The colors and lights of Diwali

Hope all of you had a happy and safe Diwali!

For us it was a fun filled, sweet filled, color filled and lights filled Diwali. Here are some pictures of Diwali at home.

Preparations during the day.

Rangoli without any artificial colors

Floating candles and petals in a silver plate

 Floating flowers and candle in a brass vessel

Finally with lights.

The lamps flanking the floating candles are the tealight holders we made last week.

So, that was our Diwali. How was yours?

I'll link my rangoli to PPF on Friday. See you there.

Diwali decor - DIY kids

It's almost here! Diwali - the festival of lights. There are a lot of eco-friendly choices I wish to make this year.
No ceramic diyas. Upcycled and recycled lamps and decor as far as possible. Unpainted terracotta figurines of Lakshmi and Ganesh as always. No firecrackers if the kids can be convinced (!!). But unlimited sweets, lights and fun.

The kids got to work and made a few DIY lamps. I got some terracotta diyas and the kids painted them. Here's what my little artists made -

I've been cleaning and storing all the glass bottles that find their way into our house with jam and honey and other stuff. The intention being to upcycle them. Finally I got the kids to upcycle a couple of them to make pretty lamps. These are very simple. We just applied some random glue spots on the bottle and wound different colors of thread around it. A tealight in the bottle created magic.

My son took to photography after art. Look at these cool shots with interesting perspective.

The threads or ribbons can be wound in a better manner for a more neat finish. You could create symmetric patterns too if symmetry is the thing for you. I just let the kids do it so the bottle ended up with equal amounts of thread and glue :)
We did another experiment and the bottle turned into an interesting "Potli" tealight holder. :) Its red crepe paper wrapped around the bottle and secured with a rubber band at the top. We could use colorful ribbons or golden threads too. The ends of the paper have been trimmed with a design scissors.
We opened out potli and it became a flower lamp. :)

We put some masking tape on yet another bottle and painted over it with acrylics. After the tape was removed, the little tealight did wonders to our home. It would have turned out better only if we could have chosen better colors and had the patience to wait for the paint to dry before removing the tape. But we are kids! And just 2.6 and 5.2 years at that!

My friend Vinaya tried her hands at a couple of DIY decor items. She was kind enough to share these great pics here.

You can find the instructions for these pretty paper flowers here.

Isn't this Lantern made out of an old cardboard box looking gorgeous? And its pretty simple to make. The box has been cut into equal sized pieces and stuck together at right angles and alternate blocks are colored in different colors. This is a great DIY Diwali and Christmas decor idea that even kids can try. Thanks Vinaya.

I might just come back again before Diwali with more decorations as my head is brimming with ideas at the moment. Maybe some non-kid decorations this time. Happy Diwali!

And I'm authorizing myself on behalf of my kids to send this post to Paint Party Friday hosted by Kristin and Eva and Show and Tell Saturday #28 at Artists in Blogland.

Hand Painted Lamp

I've been itching to make something for a while now. But haven't been getting time lately. Finally I made this simple Lamp. It is an outline drawing on a canvas sheet converted into a lamp.

Hand Painted Lamp shade

Closeup of the drawing

Yes, it was a hasty job and it shows :)