She captures memories in paper

Varsha Kundalia started doing arts and crafts when she was a teenager. As a youngster, she loved the idea of working with material lying around the house to create new things. This led the MCom graduate to make various types of greeting cards including explosion box cards and customised albums, a hit among family and friends.

Exploring new things has always been her forte. The 28-year-old concentrates on customised artworks as “it has a personal touch”.

“During college, when I used to make cards for my cousins or friends, they would be overjoyed. This is when I realised that I wanted to explore making more of them.”

Varsha’s explosion box cards are a hit among friends.

After Varsha got engaged, during her courtship period she made a customised explosion box card for her fiancé. “I wanted to gift him something special, and I was inspired by a design I saw on the internet. My (now) husband encouraged me to explore the world of arts and crafts after that. I wasn’t interested in a 9 to 5 job, despite being qualified; I knew this was what I wanted to do.”

One of her favourite creations, an explosion box card can take two to three hours to make, depending on the number of layers the card has. She has worked on 50 different designs till

now. Varsha uses equipment like a paper-cutting machine, scoring board, punching machine, scale and scissors, and raw materials like paper (printed and plain), glue and embellishments to make the cards.

Varsha Kundalia

“I shop for most of the items online. I use paper varying from 250 to 350 gsm, according to its thickness,” she adds.

“I customise the cards with embellishments and motifs, but mostly with photographs of couples or the person who want the cards. It’s like a good reminder of one’s memories. The best part about these cards is that they are great boxed surprises and can hold many pictures in one piece. Many have requested for such cards for birthdays, anniversaries, Valentines Day and even graduation days,” she says.

Her Facebook page ‘Hobby Klub Bangalore’ showcases many creative artworks. Waterfall cards, multi-layered box cards and tri-shutter cards are other greeting cards she likes working on.

“Everyone likes new things, and I wanted to give people various options to give as gifts. While waterfall cards are smaller, explosion box cards are much bigger and look like a gift box,” she says. Varsha also makes various albums in the form of a cabinet, photo-reel and accordion albums.

“Albums lying around the house add a subtle yet vintage value to memories, and these unique items can add zing to any room. The cabinet album has two folder-like sections which can be pulled out to store pictures and be kept in any room. The accordion is a showpiece in itself. The photo-reel album is a true reminder of how photographing memories was an important ritual,” she says.

Varsha continues to try new things. “I love working on scrapbooks, but they take a longer time to make; it can take almost 7 hours to finish one. I also like working on pregnancy journals. I love making all these artworks as they are beautiful and quaint ways of preserving people’s special moments,” she concludes.

(Varsha can be contacted at 97078 22460)