The Great Indian Rope Trick!

All your fancy felt-tipped pens are dried out. 55 pieces of that 400-piece jig-saw puzzle that was your constant companion throughout last year's monsoon seem have gotten lost. Just when you're tearing out your hair, whining, 'I'm so bored!" you spot a roll of rope under that staircase or in the garage! Great!

Grab that role. You can now use it to magically turn a lot of boring objects around the house into 'works of art'!

WHAT YOU NEED

1.    That role of rope…a few metres would do, for a start
2.    Fevicol
3.    A small tin of gold or silver paint
4.    A thick paint brush
5.    Some cello tape
6.     A pair of scissors

Look around for boring things that need dressing up. A lot of homes have big pots in the balcony. Some parent bought it years ago with grand plans of growing potted palms. But due to sheer neglect, that poor palm died months ago, leaving this pot looking lost in a corner. Wipe the pot surface clean, so that there's no dust on it.

Approximately measure out the length of rope you will need to make 3 or 4 coils around the shoulder of the pot, as shown in the picture. Cut out that much rope and get to work.

With a pencil, draw out the path on which you plan to stick the rope. Then liberally apply Fevicol along that line, before carefully sticking the rope onto the pot. Leave the rope and Fevicol to dry out for a day.

Then bring out the gold or silver paint and try out your talents as an artist. If you have a steady hand, paint only the ropes gold (or silver) Otherwise, mark out a broad band that you can cover with paint, leaving a little margin of gold on either sides of the ropes on the pot-shoulder.

Now leave that to dry, too. Your lost forlorn pot has now been transformed into a gold beauty. You can leave it at that. Or, if you're more adventurous, you can use a black felt-tipped pen and draw simple stick figures (on the gold panel) in a row, around the circumference of the pot.

If that project has gone off well (by 'well' I mean, your Mum has gone 'Wow!' and your Dad quietly moved your pot into the sitting room where everyone could admire it AND you didn't spill any paint or Fevicol on the floor/carpet), you're ready for the next rope trick.

A lot of homes have photo frames or bathroom mirror frames that are just begging to be beautified. Try out what's shown in the picture with a green frame. For the work on the 4 corners of the frame, apart from Fevicol to stick the rope onto the frame, you can also use cello-tape to firmly secure the rope (especially the rope ends) on the back face of the frame.

Once you get confident about how to embellish ordinary things with a little rope-and-gold-paint, try out things on your own. You can braid or plait the rope, before pasting on the braid along a frame or on a pot. A gold-painted braid will look quite grand.  For instance, on a pot like what's shown here, you could add an irregular 'dripping paint' effect to the lower edge of the gold band.

You could even embellish your boring window frame (with parental permission!). You could take a boring shoe box (the type which has a removable lid), paint it a deep blue, stick on your rope designs along a border and paint a band of gold over the ropes. This grand-looking box could then store all your precious stuff.