Kolam by Sudha Balaji

This is a sweet dish that is used as an offering or neivedhiyam for Puja particularly on Thursdays. for Lord Hyagreeva  (for children's education). It can also be prepared and offered for auspicious occasions and festivals like Varalakshmi Vratha Pooja instead of kheer or payasam.. Method of preparation Gram dhall ( kadalai paruppu ) is cooked with little water in a cooker.  Using a ladle break the dhall so that some are whole and some are broken.   Add powdered jaggery and mix well.  In a vessel add ghee and heat it.  Now add cashew nuts, raisins and the mixture of gram dhall and jaggery to the heated ghee   Stir well till jaggery melts completely.  Add cardamom powder to it.  The neivedhiyam is ready.  Adding grated coconut is optional. Usually, it is prepared in small quantity since it is for offering. Guruvaram or Thursday is very important for our family.  My mother-in-law was an ardent devotee of Mahaperiya His Holiness Chandrasek...

This kolam uses a dot grid -  2 rows of 12 dots and then 10,8,6,4,2 on either side.  The dots are connected using straight lines.  The final image appears simple but we can get confused.  So I have few pictures to guide us from the beginning of the kolam  through various steps to make it somewhat easy to learn , practice and draw.  There a maze of lines connecting the dots.   I have add few colourful dots from bullets to make is suitable for the festival of colours Diwali also.  if we want a different rangoli with dots for Diwali  Chukki rangoli new design for Dasara Pulli vacha kolam for  Navarathri Place colourful bullets and draw as a latest kolam for New Year  Aishwarya kolam I drew for my YouTube channel was the official video for the platform for many weeks.  I do not know whether Google still follows this concept.  I realised why when a lady commented on the video "I have seen many Aishwarya rangoli steps but ...

  As discussed already for  free hand kolam or rangoli sky is the limit for our imagination we can expand the rangoli so long as there is space for drawing the design. I have shared a gallery of 3 small rangoli designs for our daily rangoli.  Though they are small they may be tricky at a couple of places If you are looking for chinna muggulu without dots or without chukki rangoli for your reference to draw quickly  in the morning, this collection of white rangoli may be drawn in a notebook so that you can access it easily without any delay. Note the similarity between the first and second design.  The second design is almost an expansion of the first with few changes. Star and floral patterns at the centre are one of the easiest ways to start drawing a rangoli while leaves, petals are used to expand  Without chukki rangoli ideas through images  rangoli without chukki , white design black background For those who are landing on this post for the first ...

  Corner rangoli designs | side rangoli designs | side border  As the name suggests, they are drawn on the corner of a bigger rangoli pattern or at the corner of a room    They are actually rangoli borders It is natural to use flowers like lotus are used for freehand rangoli designs with our own decorations added to them. I have to use more lotuses and other flowers, birds and animals for my freehand rangoli. I have shared 5 ideas in white kolam (after all I belong to the traditional school of kolam ) .  These ideas can be used in colour.  The name of the website is Rangoli sans dots .  So drawing free hand rangoli designs is my bread and butter.  I just love to create them.  "Kolam and music combination is phenomenal... I am looking forward for more of these videos with a perfect blend of rangoli and music " This is feedback from one of my social media accounts. Actually, classical Indian music blends well with kolam , I think.  ...

I had written earlier  on jasmine  an easy simple method of making jasmine garland using a needle and thread.  In fact what we get is a densely set floral garland.   Stringing of roses is difficult because the petals are delicate and tend to fall when we try to string roses. The roses should be fresh and used within a few hours.   Hence it is better to string roses when they are fresh Coming to jasmine, stringing them is difficult because the stalk is thin and small ( initially it is better to learn stringing leaves or flowers with long stalk  It is easier to string the jasmine flowers when they are buds.   Once they bloom it is slightly difficult as the petals interfere with stringing process.   Usually, the jasmine buds are strung and the garland is stored in a piece of clean cloth made slightly wet with water so that the flowers bloom the next day.   Too wet a cloth will result in the flowers getting damaged.   There is...

  I find that the terms mandala or rangoli are freely used for rangoli designs in many countries outside India just as we use rangoli or kolam in India.  Since the word mandala is related to circle, let us have some circular designs as theme in this post. In the first rangoli concentric circles have been drawn without any aids like templates.  When we draw circles with this method there are some limitations.  Alternatively, we can mark the circles using geometric aids or a piece of chalk tied to a thread by drawing a number of concentric circles after holding one end of the string at what will be the centre of the circles.   After drawing the circles, the route along the circles can be overwritten with rangoli. I prefer the former method usually because I feel it gives a more naturalistic appearance to the rangoli. The rangoli is decorated with patterns inside.  As a result, it turns into an awesome rangoli . The use of free hand lotus designs makes i...

There is a tradition to draw a kaavi border around the muggulu designs on Fridays Talking of auspicious kolam for auspicious occasions, there is a tradition of drawing a muggu with lines (lines rangoli design) for auspicious occasions like weddings, housewarming.   I have drawn a simple lines muggu probably one of the smallest rangoli with lines. Though the final picture looks simply, we can go off track while drawing this kolam that is an excellent exercise us and can be challenging also.   These steps are an attempt to simplify drawing this kolam Drawing parallel lines close to each other is the requirement.  (Of course, with powder) and without any aids we can do it as is humanly possible).  Such thin lines are drawn in ezhai kolam - a unique design that has a rangoli or muggu design with patterns formed using many lines.    Ezhai means a single strand of the many strands in a thread or string.  So the lines should be as thin as possibl...

  The rangoli below is called  krishnan dindu  (Krishna's arm rest or bolster is a rough translation)  For this design also I have used a quadra - line design.   Draw curved lines to connect all the straight lines to get the final design that looks like an endless loop. Fill the design completely with colours of your choice.  When completed one cannot see where the rangoli starts and where it ends.   These rangolis are very simple and very easy to draw.  One intermediate step of this kolam or rangoli is shown below.  The images are self-explanatory, I think.  I have shared small white kolam with lines, we can make them colourful, if required, add decorations also around the central rangoli design This website also has posts on recipes and crafts - some examples are given below for reference  a)  4 kaal pinnal step by step  b)  Pitla recipe  white rangoli with lines  line rangoli with steps   ...

This is a combination of two beautiful art forms  The   white mehndi rangoli design   is a totally different type of design and it does no conform to geometry or anything in nature.  I have tried some simple free hand patterns to which to spiral designs are attached outside and one inside.  The entire portion inside and on the spiral lines have some patterns on them that have been drawn spontaneously according to my imagination.  Hope it has come out well.  Mehndi designs are drawn with mehandi cone that is available in the market.   I wanted to try with  kolam powder few without chukki rangoli designs in white. To draw these designs apart from the quality of rangoli powder, dexterity and control are important factors 1) Henna mehndi rangoli designs 2) White rangoli with mehandi theme 3)  mehndi designs for hands with kolam as theme 4) Mehndi rangoli design simple  The mehendi function before marriage is usually celebrated i...