Tuesday 27 November 2012

Summer evenings...

I love the warm evenings in summer. My garden was looking nice at sunset so I did a little twilight photography...









Tara

Monday 26 November 2012

Erika models...

A while back, my lovely cousin Erika agreed to do some modelling for my portfolio.  She's my favourite canvas.  Not only does she have great skin, but she also shares my love of Henna, so I feel it's as much a treat for her as it is for me to henna her. 

I decided to do Bridal Feet and a large Peacock on her back.  I've been obsessed with Peacocks for a while now in other areas of my artwork, but I had not really attempted a henna one.  The feet and the peacock took around 4 hours to do (including a couple of cake and fizzy breaks, plus I was quite slow on the feet - then there was time taken to photograph it all).

Here are some photos taken on the day...

Henna cones poised...
 A nice comfy chair for Erika since I was going to be a while...
 Bridal Feet with mirror image designs... (oh my poor old brain after this one!)
 It goes all the way round...



 My favourite photo of the day...



 The Peacock...

Happy Monday everyone!  Hope your week started in a good way...

Tara

Wednesday 21 November 2012

Diwali, the sand and the orange bowl...

Last week was the Indian Festival of Diwali.  This coincided with a friend giving me the most awesome orange painted bowl... and Shannon (of henna fame) gave me a bag of multi coloured sand.  What a perfect way to celebrate Diwali and light up my life!  As usual I went a little over the top with the decorating but quite frankly, a bowl like this and all this lovely sand deserved some effort.  You may want to settle in with a cup of tea because this is going to be a long one...

Here is the bowl - its an old wooden Indian Parat which has been painted.  Parat's are traditionally used for mixing and serving chapattis.
 I do love the colour!
 A couple of days before Diwali I had it adorned with a floating rose bowl (my roses are doing well this year)...
 Shannon gave me this sand so I could do kolam (or rangoli) which is a south Indian tradition of drawing on the ground with sand in geometric patterns...
 Here is the sand all lined up ready to go - I decided to do my kolam inside on the wooden floor since it was windy outside and I didn't want all my hard work blowing away...
 I started in white...
 added as many colours as I could fit in my design...
 Here is my floor altar with Ganesh, lemon offerings, floral offerings and many candles - it looked magical...
 As you can see, I couldn't wait for it to get dark and lit it up well before sunset...

 An Indian toran I bought at the market a few weeks back added a festive feel...
 Floating candles in the rose bowl...
Ganesh lit up with candles and rose adornments...
 The orange bowl featured in its own altar to Laxmi.  For the base I used a Sanskrit cloth I bought in Nepal on my last trip there. 

 Here is another special orange bowl which Shannon gave me for my birthday (there is a green one too in the next pic) - its from Morocco and has a silver rim.  I added roses and marigolds from my garden...
 
 Laxmi and Ganesh...


 I didn't stop at two altars.... oh no, I just kept on going.  Diwali at my house is not complete without a bit of henna drawing on the doorstep...
 Henna drawing in chalk...
 To round off the night's festivities (which also included Mr Tara and I eating way too many sweets), I did a spot of peacock henna...
 For those of you who celebrated - I hope your Diwali was bright...
Tara

Monday 12 November 2012

Serene Scene...

Life got a little hectic for a while there... what with this, and that, and many henna gigs. 

However, things have returned to normal here at Nomadic Tara's workshop so I hope to share some of my latest creative projects with you over the next couple of weeks...


I hope your week has started in a nice way...

Tara