Hi .. I am Lakshmi Hariharasubramanian. Most of you know me as Purnima. I am from Erode, Tamil Nadu, India. I am an Electrical & Electronics Engineer by degree, an Oracle HCM Fusion Consultant by profession & a Self-taught Artist by passion and am a newly wedded wife 🙂

As a child I was interested in Sports and became a Basket Ball player and continuing my Basket Ball journey until today..

Art.. Art runs through my family.. My grand father, parents, uncles, aunts & my sisters everyone enjoy creating art in various forms.. I used to draw & paint during my childhood days.. (Not so great though) However I was motivated once when my painting got published in one of the esteemed newspapers in India ” Young World ” – a weekly edition of “The Hindu”. I had painted a scene for Children’s day special. This made me realize I have some passion for creating art. I started making handmade greeting cards for Mother’s day & Father’s day.. I slowly pushed myself to learn Stained glass painting & Pot painting. Believe me my Mom still has my first ever glass painting.

Next my interest grew towards embroidery as my Mom used to make beautiful designs on our dresses. She taught me how to make embroidery & I along with my Mom made Kundan & Zardosi work on one of her Silk sarees.

Apart from these, it’s mandatory for any South Indian to know how to make perfect Kolams (Mandalas/Rangoli). I have seen my mom & aunt making beautiful art daily & yes I am good at drawing kolams as well.

Then I joined my IT career in 2010 in Bangalore, India. I learnt the skill of computers and enjoyed coding for a while though 😉 It is a thirst for any Indian Software Engineer to travel onsite & work in the US of A. I ain’t an exception 😛 It was in 2015, I got my chance to travel to the US of A on a work visa.. This visa initiation process & getting the right project gave me ample time to pause & think “What am I doing ?” I used to draw, paint & make bead jewelry with friends & my sisters from time to time. All of these were for personal use. Never thought of advertising my artistic skills. So in 2015, I started painting glass bottles and gifted to my close friends , who eventually pushed me to think of this for commercial purpose. I had sold my first bottle painting to one of my friends.

Now starts my USA phase of life. I continued with acrylic medium & painted couple of canvases while I was in Texas. In 2016 I moved to Atlanta, Georgia where I got introduced to paper crafts. Thanks to Pinterest & Instagram. I started making paper cut designs using Xacto Paper Knife. I made few of hand cut greeting cards for my colleagues in 2017. A Friday night October 2018 is when I came across Jennifer Mcguire’s Instagram page & was flattened to see her techniques in card making. Believe me I did not sleep that night. I got hooked to Instagram posts of Simon Says Stamp, Lawn Fawn & many more..

Next thing I knew was I had ordered my Sizzix Big Shot machine that night & I made my very first layered greeting card using watercolors for my mom’s birthday that very night.. I couldn’t wait any longer. Saturday morning I was at Hobby Lobby purchasing my very first Christmas special Clear Stamp, acrylic blocks from recollections & a black stamp pad. I pinged my friend Sandhya from SanjusCreations for all the specifics. Thank you Sandhya for taking time to assist me all along after which every other week I kept on buying more supplies (am never done though 😉 ) .. Yes.. I made more cards .. tried many techniques from Jennifer Mcguire 🙂 Thus RAMANIS was born.

All my works are available in Instagram page – ramaniscraftworks & Facebook page Ramani’s Craft Works.

After a year, here I am.. writing this blog .. I hope you have enjoyed knowing my story. Am sure you are going to enjoy more in my world of creating magic through art!!