Festive decor

Ganesh Chaturthi or Ganeshoutsav one of the biggest celebrations across Maharastra begins with utmost gusto and ends with plenty of modaks. While the pandals, dance and delicacies savour the real essence of welcoming Lord Ganesha into our lives, the other significant part of the celebrations comprises decorating our homes for Ganesha to have a splendid stay. Right from lighting up the idol spot to adorning the entire house with decorative marks the onset of festivities.

And over a period of time with every household welcoming their own little Ganesha, the innovations and ideas to decorate homes to please the deity are also widening up. This time again keeping the spirit of festival high, we bring you some easy-to-do cool decoration.

Mompreneur Kuhoo Gupta, Founder of The K Junction, believes in eco-friendly celebrations and puts only recyclable decorative in use. “Making buntings out of newspaper is one of the best decorative ones can make. Take the newspaper and fold into multiple triangular shapes and cut in that shape. It will give you a bunch of triangles out of one fold. Then stick or staple the triangles over a jute rope,” advises Gupta. To make it even more attractive, Gupta emphasis on involving children in the decorations and colouring the triangles based on your wall colour.

And since coconut comprises a major part of the celebrations, Gupta suggests utilising the shells for keeping pooja ingredients rather than just throwing them away. “Stones of different sizes, too, are great decorative items. All you have to do is paint them in different colours. Even crystals and live plants at home are a nice aura to add around where the Ganpati is placed,” she adds. Gupta even makes her Ganpati at home keeping the environment safe using flour and food colouring.

For Raktim Roychowdhury, Lead Design Development, AMA Design Solutions Pvt LTD, any festival is incomplete without lights and for that, he suggests some cost-effective measures.

“Ganpati is a lot of lighting. At home, we have lamps that we normally discard. Those can be hung using a wire. Plus you can colour it with pop colours like bright orange. But if you have neutral walls use those pop colours to add contrast to the room. Even if you use grey colour it will look great against your neutral wall,” says Roychowdhury.

And to decorate the walls without spending too much money on wallpapers, Roychowdhury directs towards pulling out the old carpets and hanging them as tapestry against the wall.

“We even have paintings lying in the house that we don’t want to hang. Remove the painting and hang the empty antique frames on the wall and consciously paint the walls inside them in different colours. Having these frames around Ganpati will brighten up the area,” he adds.

Most importantly, the design developer encourages using origami instead of rangoli at the entrance. “You can stick the origami’s on a board and place it at the gate. Certain pattern can be made using different colour sheets which will eventually result in 3D rangoli. Later hang it on the wall as a mural,” he says.

Eco-friendly Idol at home

Ingredients:

• 5 spoons turmeric
• 2 spoons all-purpose flour
• ½ spoon sugar
• Milk to knead

Method:

• Knead the dough to a nice consistency similar to play dough with which you can shape up the idol easily.
• Take half of the dough and make a sphere out of it, which will be the stomach.
• Now take some more dough and elongate it to make the legs. But when you see cracks while making the idol dap it with milk.
• Make another small sphere, which will make for the head of Ganesha. And keep applying milk on the joints and cracks as you mould your Ganesha. Now make hands of Ganesha as per your design and keep smoothening the joints by appl2ying milk. Followed by two ears and a trunk. You can also make 2-3 small balls as the mukut.
• To make the eyes, you can use black pepper or clove. And match sticks for the tusks.
• Let it dry for a day or two. And you are ready with your eco-friendly Ganesha.