Corn Stalk Maze

In October the farm stand down the street comes to life with lots of Halloween activities.There is a mini zoo with lots of wild animals and giraffes you can feed. On weekends they have pig races. There is a hay ride and haunted house. And of course they have lots of pumpkins to choose from. In the back they created a corn stalk maze for kids and adults to explore. When I did this tile my husband looked at it and said it was kinda confusing. I was thinking of fall with the colors and eyes in the Paradox, so the confusion of the cornstalk maze seemed an appropriate name for this.

The feeding station is up on a high platform so you are at eye level with the giraffes.

We love to take pictures of our kids with pumpkins. It's a family tradition.

Beyond the Basics class pictures 10-22

At the 'Beyond the Basics' class we go through both new tangles and new techniques. This class was held Oct 22nd at Banbury Fair. The first tiles were done on the Zentangle black tiles using a Sakura white Gelly Roll Pen.This class had a mix of ages - both teens and adults. I honestly can't tell which tiles were done by who. Click on the picture to see it in more detail.

Another tile we did was one where we explored tangleations. Everyone did the Bales pattern. I then challenged them to come up with as many different tangleations as possible. It was great to put this mosaic together and see all the different variations people came up with!

Pumpkin fun

In the spirit of the season I used another of my colored tiles to create a pumpkin tile.I love the way the n'zeppel pattern almost looks like a web behind it.



Be sure to see what Suzanne McNeil did with Zentangle on her pumpkins! http://blog.suzannemcneill.com/2011/10/20/a-little-halloween-zen.aspx?ref=rss



These are wonderful pumpkins too. They were created by Alisa Burke. Her tutorial is on her blog at http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2010/10/pretty-painted-pumpkins-tutorial.html

Happy Halloween!

New tangle 'Punzel'

Last night a new zentangle newsletter arrived in my inbox. In it is a new tangle 'Punzel' that is a variation on 'Chaining'. So I got to work right away. It's a very addictive tangle. You want to keep going and going. Is it tricky? A little, but once you get the hang of it you'll love it. It's a little like braiding hair.

 You can subscribe to the Zentangle newsletter too! http://zentangle.com/whats-new.php

This one should hopefully link you to the Diva's site. Instructions are also posted there http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com/2011/10/weekly-challenge-45.html?showComment=1319460284764#c7555213069210903319

Fall rainbow

Fall is in full swing hear. Raking has begun in earnest. Seeing all the leaves on the ground is a good way to look for organic patterns. Using leaf shapes for strings was how this tile began.After all the tangles I wanted some color so I got out my Conte chalk pencils. Adding the background was fun.

Russian Christmas

Whenever I can, I try to sneak in a little Christmas preparation. That way when the holidays get here I won't feel quite as stressed. This is just a paper cardstock ornament with just one tangle on it. I used a Sakura purple metallic pen on it. It doesn't photograph as well as I would like but it's very pretty in person.  It will be perfect for slipping inside a card. 


The tangle is one I posted a while back. It's one that is seen on the borders of painted trays from Russia. This is the link to the instructions - http://suejacobs.blogspot.com/2011/01/zhostovo-border.html

Tangle within a tangle

Last night I was watching TV and thinking about how I wanted to approach the newest challenge from the Diva. Weekly Challenge #44. "String Theory v. VI: Tangled on the inside"
I was flipping back and forth between 'Dancing with the Stars' and 'The Sing Off'. So since the music was on my mind I decide to play with the pattern Muzic by Casey Poirer. This pattern is in the Totally Tangled Book from Sandy Batholomew.

The challenge is to use one tangle (in my case Muzic) and to tangle within it - ie. using the tangle as your string. As you can see I used tangle patterns that look darker and fill up more spaces for the dark keys and lighter patterns for the white keys. A little shading - and I'm happy.

Metallic leaves

I'm still in leaf mode here. This one uses the Sakura metallic pens on green cardstock. It was interesting working with two colors of metallics on each leaf. If I worked quickly I could sort-of get them to blend but still retain their own colors. An interesting process.

Sunflower Fun Challenge

This is the same watercolor background technique I used yesterday but I love how different it is. This is my response to the Diva's new challenge.

Weekly Challenge #43: Sunflower Fun

Autumn colors

I love the colors of the leaves as they change in the fall. So I did a few tiles with watercolor backgrounds using yellows and browns. You will be seeing them all in the near future. On this tile I used a colored Sakura Micron Pigma Pen.The shading is all done with a Faber-Castell Aquarelle pencil. This was the first time I've tried thid colored pencil and it was a joy to work with.

I used the Zentangle principal of 'drawing behind'. As you can see, the one whole leave is drawn first and then each subsequent leave is set behind another. A bit tricky to draw, but the shading brings it all out and is my favorite part.

I tried to give just the vague impression of veins in the leaves by using a light shading in the negative spaces between the veins.

Clear Glaze pen play

A few weeks ago I got a set of the Sakura Gelly Roll Glaze pens. I was having fun with the colors and loving how shiny they were. Then I started playing with the CLEAR pen. Wow, it works perfectly as a resist.

I started with a white tile (my usual 3 1/2" square). I got the basic flower and heart shapes by using a simple stencil I had laying around. The glaze takes a bit longer to dry than regular ink so I paused a bit before I did each shape. After the shapes were in I went ahead and did my tangling. The pen produces a fairly thick line so I tried not to get too complicated with the tangles. I also found that drawing with a clear pen on a white tile makes it a little tricky seeing where you have been. I solved that by holding the tile at a bit of an angle so the light would reflect off the lines.

After the tangles were done I got out my watercolor paints. I just used a blue and a purple here. I wet the entire surface with water and then put in swaths of color while it was still wet. After it was all dry I used a colored pencil to reinforce some darks in the corners.

Hope is theThing with Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

This tile and the poem, is my response to Challenge #42 "HOPE". http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com/ Breast Cancer took my godmother several years ago. I think of her and all the other women that suffer with this disease. 


I have a special request of all who see this. My local hospital is participating in the Pink Glove Dance contest. My new granddaughter,  daughter and I are in the video because she was born on the day they were filming. (we are at 1:43 in). Please vote for  Advocate Good Shepherd, Barrington, IL  at http://pinkglove.co/12  you only need to vote once!

The tile is one that I added color to with my watercolor paints. A white pen, shading with pink chalk and highlights with a white chalk pencil.

Sunni Brown

                                   http://sunnibrown.com/2011/09/23/ted-doodlers-unite/

I came across this video and found it both entertaining and enlightening. It confirms what I always thought. Zentangle just takes it to the next level!

And another article I read on line says this:
Zoning out during a meeting? Sketch something on your notepad. People who colored in shapes while listening to someone speak were 29 percent more likely to recall the information they'd heard than non-doodlers, according to a report in Applied Cognitive Psychology. "Doodling keeps you focused on the action of drawing and stops you from daydreaming. You can still listen while doing it, whereas daydreaming reduces attention to what's being said," says researcher Jackie Andrade, Ph.D.

Sepia circles

I love doing circles for my strings. It gives me a soothing start to the piece and leaves a nice size for me to practice tangles I may not use very often. These are all official tangles, but I haven't practiced them much so it took me some time to get them done.

This uses colored card stock, a sepia Micron Pigma pen and two shades of Prismacolor brown colored pencils.

circle strings

 This tile uses only three circles to create the strings. The circles are so big that only part of the circle is actually on the tile. I was very pleased with the way this one came out. The shading really made it all pop.

I posted this a while back to show you how to do this but I wanted to post it again now that the tile is done. You can see that I used the cardboard circle from a roll of tape for the circles.

And the original inspiration came from the coaster that was under my class in the hotel I was staying at this summer. This one would have been way too complicated to tangle but the idea was there.