make it pretty - part 1

Festival season is arriving. Ganesh Chaturthi, Rakhi, Navratra, Dussera, Diwali and New Year, all packed into the next six months, and more smaller festivities squeezed between the main events. While decorations are undertaken mostly during diwali, it starts much earlier in the state of Maharashtra with the Ganpati festival which is hugely important and popular. 

Making your homes look pretty doesn't have to be expensive or very time-consuming. Here are two styles I followed last festival season, using mostly things available in the house. My process is simple.

1. Go through all your stuff, art and craft material, show pieces, pictures, frames, vases, mats, little knick-knacks in your grandmothers' cupboards from yesteryear...

2. Group items that fit into one theme, eg. colour wise, design wise, era wise, or create your own theme, eg, eco-friendly, handmade, floral, etc.

3. Pick one or two key pieces in the group you find most satisfactory and start building around it.

4. Buy only what's really necessary like fresh flowers (unless you have a garden to forage wild flowers and leaves)

5. Once you are done, take a step back. Now start removing whatever you feel is cluttering your arrangement. Simplicity always works.

My theme for this arrangement was red and warm.  I used a lot of reddish hues and candles.

The red chatai and the big orange plate were my key pieces, both of which I had in the home. 

I bought some dry flowers in red and brown and some fresh daisies in a reddish hue. 

That is all I bought for this arrangement. I was lucky to find a potted plant in my house with 

beautiful reddish spiky leaves.

These round vases were kept in the house and the bottles are my old empty shampoo bottles. I used
previous year's rangoli colours and some old decorative stones in warm hues to add colour. I used
water in all the bowls to add lots of reflection from the candles I used.

The diffuser sticks formed a base for this little floral candle and the diffuser vase was used to hold
dry flower sticks as it was wooden and fit perfectly in my arrangement.