Introducing kolam videos

Hello, I'm Puteri from Brisbane. I'm going to be involved in an exhibition in about 2 months time. One of the display is involving Indian culture and we'd like to make/draw a kolam or 2 as one of the display. I just want to know where I could get some really basic steps for making a kolam. For example, what type of colour/paint do i use to dye the rice flour? And I don't even know if we should use rice or rice flour and methods of dyeing it. I come from Malaysia and this exhibition is about Malaysian culture (The three main races of Malaysia are Malays, Chinese and Indian). Unfortunately, we do not have anyone with enough knowledge of Indian culture on our team. So, I'd really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction. Thank you. :-) Puteri

Hello Puteri, First of all, let me apologize for this late reply. Most of the answers for your queries are already provided in the FAQ page of this site. Please also check out the youtube video link provided at the top of this page. It demonstrates the basic procedure of making a kolam with rice powder/sandstone powder. You could mix in colored sand (with the basic white) which is available in craft stores. I've colored my white sand with diluted liquid food-coloring once when I ran out of options...and once the sand was dry, it blended in quite well and the idea worked for me. You don't have to use rice flour to make your rangoli. You could use white sandstone powder or just white sand to make rangoli for exhibitions. In case you're using rice-flour, make sure to get the texture right, it shouldn't be of very fine texture because it makes it hard to "draw" using fingers. You'll know what I mean when you look at the videos. Also, check out the following link to get some ideas for the exhibition. The link is from one of the exhibitions where I had participated and the display that I had made was well received and highly informative:- http://www.ikolam.com/event/milpitas_library_2006 Hope this helps...let me know if you need any other information. Thank you for getting in touch with us. Good luck. -Lata

hi Lata, Thanks for uploading so many rangolis and i appreciate all your efforts in spreading this art. Can you please tell me how to search for all animated rangolis here? Or any direct link? thanks & regards Anirudh