Diwali Crafts

Diwali Door Hanging

At Diwali it is traditional to hang an embroidered door hanging, or toran, above doorways to welcome visitors and hopefully the Goddess of Fortune Lakshmi to your home. Make your own simple version from paper with the help of our printables.

You will need:

Printable pages – or your own version
Colouring pencils and pens

Instructions:

Print out three copies of your chosen “band” design (or our blank template, if you would like to do your own design) and colour them in. Print out three “drops” and again colour these in. The hangings are usually symmetrical.

Cut out the three bands and tape them together along the back so they form one length. Cut out the drops and tape these along the bottom of the band as in the photo above.

Use sticky tack to stick the banner to the top of your door frame.

Blank band

Blank band

 

Beaded Candle Holder

When you light a tea light in this pretty beaded candle holder, no-one will guess that it is a recycled glass jar! Use pretty glass or plastic beads for a lovely stained-glass effect.

You will need:

A small glass jar Craft wire Beads

Instructions:

Wrap the wire tightly around the top of the jar. Make a loop of wire over the top of the jar to make a handle. Feed under the wire around the jar rim and pass back over to make another loop. Twist the two loops together.

Feed some beads on to the wire, widely spaced out.

Twist the wire around the body of the jar. When you have wrapped around all of the wire, twist the end into the wire around the rim to hold everything in place.

Coloured Sand Rangoli

You may be able to buy coloured rice for your rangoli projects. If not, coloured sand (available from craft stores) makes a good alternative. You can also die your own coloured salt, by simply mixing cheap table salt with food colouring and then spreading it out to dry.

In traditional rangoli, the outline pattern is drawn on the floor and then filled in by carefully sprinkling coloured powders. Older children could try this technique directly on the ground with coloured sand or salt, having drawn their outline with chalk. Make sure they try this somewhere away from too much foot traffic, and easy to clean!

You will need:

Chalk for drawing a grid or outline
Newspaper to work on
Coloured rice, salt or sand
Large piece dark paper (black construction paper is ideal)
PVA glue
Optional – glitter

You may prefer to draw your outline on a piece of dark coloured paper and then fill in each section with white glue, sprinkling with sand or salt as you would with glitter. Do one colour at a time and shake the excess off onto a large piece of newspaper.

Children could use glitter in some areas of the design for contrast and emphasis.