Fresh start: my own Etsy shop!

Inspired, ironically, by the site Regretsy.com, I've started my own Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/OmandalamamaO Right now I'm selling $1 mandalas, JPG designs to download and print as you like. I will do custom designs and retire existing mandalas for just $12, giving you full copyright to use the mandala however you wish. My daughter, Bean, said one morning "If you make mandalas for $1 and sell a million mandalas, we'll have a million dollars!" Such a bright idea, we'll see how it goes. I'd be happy to sell just a hundred.

My health has been really crappy this year, and my hands are near-frozen by carpal tunnel, arthritis and deQuervain's tenosynovitis. I can no longer do the "Mandalas of the Lunar Quarter," I'll try those again in the future.

Would you like your initial in the center of a mandala? Contact me on Etsy to request a custom "monogram mandala" for just $12!

Graph Paper for Creating Mandalas

While searching for free printables for my daughter, I just found a great page of free printable "polar" graph paper, perfect for starting your own mandalas. Try drawing designs or doodles within each cell - or even just simple lines - and watch for patterns to appear! Polar graph paper is great for kids, too - even if they don't want to draw a mandala, they can color in the cells and learn about patterns and geometry. Now I want a tablet of this stuff - super geeky!

I will be back creating mandalas for you all, just having a rough patch. I'll be using this polar graph paper myself to get over my artist's block. Enjoy, and as always, pass it on!

First Quarter Moon Mandala, March 12, 2011

More than just circles

Doodling has been a passion of mine since early childhood. Even when I could color inside the lines, I'd draw all sorts of extra lines and designs until it felt "right." In the example below, only the series of rings and four pointed ovals are the original image; everything else is my doodling. If you think a design is too plain, embellish it! For example you can print any blank mandala and add all sorts of designs into it; try printing out several blanks and see how many variations you can come up with!

The next sample is something I doodled for my daughter. It's hand-drawn in pencil, using a simple little one-dollar "spirographic" plastic template tool that had a few extra circles in the template. I used all the circles, the spirograph wheels, and the straight edges as well as a little free-hand drawing.

Doodle on something today!

Carl Jung on Mandalas

I had to abandon the idea of the superordinate position of the ego. … I saw that everything, all paths I had been following, all steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point — namely, to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the centre, to individuation. … I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate.

- C. G. Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"

New Moon Mandala, March 4, 2011

Mandala of the Lunar Quarter - New Moon of March 4, 2011

We're buried in snow, ice, tissues and cough drops for the last few weeks. We're recovering from a flu after a cold after a flu, achoo! Just one of the joys of having a young child in public school. On a good note, my daughter split her resting time between playing on her DS and coloring mandalas - I need to scan in some of her work! Given a choice between a mandala and her DS, the mandalas win every time. I noticed she uses different colors when she's feeling sick, surprisingly much brighter colors than when she's well and energetic - perhaps it's her way of getting well? As always, right-click and "Save image as" so you can print the mandala out and color it. If you'd like to show off your finished work, be sure to upload it to my Flickr group (link at bottom of the page).

MOLQ - Full Moon, January 19, 2011

Mandala of the Lunar Quarter - Full Moon, January 19, 2011

  Mother Earth wakes and takes one of those great-feeling, long, stretching yawns after waking, turning its face more towards the Sun with each passing day. Earth and Moon dance together in their eternal spirals. Under Earth's mantle of ice and snow, under a crust of browns and grays and decay, new life is already beginning to stir. There's a quickening in the air. Can you feel it?

  As with any mandala, you should feel free to pick up pencil or pen and add to the printed mandala before you begin to color it. Perhaps the "leaf" shapes aren't truly leaves, perhaps they are eyes, or hands, or owls, or some other image that's just popped up in your thoughts. Perhaps the "triple moons" need to be connected, or divided, or further ornamented. What is the center of this mandala saying to you?

  Mandalas aren't just about coloring in the shapes that exist within them. You can always save and print out a mandala again and again, and alter it in a myriad of ways. Work in pencil at first, then ink over the lines. Think about putting the date on the front or back of your work. Think about jotting a few notes, as well, relevant to your feelings at the time. Looking back after a year, five years, 10 years ... what will your mandalas tell you?

Busy New Year, & Mandala 1.0 for Mac

I apologize for not having new printable Mandalas of the Lunar Quarter up! I hope to have one for you tomorrow, on the first quarter moon. It's been a busy new year so far, I've needed a lot of rest.

Does anyone who uses Macs remember "Mandala 1.0," a little shareware program that came out before Mac OS 7.5? It was a nice, clean, fast little program to make kaleidoscopic designs. Today there are quite a lot of kaleidoscopic design programs and filters for graphics programs, however, none of these newer programs feature the ability to simply draw  black lines on a white background, "live" as in instant WYSIWYG.

The newer programs/filters also don't seem to be as versatile: Mandala 1.0 had options for selecting axes from 2 to 32, using the mirror or the spiral method, included a few preset types of lines and shapes, and If the ability to select a "pen" of different widths. If  I changed from 6 axes to 12 axes in the middle of a mandala, or went from mirror to spiral, it didn't affect what I'd already drawn! I created literally thousands of mandalas with that little program, printed them out, gave them to everyone I knew, colored them, even decorated entire rooms with them. It was so easy to use. Everything I've found since seems to be only for creating colored mandalas, or black-and-white mandalas with thick lines and a set number of axes, as well as being limited to mirror and no spiral or vice versa.

If anyone remembers Mandala 1.0 for Mac, and/or knows how to find a similar program for Windows, please let me know!