Mandala Experiments

My good friend (and evil twin) is a craft blogger and illustrator, and she’s graciously allowing me to use some of her patterns in my work. Some day, I hope to create really fun designs with her mandalas - but for now, I’m just fumbling around and learning what this machine can do.

Thought I’d share a few of these experiments, which are just testers/WIP’s. I’m just exploring different materials, sizes, settings and (next) coloration techniques.

My first attempt was this little bat mandala, done on a random scrap of leather. It measures 3.5" around, and it taught me that I don’t want to deal with projects that require so much tiny weeding. Also, settings were not dialed in so well:

For attempt #2, I used proof grade leather and got the settings down a bit better. This one measures 2.5"(note that there’s still a bit of teeny weeny weeding to clean up here):

Here are those same two leather mandalas side by side:

These two are engraved on proof grade maple, and they’re respectively 3.25" and 4" around. There’s still a little bit of weeding to finish up, but I think they turned out nicely:

I’ll circle back on these little testers when I have a bit more time, so that I can play with color variations and whatnot.

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Gorgeous! :smiley:

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Ha! It always happens that you see the specks you missed after you post the pics!

Great designs and nice engraves. Very precise on the second one. The maple ones are super too. I like how they scale.

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Beautiful!

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Ooooo, very nice indeed! Hard to believe those pieces are as small as they are. Isn’t that Proofgrade leather gorgeous stuff?

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Very lovely. The details really scale nicely on both materials.

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I’m excited to see these either inlaided or similar.

Very nice!

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I keep being amazed by how beautifully all the tiny bits come out.

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Beautiful and mesmerizing!

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Oh, what a great idea!

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I love these designs.

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Very cool. The mandala looks fantastic, and I love the bat tesselation one too

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Those designs are really nice. Sometimes for the detail photos it’s easy to lose perspective of how small and detailed some of the engravings are. Those turned out great.

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The second attempt looks very sharp. Good progress! Please keep posting your experiments.

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Simply stunning…wondering if anyone would care to do my pic…it is a Buddhist Dharma Wheel.

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Sure, I’d be happy to if you can share the file with me :slight_smile:

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My photoshop skills are lacking, but I really wanted to respond with an image of a Buddhist Dharma Whale.

Google provided me with this, which is awesome, but not punny.

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Hahaha thanks.

Hahaha sorry did not expect an answer…I have a .jpeg of it but haven’t done anything with it yet…so thank you for the offer anyway.

These designs are wonderful!

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