My first/second Mandala

I designed this mandala first, but ran out of materials. But my new materials came today so I finished it up :slight_smile:

Ended up being 250mm diameter. Makes it really nice to hang on the wall.

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Beautiful! :grinning:

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Love it! Dig the variations in the layers.

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Very cool.

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Amazing.

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That is cool, good job.

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Nicely done piece.

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Lovely job!

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Love how this came out. Impressive! May I ask you how many layers you used? Just curious! Just finished a 6 layer shadow box and thought that was a lot to glue straight.

Mesmerizing

There are 5 layers, including the back. I made a little jig to help align the layers when gluing and glued each layer with about 15 min between.

Cool. I tried to figure that out when you posted it by counting the rings in the center :slightly_smiling_face:

I came up with 2 light layers, 2 dark layers and one full backing layer.

I was thinking about how that technique might apply to the Moorish or Islamic geometric patterns that characterize their artwork.

Or layers of Celtic knotwork.

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Awesome! That is actually manageable. It certainly looks more intricate than that.

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What a lovely piece! Very clean lines.

This is awesome! Layering different types of material, even just the same material, to make a cool artistic effect is next on my list! Thank you for sharing!

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First, nice mandalas to @zoramite. Good concept, nicely executed.

Gluing can be very easy and fast if you use registration dowels. Just cut small precise dowel holes in the same spot on all but the top layer. (I use bamboo skewers, oak dowels, even rectangular pegs I cut from sheet material. Brass rods also work well.)

Then all you need to carefully align is the top, as it has no dowels for aesthetic reasons (or if you don’t mind the look of the dowels, just cut the top layer too). If the dowels are nice and tight you don’t need to wait between gluing the layer—it should all hold together nicely.

Here are three projects that use dowels to great effect to keep things aligned.

Dowels (hidden):

More dowels (visible):

And brass rods (visible):

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Thanks for the tip @evansd2 ! I will use that method with my next shadow box. Appreciate pointing me in the right direction. :+1:

Beautiful! You did good!