Make your kites creative

While trying to make your kites look colourful you can make them unique by writing a message that will be an inspiration to others.

Colour the skies: With your imagination Photo: K. Ramesh Babu

Sankranti brings in the kites. While the market offers a variety of kites for the festival each year - why not decorate and personalise your kite this time.

It can be a smiley or graffitti that can add that special look to your kite. And there is more that you can do to design a colourful kite.

The easiest way to start decorating your kite is by painting it using poster, acrylic or fabric paints.

Make sure you mix very little or no water at all with the paint before applying it onto the kite as you do not want to risk tearing it. If your kite is made of translucent, plastic-like cellophane paper you can even use glass paints to make your kite look like stained glass!

Another interesting way to make your kite look different is to use collage techniques. All it needs is old magazines/newspapers, a scissor and some glue.

Try collage

Cut out big bright pictures of all that you love and paste it onto your kite. Make sure you don't overlap the cut outs or paste too many of them as it might damage the kite. Again, if your kite is made of cellophane material, you can collage over it either using regular magazine cut outs or other colourful bits of translucent cellophane paper to give it a more stained glass look.

Other ideas are using finger painting or vegetable painting (which is creating impressions with cut lady's finger, carved out potatoes and other vegetables that have been dipped into paint.) Spangles are a great way to add a little glitter to your kites!

Write a message

And if you're using colour pencils, make sure they're not too sharp! Your kite can also be used to convey something that you feel strongly about - you can use a thick marker to write on it about a cause that is dear to you (eg- “Don't cut trees!”) or simply a big, bold “Happy Sankranti”!

Lastly, give a finishing touch by using a piece of ribbon to tie a bow on your kite. You can also make a colourful kite tail by tying a long piece of twine at the end of your kite on which you can attach colourful little bows at regular intervals.