love cross

Like a tender love sonata, Asha Prabha's journal embraces your memories with serene and warm sensations. Crafted by talented Indian artisans, this cardboard and polyester design features gorgeous floral motifs on the cover, handmade with rayon threads in red, green and orange hues. Secured by a practical black cord, the journal also has a cotton binding and 50 handmade paper pages.

Like a postcard from Rajasthan, the cover of this journal features women carrying pots on their heads, their beautiful faces framed by their traditional saris and jewelry. Farm animals roam the streets amid the thatched roof houses in an image that is screen printed with wonderful details. The back of this handcrafted journal replicates an ancient postcard with a court stamp paper and immigration stamp. The screen printed images are bordered by olive green cotton, including the ribbon.. From Asha Prabha, the journal features 48 pages of blank handmade paper.

Mother nature begins with the tree of life in this World Peace Project painting by India's Bharti Dayal. As Mother Nature sits cross-legged, resembling a heart, she extends her limbs upwards, branching out into a full-grown tree with pink leaves and lotus flower motifs.

The artist explains that the unification of the female form and the tree suggests that femininity is in its essence peaceful. Just as Hinduism advocates the continuous growth of oneself and the pursuit of inner peace, 'Feminine Tree' depicts the figurative source of peace as the self, independent of the surrounding world.

The artist uses natural vegetable colors to depict this symbolic scene of Mother Nature existing within an empty gray domain, sprouting with vibrant pink, directing one's attention to the peaceful heights reached in the feminine universe.

Dayal carefully arranges her composition to tell the story of the tree of life, employing the classic Madhubani painting style. "Madhubani paintings are in fact a simplistic manifestation of the philosophical heights achieved by Indian civilization for the universal power of love, longing and peace -- the quest of all beings," Dayal says.

Irises grace the front cover of this personal journal, their image themed as a postcard whose message is featured on the back cover. From Asha Prabha, the imagery is replicated through screen printing techniques with an antiqued illusion. The 48-page journal is crafted with handmade paper and trimmed with olive green cotton, including the ribbon.

Carved and painted by hand, geometric motifs cover a pair of mango wood bangles. Vipin conjures vintage jewelry that is cool and casual.