Holi 2017: Make organic colours at home – Here’s how

The vibrant festival of colours – Holi – is just around the corner. People across India are gearing up to get drenched in the beautiful and joyous colours of the festival. The celebrations are all about gorging on Holi special delicacies, painting friends and family with colours and to let your hair down to make the most of the festivity. Unfortunately, chemical powders have now replaced colours made of flowers, leaves and other food ingredients. Natural colours are non-toxic and they cause no harm to skin or hair.

This year, let us vow not to use chemicals. Let us remain healthy and safe by playing with varied colours of joy and happiness.

In this photo-feature, we will take you through some homemade colour making techniques:

Brown

Boiled tea leaves, filter coffee decoction waste and Kattha (used in pan) will add colour brown to your Holi colour palette.

You can make a paste of the boiled tea leaves, add water to the filter coffee decoction waste or add water to kattha.

Saffron

Orange marigold (orange genda) will give you vibrant orange. Even Palash flowers can come in handy.  All you need to do is to make a paste of these flowers by grinding them in a mixer jar.

Green

Mehendi leaves, Pundina, coriander, Spinach, Neem or Gulmohar leaves can be best for making green colour.

All you need to do is to use your mixer jar to grind them to a paste.

Blue

Dry Jacaranda flowers known as neeli gulmohar flowers can be used for making rich blue colour.

Use a mixer grinder to make a paste.

Yellow

Yellow marigold (genda) will be perfect for the yellow colour. Use a mixer grinder to make a paste. You can even use turmeric powder to water to make a thick paste.

Pink

Extract the juice out of beetroots and add some milk to it to give it a pinkish shade.

Red

Red Hibiscus will be the best option. Use a mixer grinder to make a paste.

Black

Boil Indian gooseberries (amla) and make a thick paste. Store it in an iron vessel. Next morning, add water to this paste and it will be ready to use.

(Photos from Thinkstock.)