Rangoli is done by women to bring good luck, it is generally practiced during festivals, marriages, celebrations and gatherings.
In olden days the base material is usually rice flour and for color they have used sindoor, turmeric and other natural ingredients for various hues. Recently these have been replaced by chemical colors.
Rangoli designs can be simple geometric shapes, deity representation, peacock, fish, flower or petal shape. These Rangoli that I have posted are made using chemical colors. I am not well versed with these designs my house keeper use to do it for us.
Rangoli can be of any size and use wide variety of materials. When I was a kid I used to draw the design with a chalk and fill it with colors.
Major symbols used in Rangoli are lotus flower (which has a lot of spiritual significance in Hinduism), mango, leaves, fish, deepam (diya / lamp) , parrot, peacock, and swan.
During Onam they put these Rangoli designs using flower for 10 days, the designs grow complex and big each day.
To make this flower Rangoli, first the design must be drawn using chalk piece then it is filled with flowers of one's own choice, this is usually drawn during Onam and Karthikai Deeapam.
The Flower rangoli designs in this post are made by one of my best buddies Vidya lakshmi.Have you tried Rangoli ?
