I carved this on a 16″ flat plate. The mandala is a design I found on Shutterstock and modified for chip carving. The gold areas are painted with an iridescent gold acrylic. The quote is from a poem by Robert Frost. I finished the carving with General Finishes Arm-R-Seal mixed with a light colored gel stain to form a toner.
I do my layouts with a desktop publishing program that allows you put text along a curved path. Unfortunately it’s an older program that’s no longer available. I don’t have Inkscape but it may be that it has that capability.