Tips for Creative Pooja Thali Decorations-II

As I promised in the last post, this post is about ideas for creative decoration of the pooja thali. So without much ado, here it is. The procedure for decorating the Diwali pooja thali is as follows:

• Take the thali that you have chosen. Usually the thali is covered with paper, cloth or any other decoration material, which forms a beautiful base for all the other decoration materials. There are many ways in which you can create many pretty and colorful bases.
• Next step is to decorate the thali with a paste of roli/kumkum/sindhur/chandan or haldi. You can make holy symbols with these pastes and powders on whatever base you have chosen.You can use flowers to make different shapes and patterns on the thali.
• Then place the Idols of deities in the thali. One by one place all the pooja material on the thali. With a lighted diya placed in the thali, the glow will make the thali look very bright.

This is the basic way of arranging things in a pooja thali. There can be 100 of creative ways to enhance the look of the Diwali pooja thali using various decoration tools and techniques. Below is the compilation of all the ideas that i have across till date. Hope you ll find a few of them useful, if not all.

• You can cover the pooja thali with a bandhani cloth with a golden lace or gota.
• Usually bandhani cloth is used, but a velvet or tissue cloth looks as good. If it's a plain velvet you can embellish it with shells, mirrors and sequins, which are easily available.
• Glitter powder also comes in handy in the pooja thali decoration.
• Designer packing paper sheets are also a good alternative. Translucent sheets are available is a range of bright and glossy colors.
• A base of attractive rangoli designs looks very nice. You can even make different section in the rangoli patterns which will be filled by the pooja materials placed on the thali.
• If you don't have rangoli colors, you can also use sindhur, haldi, rice powder and chandan powder to make designs. Other than the base, all these powders can also be made into pastes, by mixing water, and can be used to make holy symbols like ' aum' or 'swastik' or writing 'shree'.
• Another way is to put a little ghee or oil on the and spreading the haldi and roli powder on to the thali. Shake the thali lightly, and you will see both the colors meshing beautifully to form a very bright and colorful base.
• Oil paints and water paints can also be used to paint the thali if its an earthen thali, and it can be further embellished with small decorative mirrors and colorful gem like stick-ons.
• Spreading rice grains on the thali and making designs with vermilion is simplest of all the decoration ways. Place colorful flower petals, diyas, incense sticks, silver coins and other things to add color to the white base.
• Another simple way is to cover it with petals of multi colored flowers.
• Cut out strips of different colored cloths and stick them in concentric circles onto the thali. You can also use paper in palce of cloth. Adorn with mirror, sequins, etc.
• Take out zari borders from your old sarees or duppattas and embellish.

And if you think, this craft is not your cup of tea, just go out in the market and buy a thali with little engravings and designs as you will need to decorate them much.

<a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href="http://handicraft.indiamart.com/products/religiousproducts/pooja-thali.html">pooja thali</a>