coconut Shell Craft

My son Vyas isn’t the ‘crafty’ kind and used to run away from crayons when he was in kindergarten classes! Somehow, he seems to be enjoying artsy-craftsy and has been volunteering to do the coloring all by himself:)

So here is to ‘Shruti -aunty’ from Vyas- a candle stand made out of coconut shell and another small painted mutka (pot) after licking away the last bit of Malai Kulfi in it:)

Candle Stand

What is South Indian cooking (specially Tamilnadu and Kerala) without coconuts? Two shells made it to our shelf instead of the dust-bin this time.

Procedure:

1. Two empty shells scrapped cleaned from inside and outside. My MIL grated the coconut and handed out the empty shells of different sizes. But the coconuts would not break into two neat halves just when you want them to! I dipped the shells in water and scrapped the outer surface using a peeler. Did not know a better way of doing it and no time to google!

2. Vyas colored the inside and outside of both the shells, one with green and the other with brown. I’d planned to put on metallic colors but the darling had left the bottles half open after previous use and what I found in the bottles were just the cakes!

3. I stuck the two shells using M-Seal!.

4. The rangoli like design on the shells is by me. I used fabric color with glue to paint the design.

The Mutka

Vyas insisted on coloring it red (fabric color) despite the color choices! Ne’er mind. The end product did look good:) Again, I made that flower design using M-seal and colored the leaves green and the buds yellow. Wanted to put some colored twigs with flowers made of sharpened pencil remains, but no time.

The final products