At this moment I am exactly doing rangoli.
Rangoli is called painted prayers of India.
I am doing rangoli since I was a kid. When I was a kid we had a raised platform in the courtyard especially made for rangoli. We used to buy permanent paints (samples used to come in small amounts) and used to take 2-3 days to make rangolis all over house at different places. We never used to get tired. I still do it but now with flowers or powder colours.
All over India rangoli is done at different festivals or even on everyday basis and has different names such as Alpana in West Bengal, Kolam in south etc.
from Bangladesh
please click to enlarge to see stepwise alpana
Here are some sites with beautiful patterne , info & how-tos…
Animation of a rangoli design.
Some beautiful rangoli designs.
Tips and rangoli designs.
more rangoli patterns.
Tomorrow is diwali and I wish I had more time to do this post on my favourite art & craft but… (maybe…no Iwill definitely do a region wise post again on this topic), (& if my fellow bloggers have done a post on same topic I would add their links later.)