Happy Diwali Greeting Card

Happy Diwali to all who celebrate Diwali. Diwali is a festival of lights. Diwali or Deepawali is celebrated by decorating houses with lights in various forms. Deepawali's literal meaning is row of Deeps. "Deep(Sanskrit)" or "Diya (Hindi)" as they are called in hindi are small clay lamps integral part of this celebration. They are used during prayers to Lord Ganesha and Goddess Lakshmi and also decorating all around the house, inside and out. It signifies the house will prosper and the light from the "Diya" will bring brightness in their lives. This festival signifies the triumph of Good over Evil. For more on Diwali click here. Since, no Diwali is complete without Diyas it is has become the most popular theme of the greeting cards we make or buy for our family and friends. So this year we decided to make one with this theme.

This is a simple greeting card made with very basic quilling shapes. With a little supervision kids can make these too.

Supplies needed

- Paper quilling strips 1/8" 2 yellow, 2 Red

- PVC Glue quick and clear drying

- Markers

- Red paper

- Card stock or plain greeting card

- Martha stewart Punch Doily

I have used basic tear drop shape for the flame of the Diya. The half moon shape which I have pinched a little more in one side to make it more pointed resembles the shape of Diya.
For basics on paper quilling and the basic shapes check out our previous posts on Paper Quilling.

Glue these shapes as shown and glue or tape the punched doily of your choice.

For younger kids you can make the paper quilled shapes and they can enjoy assembling these shapes in the form of Diyas and making their own cards..

Tips:
1.If you do not have pre-cut paper quilling strips you can cut them using scissors or a paper cutter. You can use magazine papers or gift wrap papers.

2.If you do not have a punch, you can use a colorful ribbon instead.

Diwali craft activity for kids

It was Diwali yesterday and we celebrated it at a fun get-together organized by one of our friends. It has become an annual thing where all of us gather for prayers followed by potluck dinner, games,dancing etc. Since its a big get together every family is assigned with a task and mine was to take care of kids craft activity.

We wanted it to be an easy to do activity with minimum mess (hence lesser supervision).The age range we had was 2 years to 10 years. I decided to make craft kits for kids to make Diwali greeting cards with sticky back foam sheets. They could then either exchange them or give it to their parents or other family members.

You get pre-cut foam shapes specific to Christmas, Halloween etc at craft stores like Michaels and JoAnn but not for Diwali. Hence I decided to cut the festival specific shapes likes diyas(earthen lamps lit on the Diwali day) myself and tried to use as many pre-cut shapes as I could in the sample designs. Luckily I got stars, and some basic shapes like rectangles, squares, circles , triangles, tear-drop etc which could be used to make traditional card patterns.

To give kids some idea on how to proceed I made few sample cards(see the first picture) with the traditional diyas, candles and one with a Rangoli. All the cards have different difficulty levels based on number of pieces and coordination required to achieve the pattern.
Here are the supplies provided to kids in the kit :

- Pre-cut sticky back foam sheet shapes
- Blank greeting card stock ( 2 per kit
- A disposable paper bowl to keep the foam sheet shapes
- Coloring pencils and crayons

It was fun watching the kids make cards and enjoying themselves.The diyas were the most favorite and I guess the credit goes to the foam sheets with glitter :). Elder kids tried to follow the pattern while the younger one simply enjoyed peeling the adhesive back and sticking the colorful shapes on the cards. Here are few pictures of their beautiful creations.