Bb is for Bright and Bold

I have been trying for days to bring a mandala pattern that I drew into Photoshop so that I could work with it. The problems with this include (but are not limited to) capturing the image with my camera so that it is not warped, getting rid of the shadows on the page so that Photoshop does not see the darker areas as shapes, ensuring that the lines are dark enough to be read by Photoshop as complete lines, and that the shapes remain individual so they can be filled with color. Nothing really worked well enough - maybe I lack the skill to do it right.

So, when all else kept failing, I used Adobe Illustrator to create the basic template for this, and then brought it into Photoshop to color and work with effects. I probably could have done it all in Illustrator, but I am more familiar with Photoshop. I love the results, but more than that, I love the feeling of having figured out the solution to this problem.