Yellow Sunflower Mandala With Metal Inlay

I was looking at cloisonne designs and wondered if I could do a similar kind of thing on wood. I tried shaping some wire and gluing it flat to the wood, but it just wouldn't stay without keeping my fingers glued to the wood as well. Then I wondered if I could laser cut a groove into the wood, could I push the wire into it and do a similar thing?

Well, after some testing I found that I could as long as the groove was wide enough.

1. 3mm basswood or Baltic birch
2. Laser cutter
3. Watercolor paints in various shades of yellow
4. Paint brushes of various sizes
5. A bowl for water
6. Loctite (super glue)
7. 26 gauge jewelry wire
8. Flush cutter
9. Jewelry pliers (whatever you feel comfortable using)
10. Clear acrylic sealant (like Polycrylic)

According to a book I have, the word "mandala" in Sanskrit means "circle." Monks created the mandalas as part of their traditional spiritual training. It is constructed in such a way to draw the attention continuously to the center and back to the outer frame again. Drawing a mandala is basically repeating a design or symbol within several circles (real or alluded to). The repetition of the designs is meditative.

Because I'm limited in the 26 gauge wire I have, I decided I would make my sunflower mandala small, about 4" in diameter.

In Illustrator I drew a small circle, copied and pasted in front, and while holding option+Shift (on a Mac) pulled the circle out. I did this a few times to give myself some guidelines. I created a larger circle outside of all of those to help rotate and duplicate the shapes I draw inside my mandala. I made it a new color to let me know it's not part of the mandala.

Then I created a long straight line and centered it both vertically and horizontally with those circles. I then copied, pasted in front, and rotated them every 22.5 degrees to give myself 16 equal divisions of the circle to create my designs. I made those a different color and grouped them.

In thinking about having to bend wire into the grooves I will be making, I decided I wouldn't do sharp points or very small designs that I would have trouble working with.

With that in mind, I drew a half petal shape just outside one of my circles. (NOTE: I'm only using strokes because I will just score the lines on the laser instead of engraving. I have a trick for making thick score lines that I'll discuss later.)

I started at the top center guideline and drew a lovely curve down toward the inner circle. Then I copied, pasted in front, hit O for my reflect tool, selected the center point at the top of the curve, then reflected the half curve to finish the petal. I then joined the two top points (Command+J).

Then I selected that shape and the very outer ring, selected R for rotate, then 45 degrees and selected Copy at the bottom of the rotate menu (see 2nd image above). Then I hit Command+D six more times to repeat the petal all the way around the mandala.

Because this is a meditative practice, I will let you decide what shapes you want to draw for your mandala. You can download the one I created below as well.

Because my laser is slow, I often score designs instead of engraving because the time difference is phenomenal. But if I want the lines to be thicker than they typically are with scoring, I just raise the head of my laser. The farther away the laser head is from the material, the thicker the line. I'm basically just making it out of focus.

So after much testing, I found that if I raise my laser head 10mm above the wood surface, I can get a groove thick enough for my wire to fit inside. Then I lower the head again to 3mm above the surface to cut the outer ring.

So I set put my design into my laser cutter software, tell it to cut as normal but with slightly less power, then raise the head to 10mm above the wood. I have a stack of small squares I cut out from 3mm wood that I glued together to help me set the focus on my laser. When the laser is done scoring the inner lines, I lower the head again and cut the outer circle.

Use a hair dryer or can of compressed air to blow out any dust or soot from the mandala. Then get out your yellow watercolor paints and have fun.

I use watercolor paint because it works like stain in that it shows the wood grain underneath. I like seeing the wood grain. Plus it doesn't add any texture or depth to your wood.

Don't worry if you get paint down into the grooves where your wire will go. It won't show when you're done.

Give it some time to dry before the next step.

This isn't nearly as hard as it seems. The hardest part is getting the wire to stay down sometimes because it wants to curl up. I drip some Loctite into the groove over the wire and use my fingernail to hold the wire down for a count of 40. It does some significant damage to my fingernail but gets the wire to stay down. If you don't have long nails like I do, you can use a wood skewer, the tip of a flat head screwdriver, or anything that will hold it down and is thin enough to be able to pull away without actually gluing to the surface. Whatever you use, do NOT use your fingers or touch the stuff with your skin.

I use flush cutters to cut a small section of wire to begin with. I lay the wire next to a groove on the wood and sort of guesstimate how much I'll need. Having too much is better than not having enough. You can always trim the wire at the end if you need to.

Then just push one end into a groove, glue it down, and keep pushing and bending to fill up the groove. Use your jewelry pliers to help bend it as needed. If the wire wants to pop up in certain areas, glue it down in that area, then keep moving along.

Don't worry about unsightly glue residue because we will coat the whole thing with Mod Podge or an acrylic sealer when we're done.

To trim the wire as closely as possible to the end of the groove, put the flat edge of the flush cutters up against the part where you want to cut. Trim the wire using just the very tip of the cutters. Then glue down that end.

Keep filling up all the grooves until you've finished the whole piece.

Use a clear acrylic spray sealer for an even coat and give it two or three coats. That will get rid of the glue residue and really make it shine!

This was a really fun project and I hope you'll try it!