Ganesha Origami

Vakratunda mahakaya suryakoti samaprabha

Nirvignam kuru me deva sarva karyasu sarvada.

Meaning:

O God, with a curved trunk and a massive body, whose brilliance is equal to millions of suns, please make all my endeavors free of obstacles, always.

It's August and the ten day festival of Ganesh Chaturthi has begun. Ganesh, also known as Ganapati or Vinayak, is known to be remover of obstacles. The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi brings with it a lot of childhood memories for me. The festival is a grand celebration lasting for ten days, with pandals decorated elaborately, the bhajans and the aartis, the prasad thereafter and all the fun and merriment with friends and family members. Ganesh is believed to bring good luck and fortune and is worshipped before beginning any new task.

Origami Ganesha

It has been several years, though we Bengalis do not celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi festival, I do make small idols of Ganesha with my daughter, make some sweets for offering to Ganesha. This time the activity was restricted to paper folding. As I was folding the paper, many thoughts came to my mind. But above of all I prayed to Ganesha to bring back our good times, free from Covid virus and make the world a better place to live in. Thus, I prayed...

Hey Ganesha give me the strength to move forward,

Show me the way when I am lost, 

Give the wisdom to figure out the meaning of life,

Bless me with true love.

Hey Gajanan, guide me when life is challenging,

Always be by my side to seek the truth,

Help me to make a difference in this world, 

Protect me from all the evil.

Om Ganeshaya Namah...

If you wish to learn how to make an origami Ganesha, do visit my blogpost for the tutorial that I have posted earlier. Here is the link to the tutorial.

Thank you for stopping by. Have a nice day.

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Recycle a plastic bottle for planting

The lockdown period due to Covid 19, has turned out to be very fruitful for all those who wished to learn something new but never had the time to do it. It has made us realize that life has many facets and each one has to be lived with, whether you like it or not, you can't run away from it. 

So while we are trying to make maximum utilization of our time, we are also learning the importance of the environment. We are trying to value our time, interacting and spending more time with our family members.

Just as we try to deal with the pandemic, slowly trying to move ahead with our lives, here's a small tutorial on reusing and recycling a plastic bottle for planting saplings. 

"1...2...3...Let's plant a tree"...that's our slogan for the activity today.

"1,2,3...Lets plant a tree"

Materials required:

1. Plastic bottle (any juice bottle or bottled water container).
2. Sapling of your choice
3. Fertilized soil for filling up the container

As shown in the picture below, we planted a marigold sapling in a small plastic juice bottle. We cut out the bottom part of the bottle, filled it up with fertilized soil and got a sapling from our neighborhood to be planted in the container. We also made small holes (say around 3-4) at the bottom of the bottle to allow excess water to drain out from the bottom.

Recycled plastic bottle for planting a sapling

Materials required to decorate the plastic bottle:

1. paper cuttings
2. white glue 
3. water colors/poster colors
4. brushes

As shown in the picture below, first we stuck paper all over the bottle surface using white glue. 

Paper mache over the plastic bottle

Then we painted the entire bottle with shades of red, orange and yellow as shown below in the picture. 

Recycled plastic bottle for planting

Hope you also try innovative ways to use and recycle plastic wastes and do something about reducing carbon footprints rather than just sitting and complaining.

Hope you find our tutorial useful. Thank you for stopping by...