Coconut Shrine

This post is just going to be a really short one. A while back I was attending the preliminary festivities for an indian-irish wedding, it was my husband that attended the wedding itself. The couple gave out wedding favours in small golden fabric bags and I was very fortunate that he was so considerate as to bring one of these baggies home with him. He had seen some chocolates inside, what he had missed was the brass Ganesha figurine that was tucked away in the bag under the chocolates.

For a while Ganesha found a new home on top of our computer/tv screen, in a prime spot overlooking our daily family life. Unfortunately he lost his neat home when we had to get a new screen and the new flat screen is so flat, Ganesha can't perch on top anymore. He needed a new home, and what better way to give the patron of new endeavours, new life and the arts (!) than to art him one.

I used half a coconut.

I started by painting the shell all in black acrylics, then I filled a mylar cone with some copper acrylic paint and did a leaf garland around the rim inside a d also on the outside. Behind himself I painted an Om symbol because Om is the sound associated with him. When we hung his shrine coconut it kept twisting sideways, facing away from the room, so to stabilise it we twisted an LED christmas light around the rope and into the shell, backlighting the little figurine as you can see in the next picture.

And this is how Ganesha found his new and hopefully permanent home, overlooking our daily family life again. 

With this small project I found I quite enjoy making a little shrine, I also liked to use the coconut shape and paint the interior to reflect the purpose of it. I might be making more of these, I have a few more coconut half shells ;-)