Make garden decorations out of wood - a DIY mandala

It is slowly becoming more and more summery, and we are spending more and more time outside in the garden or on the balcony. After the rather dreary winter months, your garden needs a little new decoration. In this tutorial, I will show you how you can use your Mr Beam and a little paint to quickly make beautiful wooden decorations for your garden yourself.

Which wood is suitable as a garden decoration, and what should you consider?

In principle, almost any wood. Of course, solid wood or at least birch plywood of an appropriate thickness is the most stable. It always depends on where the garden decoration is used and how well you protect it from wind and weather. To protect your wooden garden decoration, you have several options:

• Impregnation: For example with linseed oil varnish. It penetrates the wood and forms a protective film. The natural look of the wood is retained and may even be underlined a little. At Mr Beam there is an extra wood care set in the shop.
• Varnishing: The varnish prevents the ingress of moisture due to its closed surface.
• Glazing: A glaze also forms a protective layer on the surface of your wood that is impenetrable to moisture after it has hardened.

Material for the garden decoration made of wood

Mr Beam Poplar plywood suitable for [x], 4mm, A3

Regular price From CHF 34.00

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Plywood birch 5 pack

Regular price CHF 47.00

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Mr Beam wood care set with stone pine oil and beeswax

Regular price CHF 55.00

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Prepare the file for your mandala as a garden decoration

You can find the file for your mandala in the Mr Beam Design Store. Start your Mr Beam to get into BeamOS. Here, you can now pay for and download the file with Beam Coins. In your workspace, you can adapt the individual elements of the file to your needs.

For my wooden garden decoration, I enlarged the "welcome" so that it protrudes slightly over the edge of the mandala on both the right and left. Simply click on your element and use one of the four corner arrows to drag your design larger or smaller, depending on how you want it.

The feathers for your mandala as a garden decoration consist of a layer of wood with a corresponding engraving. The red lines are the cutting lines and the black ones will be engraved.

The engraving serves as a colouring page, so to speak, but of course you can also design your feathers freely and omit the engraving.

Make a wooden mandala for your garden yourself with your Mr Beam

For the mandala and the feathers, place the 4 mm birch plywood in the Mr Beam. In BeamOS, you use the preview of the camera image to align the elements on your plywood to save material. Always remember to set the object height correctly! This is the only way to get the most accurate preview image possible.

The settings for lasering your birch plywood are already stored in BeamOS.

However, there is something special about the engraving. BeamOS recognizes the black lines, just like the red lines, as cutting lines, which it follows in the same way. However, they should be engraved on the nib. To do this, drag the field with the black lines down and open another cutting job.

For the right parameters for lasering your engraving, you can use the “Engraving” settings as a guide. For your perfect result, you should do tests beforehand to see which settings you personally like.

As always, don't forget to focus!

When your Mr Beam is ready, take everything out and put the 1 mm birch plywood inside for the lettering. The settings are also stored here, and you can start the laser job after refocusing.

Now it's getting creative - colourful wooden garden decorations

Varnish your mandala

Paint the mandala in a place that is protected from wind and rain, just as you know it from my other DIY instructions. Make a paint booth out of a large cardboard box and put on both gloves and a mask. You prepare your spray can according to the manufacturer's instructions.

I always recommend doing a test spray on the cardboard to get a feel for the paint application. Now spray a thin layer over your wooden mandala in even strips. When the first coat of paint has dried, spray thinly over it again.

Now lay your mandala flat on the cardboard and take another colour. Hold the spray can horizontally over your mandala. For the blob look, do not push the spray head all the way through, but only slightly. So the paint comes out of the can, but it is not nebulized in the spray attachment, which then causes drops to form. Spread a few drops over your mandala - just as you like it.

Impregnation of your lettering for your wooden garden decoration

The "welcome" should keep its wooden look, so you rub it evenly with linseed oil varnish using a cotton cloth and let it dry.

Colourful feathers on your wooden mandala for the garden

You paint the feathers with your acrylic pencils. For wood, I definitely recommend acrylic pens with a slightly broader tip, similar to a felt-tip pen. To keep the tip from fraying, it helps to paint with the wood grain. If you also have acrylic pens with a thin and a thick tip, then I recommend framing the field with the thin tip first and colouring in with the thicker tip.

The finale - assemble your wooden mandala as a garden decoration

When everything is dry, place the "welcome" on your mandala as you want it to look later. Turn them both over and use a pencil to mark the lettering on the back where the waterproof wood glue needs to be applied.

Now glue the "welcome" to your wooden mandala and let it harden.

You attach the feathers to your mandala with strings. To do this, glue the strings to the wood from behind with hot glue.

Your mandala as a wooden garden decoration now gets a protective layer of clear varnish. It can withstand all weather conditions. The sun catcher crystals follow as small highlights. Tie a string to it and glue it to the mandala with hot glue. - Your wooden garden decoration is ready.

I wish you a lot of fun imitating - and very quickly the first rays of sunshine to be able to observe the great play of colours of the crystals. 😇

Your Rina