Mandalas

The word comes from Sanskrit and literally means “circle.”

 

There are all sorts of spiritual and New Age applications and meanings, which I do not subscribe to. To me, mandalas are simply an art form. I love them. As sun catchers, dream catchers, plain crayon drawn on paper, I like the form of a circle.

 

There are many ways and styles of doing a mandala. There are the ones mentioned above. I’ve seen some very intricate ones done in needlework. There is collage and paint. There are ones done in the sand with rocks on a beach. There are whole coloring books of mandalas.

 

Most of the ones I’ve seen are symmetrical. I find the symmetry relaxing. When I’m drawing one I usually do them that way. I also absolutely LOVE asymmetry. It depends on the art I’m doing at the time. Asymmetrical mandalas can be very cool. You still need the basic circle, but can take off from that point.

 

I found a wonderful website where a man did a mandala every day for several years. The site was archived and I went through that whole thing and saved several of them in a file to use as inspiration. I’m glad I did, because I recently went back to that site and all the pictures are gone.

 

Here are some examples of ones I’ve done:

 This was a postcard I made for my postcrossing group. I glued magazine strips to cardstock, used a circle stencil to cover the middle, and mod-podged a second coat. Then outlined the circle.

 

These are sun catchers Lia and I made one summer. Do this outside as it can get messy with spilled glue. Take the lid from a carton of yogurt or cottage cheese. Fill it with clear glue and place colored pebbles or glass in it. Pour more glue in to cover the glass as much as possible. Set in sun to dry. Let it dry completely before trying to peel off the lid. The underside will still be very tacky. Place tacky side up to finish drying.

 This one was pretty much hated by both Lia and me. I had a terrible time trying to get this thing prepped evenly for the weaving and Lia didn’t even want to try it. I did a bit just to see how it would come out and decided to never do this craft again.

 

This one is crayon resist on watercolor paper with watercolors. Another postcard I made.

 

This is a trial pic of a mandala in progress. I took random nature-type stuff, sort of placed it within a circle and took a pic for future reference. I used cardboard as a base, but I’m thinking more of using sandpaper. Or maybe use the sticky side of contact paper, secure the objects and then sprinkle colored sand to fill it in. Maybe throw in a few seed beads. I’ll take another pic of the finished project.