DIY: Painting Your Own Diwali Diyas

Festive season is here. Decorations are all around. Diwali is also around the corner. What are your plans for this Diwali?
Diwali is celebrated for 5 days all over India with great pomp and show. The festival starts with Dhanteras on which most Indian business communities begin their financial year. The second day of the festival is called the Naraka Chaturdasi. The third day of Diwali, Amavasya marks the worship of Lakshmi, goddess of wealth. The fourth day of Diwali is known as Kartika Shudda Padyami. The fifth day is known as Yama Dvitiya/ Bhaiduj and on this day sisters invite their brothers to their homes.
Diwali is a festival of lights and we use different sort of lights to decorate our home. Most common are the different types of clay diyas available in market. The decorated diya's available in the market are very pricey compared to the plain ones. So why not this time buy plain diyas and paint it our own way and make them beautiful.

These are few of the things that you will need to paint your own diyas:
1) Plain diya (available in market)
2) Acrylic Paint
3) Paint brushes
4) Colour Palette
5) Coloured Glitter (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, etc..)
6) Fevicol
7) Water in a bowl
8) Old cloth (to wipe excess colour from your hand/diyas)

Soak the diyas in water, clean them and dry them properly before you paint them, as these clay diyas tend to soak in a lot of paint or oil when used new.
Then paint the diyas as you want using different colours.

This is a plain diya that I got from the market.

This is how the Diya looks after colouring:

Flowery Diya

For small clay diyas, I first painted these diyas. When the colour dried off, I applied fevicol wherever required and then sprinkled coloured glitter onto it.

Glitter and Gum

Small clay diyas that I brought from the market:

This is how the Diyas looks after completion:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” 
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

I tried to make my Diwali little creative and colourful. Do try it out and make your Diwali more colourful too..
Have a Happy and Safe Diwali.
And if you have other creative ideas do share in the comments section below. 

Just Doodling

Doodle Art / Pattern Drawing

The name might sound something difficult to try out but we have been doing it since we were kids but never realized that it was a art form. Stuck somewhere,when we are bored or stressed, waiting or listening with a pen in our hand, we start doodling or you can say we start scribbling patterns or names. That's doodle.

A doodle is an unfocused or unconscious drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes. Stereotypical examples of doodling are found in school notebooks, often in the margins, drawn by students daydreaming or losing interest during class. Other common examples of doodling are produced during long telephone conversations if a pen and paper are available.  And it is found that what we choose to doodle reveals volumes about our personality and mood. Because of this, we’re usually only  half-conscious of what we’re drawing — which means our inner preoccupations surface on paper.

Study shows Emotional people who want harmony and crave affection tend to use rounded shapes and curved lines. Down-to-earth, practical people tend to use straight lines and  squares. Determined people will use corners, zigzags and triangles, while more hesitant types use light, sketchy strokes. A large doodle shows a person is confident and outgoing, while a small one suggests the person prefers to observe rather than participate. Zigzags are a particularly common doodle and show energetic thinking and a desire to get on with things. Doodling names or initials is common for those who enjoy being the center of attention. I have listed a few of the patterns describing a person's behavior,  there are even many other patterns too.

I have used black pen and paper to create the below artworks using doodles.
In this I have doodled around names to create this art. Can you find out the names in it?

And in this picture below I have first drawn a pattern, and then doodled inside the pattern to create this image.

Cock-a-doodle-do

Have you ever doodled around and created an art ? If not, this time when you doodle try to give it a form and make it an art. Do share your doodling experiences and whether you like this post or not in the comments section below.

Happy October

There is magic at the end of everyday,

You can see it on the horizon of play

The sun slowly drops down to take a rest

And then we lay down for the night until the morning crest

- Rik Bertrand

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm,
but to add color to my sunset sky.” 
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds