Monday, October 17, 2011

Viking and Celtic Wedding Mandala

I have not ordered a hat yet because I decided to spend the money on silk long underwear for my trip to Denmark!  Out of the blue, my "oldest" friend who I've known since we were seven (that's 38 years!!) and who is basically like a sister to me, fell in love this summer and is getting married just after Christmas in Copenhagen.  I've been busy getting air and hotel reservations as well as making a special wedding gift for her. I was honored when she asked me if I would create a mandala representing her and her betrothed.  As he is of Viking descent and she of Celtic descent, I drew from the knotted and triskele designs of those ancient cultures.  I played around sketching the initials of their last name and finally figured a way to weave the two letters into a mandala love knot.  Once she approved the preliminary pencil sketch, I elaborated on the idea and you can see the progress below.  Each step was created using tracing paper over the previous sketch, all with a drafting pencil.  I photographed each step with my iphone and turned them sepia on iphoto (for the blog).  The final sketch was scanned and cleaned up on Adobe Photoshop, zooming in close and using a white "brush" to clean the negative space and a black "brush" to fill in any holes in the line work and smooth everything out.  The original design is about 3 1/2 inches in diameter.








My friend is going to use this mandala on their wedding invitation and thank you cards.  I can't wait to share the printed version with you.... it will be a surprise for all of us to see how she and the printer decide to use the mandala!


"Love conquers all; let us too yield to love."
Congratulations Shelley and Claus!!!!

5 comments:

Cobalt Violet said...

Yes congratulations to them! And I LOVE the mandala ... looks aMAZing!!!

Ruthie Redden said...

oh wow Penny, i adore this! It is so up my street. How wonderful a gift to give to your precious friend. It works perfectly, i love doing this kind of design work to.

Yum you are getting to do quite a bit of globe trotting soon hee hee when in London there are so many lovely places to visit, but a fave of mine just has to be the V&A! I could spend days in there. And i love Westminster abbey x x

Linda@ Lime in the Coconut said...

How phenomenal is that???! What a great design...you are gonna have a ball, ma dear!

PK Studios said...

Thanks Linda, Ruthie and Lulu..... I missed making mandalas. Maybe this one is the beginning of another PK mandala trend! I can't WAIT to go to the V&A and check out all the jewelry : )

Emma said...

Hello,
Quite nice post here. keep up your good work.
Regards,
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