Thursday 27 September 2018

Falling in love with Mandalas

When we chose September as Mandala month, we wondered whether it was a little ambitious.  We admire mandalas across social media on a daily basis but the great thing about them is that there is so much variety. From dotty mandalas to more intricate designs, they can truly be as unique and beautiful as each individual snowflake that falls. 

This gave us the idea that for September, instead of getting overwhelmed by all the different mandalas we could create, we would use one mandala template and have fun finding different ways to decorate it.   

A great mandala to practice your painting skills

Each project we have created we have started by transferring our design onto our journal using transfer paper before choosing our colours and designs.  Sometimes, we have had an idea in mind of the techniques we wanted to use like the one below... 

Mandala handpainted by Carol Sykes from You Can Folk It using folk art techniques


Here Carol used a simple floating technique to float DecoArt Americana in Snow (Titanium) white
 (this is a technique Carol teaches you in our Cupcakes and Babushka Flat Brush kits). This created such a delicate, ethereal look we couldn't help but love it.  


Carol Sykes from You Can Folk It created this mandala using Folk Art brushstrokes

Keeping things simple, using DecoArt Silver Sage Green, Carol painted each line using comma strokes with her liner brush before adding a few dots and filling any gaps with tiny hearts and a little French Mauve and warm white.  


A beautiful handpainted mandala created using delicate lace folk art techniques and comma strokes, all taught in the painting kits from www.folkit.co

Here, Rose chose to round off the mandala to simplify her pattern and filled it using our Delicate lace pattern and a few comma strokes.  

Bright mandala with a touch of metallic paint from You Can Folk It

Adding a touch of DecoArt Shimmering Silver along with Razzleberry and Teal Green, we used a mixture of dotting, delicate lace and comma strokes to decorate this one.  Delicate lace and comma stokes are a great way to fill a large area without painting solid blocks of colour and creating a more delicate mandala.

Handpainted mandala created using colours inspired by Jamaica

Our customers also decided to use our design and paint their own mandala.  Here, Vanessa from The Arc Shed has been inspired by the colours of Jamaica and we were amazed at how well our rosebuds work as the centre of this mandala. We would never have thought of it but it looks fantastic! 

A work in progress.... beautiful handpainted mandala using painting techniques from You Can Folk It

Still a work in progress, we are interested to see how this one turns out.  The painter behind At the Painting Table has combined a limited set of colours to create a mandala with quite a bit of unfilled space but instead of looking empty, it looks striking! 

Using one mandala template, you can decorate it in so many ways

Our painting challenge is open to everyone so if you fancy using our mandala or creating your own, we would love to share it.  Just tag us or use #funwithfolkit. You can find a copy of our mandala here. 

We are so glad we tried something new this month, we hope you will be too x 

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