It's festive time here in India and I love to decorate my home with beautiful rangoli (floor art). I am not an expert nor have I learnt it formally. I just love to experiment with my rangolis each year and today I am going to share my process of making a portable rangoli with colors.
I found this method easier as you can make this rangoli sitting inside your house, unlike the traditional method of sitting outside on the floor. I adopted this process mainly because here in Mumbai we have very less space outside the flats to make huge rangolis, and also sitting outside is not viable because of the humid weather and space constraints. I have this 12 x 12" square piece of wooden ply, which I use to make my rangoli every year. You may make any kind of design on it, but I usually find the dot rangoli easier to do.
Material required:
- Wooden plank - preferably square
- Dot rangoli patterns (lots available online)
- White Rangoli powder
- Rangoli Colors
Here are the steps with pictures....
Step 1:
Select the desired rangoli pattern that you want to make from a book or any other source. As per the design, mark dots at equal distance all over base (wooden ply).
You can use a scale or a paper stencil like the one shown here to do the markings.
Step 2:
Since I am not very good with it, I generally use a pencil/chalk to draw the design on the base to get it right. I have faced situations where I had to redo the entire stuff, if I try to make it with colors directly.
Step 3:
Use the plain white rangoli powder, to make the outline.
Step 4:
Prepare the colors by mixing in the white powder.
Step 5:
Start filling in the patterns, one color at a time. I have first filled in green color in the image below.
Then fill second color, and so on...
Here is the ready rangoli!! You can now pick it up carefully and place at any corner of the house.
Light earthen lamps and place over the rangoli.
This is another example of the dot rangoli that I had made during Diwali, in the year 2012.
Have a safe & wonderful Diwali. If you get inspired by my tutorial, please do let me know and share your rangoli pictures with me. :)
