Festive season is on! We have Varalakshmi vratham coming up in 2 weeks. There have been a lot of questions on the jewelry and accessories that I used to dress up my ammavaru last year.
And I want to share some sources so that you can go shipping spree to dress up your ammavaru this year. I will assume that you are a beginner 😛 and start from square 1 :).
Ammavaru Idol:
These days a lot of pooja stores are selling the ammavaru pre-made murthy. I would recommend that since its very easy to drape the saree and can hold up the weight of jewelry and flowers. I have added on the amazon storefront for you, these idols are available only in India Amazon. For international orders, you can reach out to my store.
Ammavaru Face:
Option 1 – Silver face: There are again a lot of options you can choose from. All silver stores will carry ammavaru silver faces in India. a silver face would look something like this. I bought it from a silver store in India almost 10 years back, there are a lot of designs with more jewelry these days.
Option 2 – Clay Face: These days the clay faces have become really popular with all added jewelry. You can find them in India Amazon.
Option3 – Brass face: Brass statues are very common, but it is not very easy to find brass ammavaru face. I have created this on request from all of my followers 🙂 . please check out my store for availability of this face.
Jwellery:
I would say you can use all your creativity in this section. You can use gold jewelry, artificial jewelry, temple jewelry anything you like. My favorite among the budget friendly options are the dancers temple jewelry because it gives very authentic temple idol look. You can get them in any dancers jewelry store or even online in India Amazon, US Amazon.
Jada/Crowns:
use black wool to make the plait and fix in the jada Billas, but in the temple jewelry set sometimes you do get the jada too, its easy to use that as well.
Bhujalu/Tomala:
If you are not a beginner, the things I have mentioned until now must be there with a lot of people already. The ones that I would list now are kind of Level 2.
Bhujalu/Tomala are a very beautiful accessory to add to your ammavaru. You can get them in my store based on availability.
This is how it will look with these with the bhujalu.
Hastham and padham:
The brass hastham and padham give a beautiful look for the ammavaru which covers the cloth made hands and legs on the store bought murthy. You get them in both brass and stones models. We have these on our store.
Kireetam/Crown:
There are two ways you can do this. For the first time I did not buy anything, I just wrapped ammavaru head part with black wool and just tied the mang tikka I got from my temple jewelry set which gave a really nice look.
I do have a lot of headset options in my store.
Pathakam:
The traditional temple idols have beautiful pathakam (pendants) that elevate their look. These can be ordered found in my store too based on availability.
Prabhavali/Makara thoranam/Marakatham:
Prabhavali’s can be found in brass stores. I also have these ones in my store.
Temple garlands:
Ammavaru cannot be complete without fresh flowers. It just brings life to the idol once we add fresh flower garlands to it. I always order temple garlands from Vivekflowers
Saree draping:
A lot of you might not have a murthy, so here I am to show you how you can make beautiful ammavaru with a lamp shade. If you have the murthy, the process the is pretty much the same except that you might have to tie a rope at the waist to hold the frills.
If you have murthy, the instructions are pretty much the same, just that you should fix the dowels to the murthy and tie the frills with a rope to the waist of the murthy.
Materials you need:
- Nail two dowels in cross shape. Make sure the height matches with that of your lamp shade
- Styrofoam block.
- Lamp shade preferably wide one
- Kalasam
- Ammavaru face
- Coconut
This time I made a video to make it more easy for you. Check out my video.
