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Our reuse & recycle series is back with a 3rd edition, offering 6 creative DIY ideas to reuse pistachio shells.
I go nuts with some nuts like pistachios! Now don’t get me wrong, I love the flavour of pistachios and love to have them just like that or in icecream, kulfi, milkshake, chocolate, chikki bar, dry fruit laddoo, salted, roasted and many other forms. Just thinking about having pistachios in different forms is prompting me to write more about them, but that post is for another day.
So coming to the point, what drives me crazy is getting that nut out of its shell. I always end up having a pack of nuts lying in my refrigerator that are hard to shell. I can neither throw them nor use them.
For those who are struggling with the same issue, do check out the below video for a simple trick to shell those hard to open nuts!
Of course after shelling all of them and eating, I still end up with a pack! Wondering what I am speaking about now? It is a pack of pistachio shells this time.
Being a person who doesn’t like to waste any resource so easily, those shells always looked lovely to my eyes. Hoping that I would use them in some form I would always store the shells, but would not really be sure what to do with them. When I had a whole lot of them, cluttering up space, I finally did part with them with a heavy heart!
Until one day, when my son got a craft made at his school for mother’s day. Though it looked very simple, it actually occurred to me that I should be doing something like this with those shells. Here is a photograph of the mother’s day craft.
So yes the shells are quite sturdy, durable and have a lovely shape. They can be used for making different crafts. Let us check out some DIY options now.
Making a flower with pista shells is the most common method of reusing the shells to make crafts. As the shells already come with an almost petal shape, it is easy to identify them as flower petals. These will come in handy when natural flowers are not available and you want to make them part of your rangoli!
Yes, it is possible to craft some elegant jewelry too with the shells! You can make pendants or add them as mini pins to your tops. Be ready to experiment with different shapes and colours that suit best for your outfits.
Fancy a bowl with pistachio shells? That is possible too! The bowl turns out to be quite sturdy and you can use it as an organizer basket to store small items or place just the bowl anywhere to act as a décor piece.
The kind of coaster that is shown in the video is a people coaster but you can bring forth your creativity to try out other designs. Go ahead and recycle all those old, boring and plain coasters and bring them to life!
This candle holder is very similar to making a complete flower with pistachio shells. The only difference is to leave space to place your tea light candle in the middle and not to cover it with shells. Follow the video for a clear tutorial.
Other stuff that you can do with these shells is to make some wall hangings with an abstract floral art. Try different sized flowers and other figures of personal interest and stick them to a base to make the hanging. Here is a video to get you started.
Keep following this space to find many more interesting DIY ideas by reusing and recycling ordinary things.
Earlier DIY posts here and here.
Header image source: youtube.
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The plight of Indian women's mental health often goes unnoticed. Co-founders Vivek Satya Mitram and Pooja Priyamvada conceived the idea of the Bharat Dialogues Women & Mental Health Summit to address this.
Trigger Warning: This contains descriptions of mental health trauma and suicide, and may be triggering for survivors.
Author’s note: The language and phraseology used are not the author’s words but the terms and narrative popularly used for people living with mental illnesses, and may feel non-inclusive. It is merely for putting our point across better.
I have seen how horrifying was the treatment given to those with mental illness.
14 years after her last feature film Dhobi Ghat, storyteller extraordinaire comes up with her new film, Laapataa Ladies, a must watch.
*Some spoilers alert*
Every religion around the world dictates terms to women. The onus is always on women to be ‘modest’ and cover their faces and bodies so men can’t be “tempted”, rather than on men to keep their eyes where they belong and behave like civilized beings. So much so that even rape has been excused on the grounds of women eating chowmein or ‘men will be men’. I think the best Hindi movie retort to this unwanted advice on ‘akeli ladki khuli tijori ki tarah hoti hai’ (an alone woman is like an open jewellery box) came from Geet in Jab We Met – Kya aap gyan dene ke paise lete hain kyonki chillar nahin hain mere paas.
The premise of Laapataa Ladies is beautifully simple – two brides clad in the ghunghat that covers their identity get mixed up on a train. Within this Russian Doll, you get a comedy of errors, a story of getting lost, a commentary on patriarchy’s attitude towards women, a mystery, and a tale of finding oneself, all in one. Done with a mostly light touch that has you laughing and nodding along.
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