rangoli

A Padi-kolam

Here is a padi-kolam (a rangoli) that i did for my SIL’s house-warming function..

The four bent sides as seen in the pic below forms the basis of what is called the ‘iyengar’ padi-kolam- basically a rangoli that has no dots..

I love these variety of rangolis for two reasons- (i) it lets your imagination take the lead and you can extrapolate the design in any which way you want..(ii) the dots i make on the floor always end up like the world map and are never aligned the way it is intended to be! In most South Indian-brahm homes, you’ll find the dot-less rangolis during festivals or functions like weddings, house-warming etc.. They look best when done with wet rice flour (soaked and ground to a very thin consistency). The one you see here is with dry kolam-maavu made from washed and dried rice. They look nice with colors too..

Diya Rangoli

Pardon the A4 sheet drawing and passing it off as a step-by-step procedure for a Rangoli. Hope I get to do a neat, colorful job of it someday like the one TPL had linked in an earlier post:)

In keeping with the Diwali season, here’s a free-hand kolam with diyas..

If you are in the mood and if there is space in your front-yard, extend the kolam heeding to your imagination:) And let me know if you find this simple/easy/good/bad/poor/complex/whatever…

A Kolam – step by step

One of the kolams in the previous post:

Let me know if you tried/liked it..

PS: Edited to upload a pic of the original kolam (fyki- TPL!), with a very slight variation:

My entry for the Artsy-Craftsy contest this month is a flower rangoli. This was done in celebration of a milestone at work with a couple of colleagues helping with the colors.