Creating Star Shaped Mandalas

For a couple of years I have been making mandalas in my art journals. When I first started I wanted to have stars in them. I used a protractor and compass to get my points evenly spaced out. It was very time consuming using the protractor  and I thought to myself there had to be an easier way. Here is what I came up with. My architect husband using his drafting software, very easily made some different sided shapes for me and I printed them out. Now I use these reusable guides, a compass and straight edge.

I first tape down the guide on to the page using temporary tape.
Then put the pointy end of the compass in the middle of the guide and draw a couple of circles.

Then I create the sections by lining up the straight edge on the lines of the guide and use a pencil and make a mark on each circle. (Draw the whole line if you think you might use it in your finished design.)

Then line up your straight edge from the marks on each circle.

Using the marks I didn't use on the first star, I created a second star behind the first one.

For me using this method takes minutes instead of an hour in starting up of my stars.

If you want to try this method, right click these images then paste into a word document. In a word document you can easily re-size the images to what you want. My guides are about 2 inches.

10 sided

12 sided

14 sided

16 sided

In another post to come soon I will post how I finished this one.

Thanks for reading!