Painting a Deepa (Diya) for Deepavali

Deepavali celebration is going on. Today is second day of Deepavali. Hindu's celebrate this by performing Laxmi pooja(worshipping Laxmi- the Goddess of Prosperity) The other tradition like lighting the lamps and bursting crackers are going on.

Deepavali means row of Deepa ( lamps). In all the houses lamps are lit. It is wonderful and colorful to see the view. I have collection of different types of lamps. In some places there are exhibition of different kinds of lamps(Deepa). I also  prefer to gift Deepas(lamps) to my friends and loved ones. This year also continued the same tradition. I had some terracotta lamps with peacock design , which I had bought last year. Decided  to paint these lamps  and gift those to my friends.
Here is the terracotta lamp:

Terracotta lamp  

As a first step, painted it with primer.

After applying primer

Painted with different colors:

Applied color

And shaded with copper color. Here is the painted lamp:

Hand painted Terracotta lamp  

For Deepavali, what else can be better gift than a hand painted Deepa(lamp) ? :)

Happy and safe Deepavali.

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Converting an old saree to frocks

Deepavali, the festival of lights started. All are in festive mood. Deepavali is not only festival of lights, I consider this as festival of shopping :) and festival of gifts. This year I have planned to give all handmade gifts to all. To gift, twin babies I stitched two frocks from an old silk saree.

This saree was gifted to me by their grand mother, who was very talented. I have written about her works and talents in my previous posts.  The saree she gifted me is here, a beautiful blue Banaras saree with silver zari border:

Many times, thought not to cut this saree, but this is the best gifts I can give to the kids. So decided stitching frocks for her grand children.

How to stitch a frock:

Though I used to stitch , my dresses earlier, recently had not stitched anything. I was out of touch of stitching dresses. I had forgotten , how to cut pattern for a frock. My old books helped me and also my sister who is an expert helped me to recollect. Here are the cuttings of the frock:

Front and back of the frock

Stitched the cuttings, and here is the top part of the frocks:

Top part of the frock

While stitching a frock , the difficult part is to stitch the top part. Once this is done, attaching the frills is very easy. So I could finish the frock within few hours. Here is the finished frock:

Frock

The twins were looking very pretty wearing the frocks.

I have the border of the saree left out. Planning to design a saree with that. Hope to share about that soon.

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

 

A journal making to store design papers

I have many designs on papers, like embroidery designs, dress designs etc. I had kept those in a normal paper folder. Artist in me was not satisfied with the plain paper folder. To make it interesting , I thought of decorating the folder to keep all the designs. I haven't used any special technique, just went on doing whatever came in my mind. :)
 It is a folder made of cardboard, I stuck cloth all over the folder. On the cloth, glues some wet tissue.

Folder with wet tissue glued on it

Once the tissue dried applied , light blue and dark blue paint on it.

After application of paint

On the front attached wooden embellishment and painted it with golden color:

With wooden embellishment 

Back of the folder with a lock embellishment :

The folder looks better rather than plain folder to store my designs.

Coming up with embroidery projects soon. Keep an eye on my blog:)

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Some unique dolls during my visit to judge Gombehabba

In my previous post I have already shared about judging the Gombehabba competition . I visited 10 houses to judge the competition. In each house , the arrangement of dolls was amazing. In some houses the themes were very attractive, and in some the creativity was dominating and in some houses I could see wonderful collection of dolls, which were bought from different parts of the world. Sharing about some of the unique dolls I saw.
Let me start with the Buddha doll meditating in a garden:

Buddha in a garden

In another house, a plastic doll was decorated as Kittoora Rani Chennamma:

A doll made as Kittur Rani Chennamma

Here is a model of Mysuru Palace. Here you can see the creativity of the lady who arranged this. Most of the dolls are handmade:

Model of Mysuru city

This is the most beautiful doll I saw this year. A lady dancing. You can see the charm on her face and the dancing posture looks awesome. It looks real.

Dancing lady doll

Here you can see the route between Bangalore and Mysuru. The important places on the route were depicted using dolls:

Route from Bengaluru to Mysuru

The below one is doll of sleeping Shiva and Parvati is near his head. This is the replica of idol at  Kondeshwara temple Suruta palli, near Tirupati.( You can read more about this temple here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palli_Kondeswarar_Temple,_Surutapalli)

The below one is about the current issue between Karnataka and Tamilnadu. You guessed it right, dolls depicting Kaveri issue. The supreme court judges are relpaced by Ganesha here, and also   CMs of both the states in the court :). I laughed a lot looking at this doll arrangement :)

Another one is a beautiful Lakshmi doll. This doll is from Pune and its Gowri(Parvati) doll. The lady's creativity has changed this doll to look like Goddess Lakshmi. Isn't it adorable?

 In many houses this custom is celebrated from past 100 years. So I could see some very old dolls. The below one is a doll , which more than 100 years old. You can see the difference in the color:

And this is collection of utensil sets. Most of us had these kind of sets during our childhood. Nowadays these are replaced by plastic ones:

Visiting all these houses to view and judge the arrangement was a wonderful experience.This tradition makes us kids. All of us enjoyed like kids, in the world of dolls.I was feeling, for those dolls we must have looked like giants :-)

Many sarees are designed, have worked on some hand embroidered projects. Soon share those with you.

 Until then, 

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Judging Gombehabba

Gombe habba is a cute tradition which is celebrated in some parts of South India. I have already written about this tradition in my previous posts. This year there was no sign , that any would invite me. I was little disappointed. But a surprise was waiting for me. A Kannada News daily Vijaya Karnataka conducts competition about gombe habba. I was invited to judge the competition. every year I used to visit one or two houses to see Gombe habba. Because of Vijaya Karnataka , I visited 10 houses to see gombe habba
Here are some glimpses of the Gombe habba , we visited , published in news paper:

The day we visited 10 houses. In each house the arrangements of dolls was wonderful. I could see everywhere dolls, depicting different themes. The themes included stories from mythology to current issues like Kaveri water dispute between Karnataka and TamilNadu, recent surgical attack etc. I have captured photos of dolls, which I found very interesting. I will share about those in coming post.

Until then, 

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Some variations in Kerala Kasavu sarees

I need not write anything about Kerala Kasavu sarees. Most of the saree loving women , own at least one Kerala Kasavu saree in their collection. This is also known as "Mundum Neriyathum". This is traditional saree of Kerala.Fine cotton handwoven sarees produced by weavers of Balarampuram near Tiruvantharam.


It has two pieces, Mundum  and Neriyattum, which is in white color or very light cream color.This has combination with Kasav( silk thread covered with gold or silver plated threads). In Raja Ravi Verma's paintings, the women he painted are mostly wearing Mundum Neriyattum.

Raja - Ravi Verma's painting- Woman wearing Kerala Kasavu saree
Image Courtesy-Pininterest

Variations in Kerala Kasavu saree

Though Kerala Kasavu sarees are beautiful, with elegant combination of white and gold, nowdays we can find many variations in Kerala Kasavu. The plain one looks very elegant and good option if anyone is planning to embroider or paint on a saree.

Plain Kerala Kasavu saree:

Plain Kerala Kasavu saree

Kerala Kasavu with Screen Printing:

As I have written, Kerala Kasavu saree is perfect for embroidery or painting. I have used screen printing on one of my sarees. Here it is :

Kerala Kasuvu saree with screen printing

This one is Kerala Kasavu , with embroidery:

Kerala Kasavu saree with embroidery

Kerala Kasavu saree with colored threads and motifs

Weavers also coming up with many designs. To make the borer and Pallu look little colorful, nowadays color silk threads are also used with golden color threads. Here are some variations with color threads:

Kerala Kasavu with motifs

Kerala Kasavu with motifs

Nowadays, Kerala Kasavu with Kerala Mural painting is in trend. I'm planning to paint a Kerala Mural on a saree. Soon share about Kerala Mural in coming posts.

Until then,

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

The dolls can make you a celebrity!

Dasara celebration is going on. I have already shared about Gombe habba celebrations in my earlier posts. Gombe habba is a lovely tradition of Dasara, celebrated in Bangalore and Mysore (of Karnataka, India). This is the tradition, celebrated enthusiastically,among all , kids and adults. In fact celebrating Gombehabba, an adult becomes a kid, while arranging the colorful dolls. :-)

I don't know the origin of celebration of Gombehabba. My guess is, it might have started to exhibit the talents of women, who had very less exposure those days. But nowadays we have several opportunities to showcase talents and skills. Here is one such opportunity showcase the dolls arrangements made by you. A well known , Kannada  daily news paper ,"Vijaya Karnataka", has announced a competition to showcase your talent of arranging dolls. I saw this , and could not resist from sharing with you all. Here it is :

Click the photos of dolls arrangements made at your home and send it to the address given(Dasara Gombe Sparde, No.4, Jaya Sai Towers, Sajjana Rao Road, V.V.Puram , Bengaluru -560004)

 The last date is on 5th Oct. Hurry up, you never know , your dolls might make you a celebrity!

I really appreciate the efforts by the team of Vijaya Karnataka , for creating this opportunity.

                             "HAPPY DASARA TO ALL"

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana