Happy New Year!

And here's the first Mandala Monday of 2024! 

This very vibrant mandala features lots of my favorite shades of Wendy Vecchi Archival Inks from Ranger, including Rosy Posy, Sunflower, Prickly Pear, Sky Blue, Carnation Red, Leaf Green, Violet and Peachy Keen. Scroll down to see a little bit about the process, and how I finished off this extra-large piece.

I *think* I invented Ink Over Collage, or at least, I don't believe I've ever seen anyone else do it...? The first project I made with this process was the GIANT pair of Mandala Canvases from January of 2016. If you want to see a step-by-step tutorial featuring the process This Post is not bad. In the meantime, here's a bit more detail on today's mandala.

Ink Over Collage generally starts with (...wait for it...) a collage. I use plain white 110lb cardstock as a base, a good quality gluestick for my adhesive, and mostly white or slightly off-white vintage and found papers (sheet music, text pages, etc) that I tear and stick on fairly randomly. I'm not too worried about being absolutely symmetrical, but I usually like to start with a perfect circle; you can use an old school compass, a Helix Circlemaker or just trace a roll of masking tape or a Tupperware lid. You can definitely outline first and then fill in with color, but using Archival Inks and an Ink Applicator, Detail Applicator or dauber, I found it hard to be 100% accurate, so at some point, I started putting the ink on first and outlining around it (I use Letter It Fineliners) afterwards. 

Obviously you don't need to fill an entire 8.5 x 11" sheet, but in this case, I had a plan (which you'll see in the next step) so that's what I did. 

At this point, I should apologize for a bit of a cheat, because in between the photo above (where all the shapes are just solid Archival Ink) and the photo below (where there's LOTS more detail) I somehow skipped photographing the step where I added extra black line work, as well as tone-on-tone colors applied with markers, and some dots and outlines with a white paint pen. This intermediate step can take five minutes or a year, it just depends what you feel like doing on that particular occasion. 

I will say that for me (here's a bit of a secret) usually the places that have the heaviest lines or the most dots, details, cross-hatching, etc... are "inspired" by the fact that I made some sort of mistake that needed to be covered up; which then had to be carried consistently throughout the entire piece. (So now ya know!)

Here's where the aforesaid Plan came in; why I made such a big mandala, and why I placed it dead center of the paper: I knew I wanted to split it into four panels, to make a set of notecards!

After using my guillotine trimmer to make four equal rectangles, I rounded opposing corners, matted on coordinating cardstock, and machine stitched each one to a white A6 card... Et voila! 

Stay tuned for another Mandala Monday... approximately a week from now; in the meantime, Happy New Year to you!