Project:Mehndi thaal

Ok so I thought of starting out with one of my past projects. If you don`t know what exactly a mehndi thaal is then have a look at my other blog about mehndi thaal it gives a pretty thorought description of what it is.

  Anyways, I and some friends and family made a mehndi thaal for my uncle`s wedding this summer, it took us about a 2 weeks of endless efforts. Even though we could have opted out for a professional one, but we wanted it to be unique and it was surely worth alot more making it ourselves and was a lot of fun too.

So, what we used:

• A strong 4 x 3 foot strong board. (we used a douple layer of a cover of a refrigrator! the shape really depends, we went a curvy rectangle so more people could be seen) 
• 2 small round boards
• 3 strong plastic pipes with different lengths (different lengths so that the people holding the board could be seen,)
• Golden wrapping paper (got 6 sheets) 
• Diyas(candle lamps)(I think about 2-3 dozens)
• Tealight candles (a 50 pack)
• 5 different sets of died rice (we chose,aqua blue, pink, yellow, green & orange)(altogether it was about 2-3 kg of rice) 
• Broken Mirror for mosaic (I hammered old sheets of mirror into small pieces, however, I would Highly recommend not to try that at home yourself! I had to use extra precautions and still i ended up hurting myself a bit)
• Tons and tons of glue (the most money was spent on glue!)
• Marigold Tongue Flowers(Gaynday ke phool) in orange

Procedure: 

 My grandfather had some professionals cut the boards and the pipes out of us, they joined the layers together and made slots under the boards for the pipes to be attached with. Then, we pasted the golden wrapping paper on the top of the boards, we chose the golden colour because that is the colour usually used on thaals because of it`s brightness and of course for Mehndi thaals it`s all about bright and radiant colors! 

   Then, I drew a light sketch on the boards and started off with glueing the small pieces of mirrors on (IF YOU TRY THIS AT HOME MAKE SURE TO USE SAFETY GLOVES AND TRY TO TAKE AS MUCH PRECAUTIONS AS YOU CAN!) At first it looked pretty weird but soon it started taking it`s shape! As it was mosaic, I had the choice of mix and matching the pieces around which was hard and fun at the same time. 

That`s what it looked like after we had put the pieces of mirrors on. Then, we took the rice to a clothes dier( I think that`s what they`re called) and he just put the rice in cold water and threw in some powdered colors, he didn`t keep the rice in the water for long or otherwise they would have started to turn moist and soft. I chose to get it colored from a professional because it was less messy and he ended up charging me nothing for it as I  had already given him enough orders before. 

 So, I drew a sketch around the whole board with the help of my sisters and cousins and we started to glue on the colored pieces of rice. 

After the designing, we filled it up with the blue colored rice and drew the borders with golden lead. I chose the blue color to be the most prominent as it was the theme for the mehndi night. 

And then I glued the top of the diyas(lamps) and dipped in the rice to have the top look coloured.

And then we decorated it with the diyas, flowers and topped it up with tealight candles!!

AND WALLAA!!