[Pastimes] Rangoli for Dhanteras 2013

The first day of Diwali is celebrated as Dhanteras, when we welcome Goddess or Wealth Sri Lakshmi to our house and also wish for prosperity.
This is Rangoli I created for Dhanteras

I chose to do it in green and warm colours like red, orange and yellow because green and red colour are used to represent Sri Lakshmi in various cultures, while yellow is the colour of gold and orange was used to connect the colours. The paisley is one of the traditional rangoli designs inspired from mango; which is an auspicious design. 
It was a really windy day and so I was not really happy with the haziness that became a part of the design. I prefer my rangolis to be sharp but could not do anything.

Hope you like the designs do share what designs you had done for this Diwali by posting a comment.

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[Pastimes] Rangoli For Deepawali- Part 2

After yesterday's post (Read here) on my Diwali Rangoli Designs, today's post is about the designs I created for Diwali of 2009. By this time, I gained much more confidence and was ready to explore little more complex designs than those from last year. This time, I decorated my doorway for 3 days.
Diwali is celebrated for 5 days- first day is Dhanteras, which is celebrated to please Goddess of Wealth, Sri Lakshmi and a lot of precious purchases are made on this day; the second day is Naraka Chaturdasi, which is to celebrate victory of Lord Krishna over a demon named Narakasur; the third day which falls on a no-moon night is the main festival and is celebrated by worshiping Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth and Lord Ganesha, the elephant God, remover of all obstacles. People light of their houses with clay lamps and welcome Sri Lakshmi into their houses. The fourth day is celebrated as Govardhan Puja in north to commemorate the victory of Lord  Krishna over Lord Indra by lifting a mountain called Govardhan on his little finger, while in southern India it is celebrated as Bali Pratipada, to celebrate the victory of Lord Vishnu in his dwarf form Vamana over demon king Bali. The fifth day is Bhai Duj when sisters and brothers express their love and affection for each other. 
So the celebrations goes on almost for a week and it is a great fun when you celebrate with family and friends. 
Now, coming back to Rangoli, in 2009, I designed rangolis for first three days and here are the pics.

This design was done for the first day. If you know me by now, you will be able to see one of my signature designs- the paisley.

This design was created for the second day. I kept it really simple.

This design was done on the day of Diwali at the doorway. Again featuring the other design which I love to create - the Peacocks. This is the most elaborate design I have created till date.

This design was done at the Puja area. If you notice in the last post also, both the designs in the puja area have lotus motif. This is because Goddess Lakshmi sits on the Lotus flower and these rangoli motifs signify the seat of Goddess Lakshmi. We invite Her to our houses and also keep a seat ready.

Hope you like the designs and share with us what kind of designs you like to create by posting a comment.

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[Pastimes] Doodle Complete...

Hey Everyone,
I was talking about this latest doodle that I was working on, in one of my last posts (Check here). I thought it's going to take a long time to finish, was expecting to finish it by coming weekend but could not stop myself to go back to it as and when I had some free time and here I am with my completed piece a bit too soon.
But never mind, let me show you how it went on after I left in my previous post...

[Pastimes] My new Doodle... the most elaborate one till now

Hey everyone,
Almost after a year, last weekend, I spent some time on doodling on a piece of paper. You can see my previous doodles here. The paper was lavender colored and I was using my favorite Uniball Signo 0.28 tip black pen to work on it. I just love this pen as I can use this for fine detailing. Again the design that came out had to include a paisley... cannot work without having them in my designs. This is the most elaborate doodle I have done (or rather have been doing still) up till now. I don't know how long it will take to complete but will definitely show you all once it is done, in the meanwhile let me show you how the design is progressing. 

[Pastimes] Embroidered Pouch

Hey Everyone, 
During the time when I was heavily into embroidery, I wanted to make a pouch to carry pens and other stationery to my classes when I was teaching. Having worked on the design for a while I was able to create a design with which I was quite happy and satisfied. The design is inspired from heena design. You can see my other designs inspired from heena here. If you notice, I have used the Paisley motif here as well... cannot design without using one! Here is the design...

[Pastimes] Embroidered Designs

Hi everyone!
When you are creating a design, inspiration could be anything- an incident in your life, some artwork, nature etc. Different things inspire me at different times and then I try to combine it with another one of my passions and create something. Having a fascination for various arts and specially the Indian Traditional arts and crafts, once I got inspired by the Mehandi (Heena) designs. In India, two types of Heena techniques are popular- The Arabic and the Indian. The Arabic designs are characterized by floral motifs with inclusion of birds like peacock but there are no human faces or bodies as evident in Indian mehandi designs. Another feature of distinction among the two designs is the placement of motifs.The Arabic designs are spaced apart, while Indian designs are placed as close as possible almost covering the complete hand or feet, the common body parts for mehandi application. Colour also is significantly different as Indian Mehandi is red to dark brown or even blackish brown in colour (made by mixing ground mehandi leaves, tea leaves, gooseberries or amla, clove or laung etc.), whereas the arabic mehandi is commonly done in black colour (obtained by mixing hair dye or synthetic dye in henna powder) with brown filling. Some examples of heena designs are

Sample of Indian Heena Design (Image Credits:beauty.fashpages.com )

Sample of Arabic Heena Design (Image Credits:www.heenadesigns.org)

With Heena as inspiration, I created this set of eight motifs. A motif is a design which is used as a decoration or as part of an artistic pattern. These motifs are embroidered using variety of stitches like satin stitch, chain stitch, stem stitch, buttonhole stitch, filling stitch, running stitch etc. The main forms used are again my favorite peacock and paisleys and a combination of two.

Hope you like my creations... do leave a comment to let me know!

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[Pastimes] Doodle Doodle... Doodle

As mentioned in my last post What I loved doing... and still love to do, one of my hobbies is doodling. Doodles are referred to those drawings, which are done unconsciously, mainly when the attention is occupied somewhere else. Most of my doodles started and ended in the same way but for some, they start as unconscious doodles but then I liked them so much and ended up spending sometime to specially complete them. Similar doodles were used to make bookmarks and cards as well. The only problem with all this was that not all were photographed. I am left with very few pictures to show, but nevermind... see what all I have and now I'll make sure to click pictures of whatever I do :)

The best way to doodle for me is to use mechanical pencil with B2 lead on any paper. I always carry a mechanical pencil with me for the same reason. Another medium I love to use is Uniball 0.27 tip pen on coloured paper. I mainly use this to make bookmarks; being an avid reader, I am in need of loads of them as sometimes I read 2-3 books at a time and moreover, cannot remember to take them out of my library books before returning them! I also tried to make bookmarks with bamboo leaves, using a Rotring pen for doodling.

Also, you'll see a lot of paisleys (mango design) and peacocks and a combination of both, needless to say that those are my favourite and always end up including atleast one of the them...

Pencil on Paper

Pencil on Paper

Pencil on Paper

Bookmark with Black Uniball Pen on Colored Paper

Bamboo Leaves Bookmarks 

Acrylic Paint on Canvas

So these were few of my creations, Hope you like them! Do leave a comment and let me know...

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