Rain

Visiting family in Texas, there has been an amazing amount of rain. It's been raining almost every day since I have been here. My heart goes out to those who the flooding has affected.

This tile uses the tangle Rain as a border with Msst inside.  A ray of hope shines through.

Blurred lines

This challenge is to do a tile using only straight lines in the tangles. I had a hard time picking these as I really missed the curved ones. But I loved adding the shading. 

Doing this late at night I had to take the picture with my phone camera and the room lights, so that's why I called it Blurred Lines.

White on Black on Found

The Diva challenge this past week was to do something with a white pen on a black surface. We could use the official black tiles - or .......? This has been a tough week for me as I haven't been feeling  well - and even ended up in the hospital for testing. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as we were afraid and I'm on the mend now.

I finally got around to thinking about the Diva challenge last night. I had a burst of inspiration - I would do tangles on the bluestone walkway with kid's chalk. Great idea right? Well, today ended up to be raining so I sat in my studio looking for other ideas. I looked down at my feet - and well, you can see what I did. I used a white Signo gel pen. I'm not sure how long this will last - It may wear off the first time I walk in the rain or wet grass. So that's why I took pictures! 

class zendalas

I wanted to share the Zendalas that my class did at the Society of Decorative Painters convention last week. Such a talented group! I was lucky that the convention was held in St Charles, IL which is about a half hour from my home.

Sweet string 92

This tile started out with string #92 from tanglepatterns.com. The tangles that were used all have names that remind me of dessert. Yum!

chocobox

cayke

butter

kandy ribnz

I started by doing the tangles with my black pen on the white tile. I was about to start the pencil shading when I looked at again and decided that this tile really called for color instead. I had my Inktense pencil close at hand so I used them, added some water with a fine brush, and I got the happy, yummy tile I was envisioning.

Dex Bunzo

Basic tile this week, got it done quickly this morning.  Too many other things going on this week!

Do. Or do not.

May the Fourth be with you!

This was the title of the Diva's challenge this week as she posted it on May 4th. I read through it - I really did. But when I got started on it I totally blanked that the challenge asked us to use the tangle pattern 'Brella'. So, since there are no mistakes, I'm posting what I came up with anyway. Obviously I didn't use Brella in here. Maybe I'll have time to do another one.

May Day

It's May! And my trees are in bloom. Nothing makes me smile - or makes me more content. than walking out to my yard and standing under the trees and being surrounded by the blossoms and their perfume.

I know that the blossoms will not last long. They are predicting rain so before long I'll have a carpet of white petals instead. I wanted to get out there and take some pictures quickly.

After spending some time with my blossoms I knew I wanted to do a tile inspired by them. A few weeks ago I was playing with my watercolor paints and a stencil and I created this zendala. At that time though, I didn't know where I wanted to go next with it. So I set it aside in my stack of projects waiting for inspiration. 

The trees inspired me to do a pink and white theme. I have a couple of different white gel pens so I used two that have different thicknesses to do my tangling. (I know you can hardly see the finer lines but trust me, they are there inside the bales.) Since my new mantra is 'Simplify', I only used three tangles and then shaded with colored pencils and highlighted with a white chalk pencil.