How to paint diya for diwali

How much I love diwali and all the festivities around! Most evident from the many diwali crafts blogged here! Learn how to paint colorful diyas at home. 

Diwali is the festival of lights, the celebration of good over evil, celebration of goodwill and prosperity. Diwali is also that hectic time of the year when we carry out the much dreaded annual house cleaning and dispose off old& unused items.Diwali is just a few days ahead and local markets are already filled with various shapes and designs of terracotta diyas. Gone are the days when diyas meant plain brown ones. These days you can even buy colorful glittery diyas that are wax filled! In case you are a “handmade” person like me, you should’ve wondered how to make paint diya to make them pretty and festive. The tutorial will be shared on ezebee magazine and you can get the complete tutorial plus tips there.

Materials required to paint diya

• terracotta diyas
• acrylic paint in metallic/pearl finish
• paintbrush ( flat brush-bigger size, round brush-smaller size)
• water + tissues

How to hand paint diya?

So first of all you need to buy diyas from your local market and depending upon the time you have at your disposal for painting them, I suggest you choose simpler or finer design detailing. I have illustrated a set of simpler diyas as well as more intricately designed diyas in the tutorial but let me tell you as always there is no rule as to how and where to paint. Its all your imagination and creativity plus this is just a reference post for encouragement 😉

I bought these diyas from local market for 5 per piece ( plain ones) and 50 for the designed ones. My daughter broke a couple of them from the set before even I started working on them and another one once I finished painting 😀 If you have a naughty kid around, BEWARE!!

Here are some simpler designed diyas that were handpainted. The top set had pink shade all over except the black at the rim. The bottom one has green inside and white at rim plus outside.You can always add the extra details into the diya by placing embellished tealight candles in the diyas

For the intricately designed diyas, the time taken for me was about a day ( breaks included). Before you start to paint diya, analyse the design first and decide which color is to go where.This one looked like a lotus flower types so I painted it pink for petals and green for sepals, blue for water. Are you getting an idea as to how to paint diyas?

Most of the time the designs are in concentric circles so its easier to achieve symmetry . Understanding the layers and choosing the right colors are the toughest part when it comes to paint diya

(Can you see a crack in the smaller diya? My daughter broke it that too after I had finished painting 🙁 I glued them together although the crack is quite visible still!)

So did you get an idea of how to hand paint diya for this diwali? If you did find this useful and tried hand painting diyas, do let me know in the comments below.

Other diwali crafts on this blog :

• Handmade Diya base tutorial
• List of must buy Diwali decor items in India
• Diwali lantern/ Akaash kandil making tutorials
• DIY Mango leaf door toran tutorial
• Tealight candle decoration with washi tape
• Diwali diya decoration with ball chain embellished tealight candle
• How to handpaint terracotta diyas 
• Paper lotus diya holder tutorial
• Readymade Kundan Rangoli tutorial

xoxo Angela