Home is where the heart is

The diva challenge this week is titled 'Home'. The Diva did a tile based on where she lives in Canada and a few of the other submissions I saw portrayed elements of their gardens. I have a brown thumb so my garden isn't very inspirational. The only thing I can grow are perennials that somehow survive on their own and come up year after year. (You may remember my peonies late in May.) So I thought and I thought about what home means to me. As I was looking through some photos from a recent family wedding I knew what I wanted to do.

Home is my family. - wherever that family may be. Our family has grown in the last few years with three granddaughters all under the age of 4. When we were last all together, the girls were very active, crawling or running all around. There was lots of action, ribbons in their hair, and lots of pink.

I used a tangle pattern (that is on my blog in the tangle pattern gallery) called 'Tootsie'. Tootsie is something I drew in my school notebooks many years ago - and I know a lot of others were drawing it too. I didn't invent it - I just named it and threw it out there for everyone to use. Tootsie became my string for this tile.

This tile began with a colored background I did with my Tombow markers and a watercolor technique. A white gelly roll pen, colored pencil shading and chalk pencil highlights complete it.

new tangle challenge

click to enlarge

On the zentangle.com blog today, Rick and Maria have posted a new tangle. http://zentangle.blogspot.com/2012/06/new-tangle.html Actually, they didn't post the tangle - just tiles done with it. And they have challenged us to name it and come up with the steps to complete it.

I'm not very good with naming things - besides, there are already some wonderful suggestions in the blog comments. So here is my way of showing the steps to this tangle. 

It begins by lightly drawing the shape you are going after in pencil - just like any string. It's hard to see in my photo but it is definitely there. 

Start with a pair of lines going along one side of the shape. Add another pair on the next side - connecting to the pair you already have. Continuing with the third pair of lines.

From here on out you draw single lines that goes inside what you have already drawn.

Just like the tangle 'Hollibaugh' you draw behind - when you come to a line that is already there, stop and continue your line on the other side.

Now I need to do some tiles with this tangle!

Zendala Dare 11

This is the Zendala I did in response to Dare number 11. Erin is coming up with some wonderful templates to add zentangle to. Be sure to check out her blog and join the fun. http://thebrightowl.blogspot.com/2012/06/zendala-dare-11.html

For this tile I used a purple micron pen and then used 4 colors of Prismacolor colored pencil. Blending them was fun to work on. 

color class pictures from Banbury 6-24

Yesterday we had a small class at Banbury in Bartlett. But we had great fun. New tangles and how to adapt them to color - and then we played with a variety of materials. The black tiles contain only tangleations on Bales but you can see some serious color going on!

And by the way - both pictures were taken with the tiles on the same white table - but it sure doesn't look the same in these photos. Maybe someday I'll get someone to explain to me how to set the white balance on my camera!

First day of summer - Cadent zendala

It's officially the first day of summer. Of course it feels like it's been summer for a while though as we've had a long streak of days in the 90's and so little rain that the grass is turning brown and crunchy. So as I did this zendala using a pattern from Erin at the http://thebrightowl.blogspot.com/2012/06/zendala-dare-10.html. I decided to start with the hot, hot colors that felt like the weather. And since it was too hot to spent alot of time thinking about tangles, I ended up going back to tangleations for Cadent.

Tombow pens were used following a watercolor technique for the shapes and colored Micron pens were used for the tangles.

Cadent - tangleation nation

The Diva's challenge this week is to do tangleations on the tangle 'cadent'. Cadent is always included in my beginner classes. It seems tricky at first but everyone is so excited when they find out how easy it is. For this challenge I thought I would try doing cadent in ribbons - sort of like a hollibaugh tangle. Below is the scrap of paper I used while I was experimenting with tangleations.

Catching up

Life has been hectic this past week - taking care of grand babies, a family wedding, and out of town company. I've enjoyed it all but it hasn't left any time for tangles. So today I'm posting a tile I did when I was experimenting with the Pea-Nuckle tangle pattern. I was still figuring out how to space my shapes. But as always, it was fun and relaxing - as zentangle should be. So I'm posting it today.

I thought I'd add this picture of all my granddaughters - it was so nice to have them all together. We all took picture after picture - trying to get them all looking in the same direction - and trying to get some sort of smile. We never did get the portrait we were looking for. But it was fun and we did get lots of pictures showing the girls personalities.

Zendala Dare #9

I'm baack - Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. I've been off with my grandbabies and haven't had a chance to do much else. I did have a chance to do a quick challenge though. While I was babysitting I couldn't pull out my pens and paper (They would have been applied to the wall by little hands!) but I could mull though various ideas in my head. So I thought I'd try doing a variation on the pattern 'Knightsbridge' using this zendala. It didn't work out quite the way I imagined it in my head but as Zentangle often does, evolved into something else.

Striping - monotangle

Doing monotangles can be so relaxing. I wanted to do a tile that had lots of highlights and shading since I love to do that. 'Striping' is a natural for practicing those techniques. So a simple string and off I went. A red Micron pen and colored pencils to shade.

bridgen challenge

The weekly challenge from the Diva is to use the tangle 'Bridgen'. It's an interesting tangle but it took me a couple of days to think about what I wanted to do with it. When I pulled out a star stencil and colored cardstock though, it all came together quickly.

Peonies make me happy

Every summer my Peonies bloom during the week between my son's birthday and my birthday. Then they are done, but oh how I love them. They are my special birthday present.

They are even more special because the plants that they came from were first planted at my husband's parent's home in Michigan. When they moved to Illinois the brought some roots with them to their new home. And when they knew it was time to move from their big home they invited us to bring the roots to our home. They are gone now, but the plants still bring a smile to my face every year.

So when I saw that I had a truly vibrant pink in my markers I knew I wanted to create a simple zendala related to my peonies. Happy and fun.

L-O-V-E zendala

Erin from  http://thebrightowl.blogspot.com/  has posted another Zendala template with a challenge. She asked us to complete it using only tangle patterns that begin with the letters L-O-V-E. Since June is such a popular month for weddings I went all in on the romance theme with my colors and choice of tangles. What fun!

Tangle Pattern used;

Looby Loo - Sue Jacobs - one of my tangles
Lis - Mafe Movromati  http://tanglebrasil.blogspot.com/2011/05/lis.html#axzz1wpbaOPrS (I simplified it here)
Opus - official zentangle
Vortex - Sandra Strait
Emilie - Sandy Bartholomew