Growing up as an only child, and in a household that wasn’t always financially stable, I often had to find things to do to keep my mind and body occupied and also entertained. Luckily I’ve always had a creative mind and found it easy to think of different things to do, and even now I’m still coming up with different ways of entertaining myself and others at home. Maybe you’ll enjoy trying some of these activities for yourself, and maybe your children will too? So turn off the news and switch off from any negative social media (they’re not good for your mental health of physical immunity), and find something fun to do that makes you smile instead…
Easter Egg Mandala
Colouring in and creative arty activities in general are known to be beneficial when it comes to mental health and are part of something called mindfulness. Activities which practice mindfulness are good for you because they keep your mind occupied in ther here and now, rather than making your mind focus on other things, especially worries. Apart from that it’s also fun to be creative! 😀
Traditional mandala designs, which are basically geometric patterns arranged in a circle, are special in Hinduism and Buddisism. The circle is a special symbol because it has no beginning and end, and there’s something I find very special about colouring in a circular pattern. Modern mandala designs can literally have anything within the circular patterns and are really fun to colour in, but creating a mandala from scratch is even more fun and I’ve thought of a special twist for Easter…An Easter Egg shaped mandala!
Steps
It’s easy to create an egg shaped mandala and a great way of spending some time being creative, especially if you or your children are bored and looking for a time filler…
1. Take a piece of paper (or any drawing/painting app – although if you can avoid screens you should) and draw an oval egg shape, filling the page:
2. To make it clearer to see you can outline the egg with a dark pen or liner:
3. You can decorate your egg mandala any way you want, but for a simple start, why not draw some more borders within the egg shape and then decorate each one in turn with any designs you like. Here I’ve used some simple circle shapes as I like circles 🙂 :
4. The whole point of a mandala you create yourself is that you deside what to put in it. You can draw patterns in each border, or shapes, little scenes if you want. The whole point though is to take your time, think about the colours and shapes/patterns you want in each layer (just go with what feels good) and build it up. You can work from the outer edge towards the centre or the centre out. It really doesn’t matter. Here you can see I’ve built up my patttern into a second layer where I’ve used some celtic spirals and triquetra designs because I just love celtic patterns 😀 :
5. Use any media you want, fine liners, felt pens, pencils, even paint! Let your immagination go wild and put anything you want into your egg mandala. 🙂 Don’t be deterred fom giving it a go, even if you think you are not very good at art. A mandala design isn’t supposed to be a work of art, this is about you being creative, so don’t get hung up on whether you’ve drawn something correctly or picked the right colour, just go with the flow and do what feels good.
To make it easier for children you might want to help by creating several borders or shapes on their egg before they begin, or if they’ll find it easier they could design an egg with horizontal layers (like you sometimes see in egg patterns) rather than circular patterns in the egg shape. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you enjoy yourself and enjoy the fun of being creative!
As you can see below, this is my finished Easter Egg Mandala done in fine liners, complete with a little bunny at the centre 🙂 :
I could go further and continue to colour in the white parts of the design, or colour in the background to the egg with patterns or even more egg borders making an infinite egg picture. The possibilities are really endless and only as limited as your immagination. 🙂 You can make as many mandalas as you want, Easter Egg shaped ones or just regular circles. And if you or your children enjoyed doing this, why not turn your pictures into cards that you can give to each other for Easter. 🙂
Being able to spend time creating whatever patterns, shapes or images come to your mind is a very freeing way to spend an hour or few. It gets your mind active, thinking in the present and therefore relaxes you. It also heps your creativity to flow and at the end of this activity you have a picture that you can be proud to look at (and if you don’t feel you did a good job then nobody else has to see it do they? 😉 ).
-If you feel like making your own Easter Egg Mandalas and feel confident to, then why not share your designs online and tag me @tstrawberrypost (on Twitter and Instagram) or #ttdtstrawberrypost or #tstrawberrypost so I can see and share your designs. 🙂
What do you think of this activity? Is it something you or your children might want to get try? Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂
The Strawberry Post 