Sanskar Bharati Rangoli!!

I am a great fan of the Sanskar Bharti Rangoli, since the day I started learning it.. It was so much fun and exhilarating experience for me.. Since then whenever I had to do a rangoli someweher, my first choice was ofcourse SanskarBharati..

I enjoyed it so much that, I also started teaching it at one place in Saswad(India). For this I took a bus, had a long one and half hr drive to and fro from my home. But I did it patiently for the love of it!

Then I moved to US. Getting the required material for rangoli in bulk (If you know sanskar bharati.. it needs a lot of plain colors and whole lot of rangoli.) is a bit difficult. So I was trying to find other options... Colored sand.. U can find that in US.. but colors are not as bright as plain colors you get in India.

But anyways, it worked.. And here are a few rangoli designs using the colored sand!

Have fun!!

Have fun!!

Clay modeling

This year during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival I decided to make a clay murti myself. This was my first attempt at clay modeling a murti, though I have done several ceramic designs on pots.

For the first time it turned out good , only that it felt that Ganapati was a little weak.. but never mind with 11 days of pooja and prasad he will definitley regain the "lamdodar" name.

Well, I used the Crayola Air Dry clay which is readily available in all the craft stores like Hobby Lobby, Micheal's.. etc..

I let it dry for a couple of days and then used different acrylic and stain glass colors to paint it.

This was a wonderful use of the "Gerber Baby Food glass bottles" , some of my friends said. I made a temple using them , decorating it with some rhinestones, painting the caps and gluing them together on glass to form a beautiful glass Temple.

Finally , the last day of Ganpati Festival, the visarjan(immersion) .. It is kind of difficult (or to say not allowed) to go to a pond/lake and do visarjan in US. So the solution was to take a big utensil(or whatever you want) fill it with water add some flowers, floating candle and lovely immersion pond is ready.. No worries..

   गणपति बाप्पा मोरया,  पुध्च्य वर्षी लवकर या!!

Hail to the God Ganesha, Come soon next year!!

Diwali Faraal and Rangoli snaps!

Rangoli drawn with the colored sand by me on Diwali..

It was so cold outside I decided to do it in the garage and it has survived to this day!!

Some of the Diwali faraal(snacks) I made for Diwali! Yumm!

Happy Diwali..

Diwali is just around the corner and I am preparing to celebrate it lavishly with yummy Diwali snacks and sweets, colorful rangoli and lights!

I also created a treasury in etsy about items I would love to have for Diwali.. :)
Check it out at http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=87610

Also come back again for a blog of diwali snacks and pics!

Happy Diwali and have fun!!

Poonam.