“Da Ta” Mosaic Art: 6/14/2009

Today I created the set up for the “Da Ta” Mosaic Art for the Book Bin Window (Corvallis Store).  A fellow artist had suggested going to Habitat for Humanity and buying a screen door to use as the background for the disks.  “You need something that’s light to carry and carry out.”  Great idea!  I found a 44″ x 60″ window screen, in excellent condition.  It can hold 12 disks across and about 14 down (for a total of 160 disks).

Here’s the screen in the window before disks are attached.

Screen in Display Window

So far I have 9 disks.  Rather than put them all together, I decided to spread them out.  As more disks arrive, I’ll fill in the screen.

"Da Ta" Mosaic Art as of 6/14/09

I only need 151 more disks.   Wanna play?

For more info about this project go to “Da Ta” Mosaic Community Art Project, which also provides links on how 5 of the disks were created.

Happy Coloring!

Maureen, The Mandala Lady

Playing with 3-1/2″ Floppy Disks – Community Mural Project

Ever wonder about what to do with all those 3-1/2″ floppy disks that you have taking up space in your office, closet, house?  How about a mural?  A DaTa Art mural.

Here’s the plan…have lots of people decorate lots of 3-1/2″ floppy disks and then I’ll put them all together to make a mural.

The mural will go up between Saturday, June 14 and Sunday, July 5, in the Book Bin store front window @ 3rd & Madison in downtown Corvallis, OR.   As I receive the disks, I’ll add them to the mural.  I’ll post photos on this blog and on Facebook to show its progress.

I’ve created six DaTa Mosaic Tiles so far to start off the project.  The rest of them will hopefully come from you.

Would you like to participate in this community mural project? If you live with the Willamette Valley area of Oregon it will be easier for you since you can deliver it or I can pick it up.  For those of you outside this area, you’ll need to ship it to me.

The more people that participate, the bigger the mural!

Send an email to let me know that you’re interested or if you need more information:  Maureen AT TheMandalaLady DOT com

DaTa Art Mural

Here’s a sample of 6 disks I created and how I’ll put them together.  To see how I made these visit the following blog posts:

1. Upper Middle Disk – http://themandalalady.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/playing-with-3-12-floppy-disks-1/
2. Lower Left Disk -http://themandalalady.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/playing-with-3-12-floppy-disks-2/
3. Lower Right Disk -http://themandalalady.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/playing-with-3-12-floppy-disks-1-take-2/
4. Lower Middle Disk -http://themandalalady.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/playing-with-3-12-floppy-disks-3/
5. Upper Left Disk – http://themandalalady.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/playing-with-3-12-floppy-disks-4/
6. Upper Right Disk – http://themandalalady.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/playing-with-3-12-floppy-disks-5/

Have Fun!

Maureen, The Mandala Lady

Playing with 3-1/2″ Floppy Disks #5

Ever wonder about what to do with all those 3-1/2″ floppy disks that you have taking up space in your office, closet, house?  Well here’s yet another idea…and I might say my wildest one yet.

Paint the disk black

In this first photo, I combined a couple of steps.

1. Find a black floppy disk
2. Paint the whole front face with black acrylic paint (I put on 3 coats)
3. Find something wacky to put in the disk.  In this case I had these white coils that were excess from the coils I use to bind my Mandala Coloring Books
4. Start gluing the pieces onto the disk

Add the coils

I used duco cement to glue the coils onto the disk; it’s strong and dries clear.  I also pulled out some plastic mardi gras beads.  I cut individual white beads and put some inside the coils, which are little difficult to see in this photo.  In the one, you’ll see them better.

I also cut individual pieces of the purple beads, which are actually little dice…if you look closely you’ll see the ‘5′ side of the second purple bead.

Finished Disk

Here’s the finished piece – view #1

Finished Disk - Different View

Finished Disk - side view

Here’s a side view that more clearly shows the white beads and purple die.

How wacky can you make your Da Ta art?

Have fun!

Maureen, The Mandala Lady

Playing with 3-1/2″ Floppy Disks #4

Ever wonder about what to do with all those 3-1/2″ floppy disks that you have taking up space in your office, closet, house?  Well here’s yet another idea.

First prep the disk.

1. Take off the metal slide bar
2. Pry open the disk just enough to pull out the floppy disk inside
3. Prime the disk with white primer paint (I used rust-o-leum’s white primer spray paint)

Prep the disk

For this project, I used yellow and lavender craft acrylic paint.  Where the label and the metal slide bar were, I painted yellow.  The rest was painted with lavender.  Let go of making it perfect, you’ll be embellishing so much that the base coats will be hardly noticeable.

Base coat of paint

I put on 3 coats of color. You can put as many or as few as you want.

After 3 coats of paint

I pulled out mardi gras beads and my white pearl metallic craft paint.  I painted one layer of the white pearl paint all over the disk.  Already the paint imperfections are less noticeable.

Time for embellishing

I debated on whether to show each step to the finished product, when I realized that I want you to do your own thing, come up with your own ideas.

Basically what I did is cut up sections of the beads and using a very good craft glue and proceeded to put the beads all over the place.  I used Duco Cement that I found at our local hardware store.  Use anything that is strong, dry clear, and will adhere to plastic (if you’re using plastic beads).

The Finished Disk

I plan to use this with other disks to create a mural by adhering these to a large foam core board with double stick tape.

The main thing is to have fun and explore your own creativity.

Maureen,  The Mandala Lady

Playing with 3-1/2″ Floppy Disks #3

Ever wonder about what to do with all those 3-1/2″ floppy disks that you have taking up space in your office, closet, house?  I’ve come up with some ideas to create what I call “DaTa Art” (versus Da Da…I know it’s a groaner).

Gather your materials

For this project you’ll need a floppy disk, wrapping paper, tape, and a viewer.

1. To make the viewer, trace the outline of a disk on paper, cut the paper about an inch wider than your outline, and then cut out the center of the outline.
2. Use the viewer on your wrapping paper (or whatever paper you want to use) to find the section you want to use.
3. Cut the wrapping paper about 2″ wider than the disk.

Tape paper to disk

1. Lay the paper face down on your work surface
2. Place the disk down in the center of the paper
3. Fold the first edge over the top of the disk and tape it down (I had to use making tape because like most households the regular tape had gone the way of the laundry socks)
4. Fold the right corner of the paper down the side of the disk; this will make for a cleaner corner
5. Smooth down the folds (the next photo shows the folds), fold the right side paper over the disk, and then tape it down
6. Continue around until the fourth side

Final Edge

1. For the final edge, fold both corners inward
2. Fold the paper over the disk
3. Tape it down

Backside of disk

When your done, the backside should look something like this; although with transparent tape it would look much cleaner.

Front side of disk

Here’s the front side of the disk…much better.  To enhance it even further, I pulled out my glitter glue.

Finished Disk

All done!   Obviously the sky’s the limit as to how to enhance this.  You could apply beads, buttons, stickers, you name it.

I plan to add this to a mural project with other disks by adhering them to a large piece of foam core board with thick double stick glue.

Have fun!

Maureen, The Mandala Lady

Playing with 3-1/2″ Floppy Disks #1 (take 2)

Ever wonder about what to do with all those 3-1/2″ floppy disks that you have taking up space in your office, closet, house?  Here’s a variation of the first 3-1/2″ floppy disk project I posted.

In going through my stash of floppy disks I found this orange one with a black metal slide bar on it.  Being a resident of Corvallis, Oregon I’m a big fan of our Oregon State University Beavers.  Their school colors just happen to be black and orange.

Following the steps from the first project, I used an image of the beaver logo, cut it to size, making it a little bit shorter so that some orange would border the top part of the logo and then clued it to the disk using an acid-free photo glue stick.

OSU Beavers Floppy Disk Art

I used an extra fine point gold paint marker by Marvy to put the city/state on the disk.  Voila!  Instant fan art.  If one of your team’s colors is that of the floppy disk you have, turn it into fan disk art.

Have fun.

Maureen, The Mandala Lady

Playing with 3-1/2″ Floppy Disks #2

Ever wonder about what to do with all those 3-1/2″ floppy disks that you have taking up space in your office, closet, house?  After more pondering I came up with this idea…

I used an off-white floppy disk, took the metal slide bar off, and opened to take the innards out of it.  This is the back view of the disk.

Floppy disk and photo cut to disk size

When I opened it, I opened it from the bottom and just wide enough to take the ‘floppy’ part of the floppy disk out.  I took the disk, traced out the shape over the photograph, and then cut the photo to size.

Cut the photo into pieces to fit on the disk

Here’s the front view of the disk.  I cut the photo so that one piece would fit where the label goes and the other piece fits over the area where the metal slide bar was.  After I had finished the project I noticed that in this photo the lower piece is actually upside down.

Clue photo pieces to disk

I used an acid-free photo glue stick to adhere the photo to the disk.  You can use one photo or mixed up your photos.  Here I wanted to create a continuation of the two.  The tree is in the upper portion and a little bit in the lower portion to make it look like the photo is being framed by the disk.

Finished photo

I used an extra fine point gold paint marker by Marvy to write on the disk.  I plan to use this in a mural where I’ll stick this (and other disks) on a large piece of foam core board with double stick tape.

You can take this a step further by decorating the disk and/or adding trim around the outside edge of the disk.

Have fun with this one.

Maureen, The Mandala Lady

Playing with 3-1/2″ Floppy Disks #1

Ever wonder about what to do with all those 3-1/2″ floppy disks that you have taking up space in your office, closet, house? I hated the idea of throwing them away so I pondered other possibilities and here’s one idea I had…turn them into photo disks.

Start with a used floppy disk (I distorted the label for this photo)

Next create a viewer to use to for the photograph you want to use on your disk.  The photo cutout will go where the label is.  It measures approximately 2-7/8″ (w) x 2-1/4″ (h).  The top of the label is cut straight across, the corners at the bottom are rounded.

Create a viewer and outline

Use the viewer on the photograph to determine what section of the photo you want to use.   Once you found the area you want, you can either use the viewer or the viewer cutout to trace the shape onto the photo.   Then cut out the photo.  The pen I used made an indent on the photo which I used as my guide for cutting the photo.

Use viewer to determine section of photo to use

I used an acid-free photo stick glue to adhere the photo cutout to the disk.   For this step I wound up using a different photo, it had more interesting shapes and colors.

Glue photo to disk

Lastly you’ll want to label it. I used an extra fine point gold paint marker by Marvy. Whatever you use, it will need to be able to adhere to plastics.

Label it

That’s it.  Once you’ve done a couple it goes much faster & easier.  I plan to make a mural of my disks by sticking them on foam core board with double-stick tape.   You can use tacky putty to adhere them individually on a wall.

Have fun with this one.

Maureen, The Mandala Lady

Temporary Hiatus

I know it’s been a while since I posted an activity. My apologies. I’ll start back up in January 09 and then it will be a monthly entry.

I hope you find new and interesting ways to Tap Into Your Creative Side!

joyfully, Maureen The Mandala Lady

UPDATE:  Okay so it’s taking longer than I had said.  The plan is to start up again in April ‘09.   My apologies for the delay.  Hang in there.  In the meantime be sure to check out my “Mandala of the Month” blog.  That one, I’m happy to say, I’ve been keeping up-to-date.

Burnishing Spirals

In one of my favorite movies, “North by Northwest” (Gary Grant starred, Alfred Hitchcock directed), there’s a scene where Grant’s character figures out where the femme fatale is going by rubbing a pencil over the paper that was under the paper she wrote down an address.  That’s the premiss of this particular creative activity.

The use of spirals is inspired by the spirals found at the Newgrange Ireland Megalithic Passage Tomb. In 1996, my husband and I spent the last afternoon of our last day in Ireland in this area. It was amazing. I want to go back so I can spend more time exploring.

Newgrange Spirals

Supplies:

• a burnishing tool, this can be anything that has a smooth point to it, like a knitting needle, a nut picker, the tip of a pen cap, etc.
• a piece of paper to draw & color on
• color pencils (for this example, I used prismacolor canary yellow, scarlet lake, and true blue

Supplies

Step 1:  Take the burnishing tool and draw a spiral on the paper.

Step 1: Draw Spiral

Step 2:  Draw as many spirals as you want on the paper.

Step 2: Draw more spirals

Step 3:  Using a color pencil, in this case I used the red, color over the spirals.  In this photo, I used the side of the pencil tip and colored with a light pressure.  What you’ll see that where the spiral was burnished into the paper, remains white, while the rest of the area takes on the red color.

Step 3: Add Red Lightly

Step 4:  Now color with hard pressure.  When you do, the white of the burnishing shows up even more.

Step 4: Add more pressure

Step 5:  Add another color, in this case I added yellow.  Color over the existing red (it will become orange) and into the uncolored area.

Step 5: Add yellow

Step 6: Now add some blue.  Here too, color over some of the existing red, and then into the uncolored area.  Notice what makes that spirals stand out more, and where they are less noticeable.

Step 6: Add Blue

In the End:

Final Piece

This particular exercise was about showing you how to create a unique look to your coloring.

Here’s an example of an mandala I did using this very technique.

Spirals Mandala

Happy Coloring!

Maureen, The Mandala Lady