Wednesday, November 3, 2010

How to Make a Simple Diwali Rangoli Pattern Design with Dots

It is not at all difficult to create a simple rangoli design on the floor or any type of usable surface. You also need not worry if you don't have colours to fill it up. A plain white rangoli has its own inherent beauty. You can try out the simple rangoli pattern in this blog post - it is really easy!  A Step by Step Guide to Make A Rangoli Pattern


Step 1: Select the Diwali Rangoli Design
Count how many dots are needed horizonatlly and how many dots are needed vertically
(this design is 9 dots vertically and 9 dots horizontally)
[Design by Snehal S. Kharkhanis from Rang Rangavali rangoli design book]


Step2: Apply gheru (brown earthy clay) on the surface (either on the ground directly or on any flat surface). I have done the rangoli on a wooden plank left over after carpentry work!

Flat surface on which to make the rangoli design


Step 3: If, like me, you cannot make dots in a straight line freehand, use a ruler or a paper already punched with holes. It is always best to use white rangoli powder to make the dots as these are more clearly visible than coloured rangoli dots. Colours should be used to fill in the rangoli design.


Step 4: Carefully lift the punched-holes paper by raising it and quickly tilting it off to the side on a paper, so that the rangoli powder on the paper does not spill on to the flat surface of your design.

Step 5: Start the design by taking a small pinch of the white rangoli powder. Many people make the mistake of picking up the powder the way they do salt or masala powder, with the thumb and forefinger tightly holding the powder and dropping it straight on the surface to make the lines of the design. What you should do is hold the rangoli powder in such a way that it sort of trickles off from the side very gently. This creates a much thinner line than if you simply dropped it directly on the surface.

Note the gentle sideways-movement of sprinkling the white rangoli powder
Step 6: Start the design from one corner and move on to the other corners, as it is then easier to do the center pattern of the rangoli design.


Do one corner first 
Step 7: After doing the 4 corners, do the center diamond pattern

Corners and center completed
Step 8 and 9: Complete the full design little by little



Step 10: Never put coloured rangoli powder directly as filling for the rangoli design. You must always mix it first with a little white powder. However, remember that the more white powder you use, the lighter the shade you will get. So put little at a time till you get the desired colour shade.

Mixing colured golden powder with a little white rangoli powder
Step 11 onwards till final completed design: Now, fill up each section of the rangoli design with other colours. Do not overdo it and make it over-the-top colourful!






I have put a small diya design in the blank space next to the main design

The completed design placed in front of my home


Two clay diyas with oil and wicks placed on either side of the Rangoli in the evening

You can also put small designs around the main rangoli design (see images below) and even put readymade rangoli sticker-type designs as shown in the photo above (the red strip below the rangoli design).
Check out readymade rangoli patterned stickers



Those who read this also liked: Diwali Rangolis Patterns Using a Flour Sieve

16 comments:

  1. Great Designs i loved them all , all are so original .
    Thanks for Sharing .

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  2. Ritu, thanks for reading my blog. The designs can be found in many rangoli design books sold by street vendors, the price starting at Rs.10/-. What is important is to select the design as per the space you are using. The designs in every book will specify the number of dots required horizontally & vertically so you need to first check out if they will fit properly in the space (floor, wood plank, etc) you have kept aside for the rangoli.

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  3. Nice ideas..thank you

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  4. thnx 4 d help.....

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  5. rilly helpful, thanks lots... i manage to do my rangoli design pretty well...

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  6. Gayatri, Priti & all the Anonymous readers who left their thank you notes: a big thanks to all of you for reading my blog. I'm glad you liked it!

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  7. Do you know where I can buy the hole paper?

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  8. Hi Anon, in the city of Mumbai this type of paper is sold by street vendors in the bustling market areas of Dadar and Crawford Market. It is available for Rs.5/- and Rs.8/- depending on whether it is small or big. You can make such a paper at home yourself too simply by punching holes. Buy a punch which creates small holes, use a ruler & pencil to mark even spaces on the paper where the holes should appear and you can punch the holes with one end of the punch. If you use both ends of the punch, the space will be wide; in that case you can place the punch in-between the spaces of the first holes.

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  9. Hi vanadana nice Pattern....... can we remove the remaining dots which are left....? so that it looks more neat....?

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  10. Thanks Pallavi for reading my blog. Yes, you can remove the unused dots. I generally leave such unused dots, though, as they look a bit dainty. Also, some people fill in a background colour in the spaces where there are unused dots to enhance the pattern even more. So it is up to your creativity what you would like to do!

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  12. thanx 4 teaching rangoli. its realy helpful

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