The festival of lights dawns upon us, bringing with it soaring spirits, sparkles and an irresistible urge to decorate. Niyati Jain, Deepshika Arora and Pragya Bhatt from Artefact, bring us a beautiful DiY wall-hanging-cum-diya-holder to brighten up our rooms this Diwali.
Things We’ll Need:
- Medium-sized plastic bottles
- Scissors
- A sharp, pointy object (compass or forceps, whichever’s available)
- Matchsticks
- Thick, coloured thread
- Coloured chart paper
- Aluminium foil
- Fevicol
- Glitter powder
- Clips
- A hanger
- Diyas
Now that we’ve gathered all our material, let’s get started!
The entire process can be divided into three major steps: first, we’ll make the decorative parts, then the Diya-holders, finally assembling all the components together to make our wall hanging.
- Cut out the upper one-third of the plastic bottle.
- Heat the tip of the forceps or compass using a lit matchstick and pierce a hole in the bottle cap
- Apply some fevicol on the surface of the bottle and neatly wrap the colored thread around it.
- Stick a few beads or mirror pieces. Sprinkle a little bit of glitter powder, just to give it that sparkly look.
- Repeat with the other bottle too.
- To make the next component, the diya-holder, cut out a piece of coloured chart paper of dimensions 8cm by 28cm.
- Make a fold of breadth 1cm on the longer side and cut out small triangles from it.
- After that, roll the chart paper into a cylinder and stick the ends with some fevicol. Fold the cut edges inward.
- Keep the cylinder on another piece of chart paper, preferably a different colour this time, and trace it out carefully. Cut out the circular piece and stick it to the cylinder, forming the base.
- In the same way, cut out a circular piece of aluminium foil and stick it on the base of the cylinder , from the inside. The aluminium foil serves to reflect the light from the diya placed inside the holder, making it look brighter.
- Our diya-holder is ready! Don’t forget to make another one.
- To assemble our components, cut out four pieces of coloured thread of varying length.
- Make a ribbon knot around the diya holders. For the decorative bottle parts, insert the thread through the hole in the bottle cap and hold it in place using a knot.
- Tie all the parts on to the hanger neatly. Hold the knots in place using clips.
Now all that there is left to do is to light two diyas, place them in the diya-holders, and search for a nice spot to hang it!
Written by Niharika Dixith
Photographs by Sanketh Mohanty