Earth Day

Earth Day is coming up this week. April 22nd! I decided to use one of my blue/green colored tiles and use tangles that are 'woven' in some way. I was thinking about how our earth is this ball in the sky that has lots of different parts and countries but we are all woven together in many different ways.

The tile has been hand colored with artists grade watercolor paints. Tangles were done with a green Micron and shading was done with several shades of blue and green colored pencils. A few highlights were added with a white colored pencil and also a white gelly roll pen. 

Real Life Strings

I recently received the book 'Real Life Strings' by Sindy P, CZT. It's a book that's full of pictures that are perfect for finding strings based on objects and locations we see all around us. I haven't had a chance to play with it as much as I would like but I'm starting to remedy that. 

One of the pictures in the book shows a light fixture as viewed from below. It's the perfect picture for strings for a zendala. I simply put my light box under the page and a round tile and traced the lines easily. Of course you can tangle directly in the book too. So it would be an easy and portable project to work on whenever the mood strikes.

Since this string is all geometric straight lines I challenged myself to use only tangles with straight lines too.

If you are interested in purchasing the book for yourself visit her blog at http://www.sindyp.com/

Harper - Banbury - and Jo's card

Harper college last Saturday - This was the second class so we moved on to more advanced tiles and used renaissance (tan) tiles. The skies turned dark and ominous outside but we were in our own little Zentangle world and just 'zenned out'. Wonderful tiles that were done!

Jo Fryer had a nice surprise for me!  She used tangling skills from the first week of class and combined it with her card making skills! How pretty and how happy you made me!

Then on Sunday I hade a foursome at Banbury working on their organic tangles. These are the fronts of greeting cards and they weren't  quite finished when I took this picture.  They are going to be magnificent!

Rixty garden

Rixty is the newest tangle from Rick and Maria. It's a fun little tangle that lends itself to lots of tangleations. Since the calendar says it's officially Spring I'm inspired to think about tangles as organically as possible. So here's my go at this new tangle on a Renaissance tile.

Initial string

The challenge this week is to use our initials as our string. I never liked putting a block S and block J together but when I tried putting the S with a script J it all came together as a string. (see below)

I always enjoy putting my 'coil' into tiles and I'm loving my 'ditto' pattern too. Then I thought, if it's my initials, why not try using all my own tangle patterns. So here it is - all me. From the upper left corner, working around clockwise, Bumps, Plaited, Ditto, Jilli, Coil, and Galileo. The illustrated step outs are in my tangle pattern gallery but if you go back to the original post you'll get even more details.

Egg-citement!

Easter is almost here so my classes and I have gotten into egg production big time! I follow some basic guidelines to keep my eggs simple and stress free. The eggs are cut from posterboard with a extra large giga punch. The tangles are done with white gelly roll pens and the shading is colored pencil. I try to keep my shading in the same color family as the paper so as not to complicate things. I usually do just one tangle per egg.- There's no reason not to do multiple tangles, I just want to get my eggs done quickly and I find this is a good way to really concentrate on the different tangle patterns.

The three eggs above use 'Quandary', 'Ditto', and 'Adeline'.

This group was done by the class at Banbury in Bartlett last Sunday. One of the gals brought her gold gelly roll pen. I love the way Ditto came out in gold!

This picture - and the closeups below come from the large group at McHenry County College last night. We had a mix of young to not-so-young and new and experienced tanglers. A great job was done by all.

By the way - one lady left her eggs behind on the display table. Please contact me with your address and I'll mail them to you!

String 29 and Harper

String 29 from Tanglepatterns.com is the challenge this week. A string can be drawn exactly as you see it or just used as inspiration. I had fun playing with it. It is drawn with;

Sand Swirl  by Karry Heun
Sanibelle  by CZT Tricia Faraone
Snag  by Jem Miller
Shattuck  an official Zentangle® pattern

Harper

These are the tiles that were completed by the class at Harper College this weekend. There are some wonderful interpretations of the basic tangles so be sure to click on the pictures to view them full screen! It's a two part class so I'm really excited to see what they come up with next week. Below you will find the second set of tiles they were working on that day

Quandary

The Diva challenged us to incorporate the tangle pattern 'quandary' into our tiles this week. Quandary is a tricky tangle. It's not hard to do but I find it challenging to get it to look the way I want it to. It's harder to get the spacing laid out so it looks good. You can find the step-outs for quandry here.

I prefer to use quandary as a background or fill pattern, so I put some 'Mooka' in first and then added my quandary to the background. I also used a Renaissance tan tile so I could play with both my black and brown pens.

CBS Sunday Morning letters

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will know how much I love Zentangle and how it has enriched my life. Along with other Zentangle fans, we are trying to get the word out to as many people as possible. To that end. we are writing letters to CBS Sunday Morning (the TV show) with the suggestion that they do a story about what Zentangle is and how Zentangle can help and inspire. 

Above is the letter and accompanying artwork for CBS. We are all mailing our envelopes today (no fooling) and encourage everyone to join us. If you have a little time, please join us. All the information is on the Zentangle website, just click here. Zentangle newsletter