How to paint a mandala on a misshapen stone

Published September 2, 2016

Purple Blue Mandala Stone, Acrylic Paints

I love painting stones and especially making mandala stones. The thing is, where I live it’s very hard to find stones with even remotely circular shapes, so I have to make do with what I find. However, you don’t need a perfectly circular shaped stone in order to paint a mandala. You just need a stone big and flat enough so that you can draw a decent sized circle on. The stone in the picture above was a great find, but it still wasn’t the perfect shape for a mandala. So here is what I did…

First, I painted the whole stone a dark purple color – this is your base color. Then I drew a circle as large as the stone would allow. To do that I used a compass and a light blue pencil – that way you can use the mark from the compass as a starting point for the mandala and the light pencil color will be visible against the dark surface. Next, I filled in the circle with dark blue paint – it is wise to pick a really dark color so that the mandala can stand out. I use acrylic paints for all my paintings because they dry fast. For the background colors you will have to apply several coats of paint to get a good coverage. It is important to leave the paint to dry before applying the next layer.

After the dark paint for the background has dried, you are ready to move to Stage 2 – painting the mandala. Start from the center, from the little mark left by the compass and proceed as you would with a regular painted mandala.

The final step is to fill the space around the mandala with dots – make sure they are randomly placed to give them a nice background feel. When the paint has dried completely, you can apply some sort of finish to seal the stone. I used a matt varnish for acrylic paints, but any all-purpose varnish for decoupage or crafts would do.

In the picture below, which was taken from a different angle, you can better see the actual shape of the stone.

Misshapen mandala stone, Acrylic Paints