December 24, 2008
· Filed under Do-it-yourself · Tagged children, Christmas, presents
Last Sunday my daughter (7 months old) and I went, as usual, to the Children’s Sahaja program (we started attending them when Sonya was about 5 months old). The meditation part was followed by an art part. One of the mum’s was conducting a workshop for the mums of the children – we were making Christmas-tree balls for each other as presents (to be more exact, we took single-colour balls and decorated them).
At modern shops, you can find gel-pencils (in the same department where pencils and felt-tip pens are sold). We used them to draw pictures on the balls.
Glue and spangles were also of great popularity among kids and their mums. The technique is not Read the rest of this entry »
December 18, 2008
· Filed under Do-it-yourself, Sharing experiences · Tagged America, collectivity, culture, diversity, Diwali, diya, William Blake
You can make all kinds of diyas with vibrated clay, water and colors. Diyas are a great gift also as they can be made with pure vibrated products. This way we can fill people’s homes and hearts with vibrated art made with love (Priyanka J.)
The story below is taken from the blog “Monsoon Masala” run by Priyanka Joshi, a freelance journalist and mother of a 5-year old son. Enjoy and get ideas for your creativity!
“Have you ever seen a diya with traditional patterns from Turkish/ Japanese/Jewish/Namibian/Uzbek/Filipino/Mexican/American Indian/Iranian/Thai design, architecture and embroidery styles?
For 3 years now, I’ve been adding this international touch to Diwali by involving my friends from different countries to make diyas with traditional patterns found in their native cultures. For me, this is a deeply gratifying and a great “building bridges” activity between communities. For the whole month of October, we have been opening our home to people from all walks of life. They bring their kids, their parents, their neighbors. We share our stories of arriving in America, making it our home more and more each day as we drink tea, laugh, talk about life, raising kids, and Diwali. After some time, our fingers mold clay into diyas almost on autopilot, and our kids jump around us, gluing beads, feathers, fabric and sequins to these diyas. Even my 5 yr old son who doesn’t talk to girls (“…because they’re weird, only play with Barbies, and don’t like Spiderman”), gets okay with them while making diyas.
My dream is to, one day, Read the rest of this entry »
