Alphabet soup - N

Alphabet soup is a challenge I issued to myself a while back with the idea of using a wider variety of tangle patterns. I decided to try to use as many non-official tangle patterns that I could find. I use tangle patterns I have found on the web in addition to the ones posted on Tanglepatterns.com.  Now that Cheryl has begun her version of the challenge here, I decided it was time for me to get going again too.  Here are the tangles I used starting with the letter N.

N'velope

Nebel

Netting

circle string - black and white

As I teased earlier, I started work on a second zendala with the circle string. I added basic circles in graduating sizes but tangling in just the circles seemed too easy for me - I had to complicate it somehow! So I decided to split the circle in four segments and fill in alternating sections. 

I was tangling it with my friends last night and they told me it looked like an eye chart! It was fun to do this without any shading and just emphasize the graphic nature of it. 

circle string

Circles as strings. These are some of my favorite strings to use and I don't know why I haven't used them lately. I took out my circle templates and had fun laying them over my zendala tile to see what I would get. As you can see, I let three of the circles overlap the edge and only used one smaller circle in full. I tried to pick tangles that had a curvy element to them so they would fit the circle idea better. Fun challenge! I've even got another tile started. Let's see if I finish that one in time!

'Y' string

This tile uses a string from Margaret Bremner CZT. It resembles a cursive 'Y' and can be found on Tangle Patterns.com as string # 26. Adele Bruno CZT challenged us to use it along with the tangle patterns, River, Rixty, Ripples and River stone. A number of other people completed this challenge too and you can see what they came up with by going to Adele's blog here.

Since today is Memorial Day I wanted to remember my dad. He served in WWII. I come from a family of German immigrants so my dad's heritage was useful as he served as a translator for our troops. Miss you dad!

Still Rain-ing

The last tile I did for the Rain challenge was in black and white in a traditional Zentangle fashion. I was looking at my last few posts and realized I hadn't done much in color lately. So that HAD to be remedied! Rain was done in a spiral here using lots of tangleations for the fill. 

One of my hand-colored tiles was used with a blue Micron and then two shades of colored pencils for the shading.

Rain, rain go away!

The challenge this week is to use the tangle pattern 'Rain' in our tile. While I was showering I was thinking about what I might do. (I do some of my best thinking in the shower!) Well, why not use the name as the inspiration! So every tangle I used, makes me think about rain, or water, or storms. I used Rain, Static.Msst, and Nipa.

Alphabet Soup - M (and Banbury)

Alphabet soup is a challenge I issued to myself a while back with the idea of using a wider variety of tangle patterns. I decided to try to use as many non-official tangle patterns that I could find.  Now that Cheryl has begun her version of the challenge here, I decided it was time for me to get going again too.  Here are the tangles I used starting with the letter M.

Meander - Lizzy Mayne

Maylea - Rhapsody

Mumsy - Sandy Steen Bartholomew

Magma - Margaret Bremner

If I've gotten any of the names wrong (or horribly mis-spelled them) please let me know! When I first started collecting tangle patterns a few years ago I wasn't as careful making notes.

Below are the tiles that were produced in my Beyond the Basics class at Banbury last Sunday. I LOVE what they did with these tangles.

String 43

This week Adele Bruno challenged us to use string 43 from Tanglepatterns.com along with several B tangles. I resisted looking at other entries before I did mine so that I would not be influenced by them. Adele posted all the entries on her blog today. click here . It's fascinating how some of them are similiar but yet so different. And some of the tiles are really 'out of the box'. 

Alphabet soup -L-

Alphabet soup is a challenge I issued to myself a while back with the idea of using a wider variety of tangle patterns. I decided to try to use as many non-official tangle patterns that I could find.  Now that Cheryl has begun her version of the challenge here, I decided it was time for me to get going again too.  Here are the tangles I used starting with the letter L.

La Bell - Sue Jacobs CZT (me)

Linden - Lizzy Mayne

Longwood - JJ LaBarbera

Lis - Mafe Movromati

Duotangle well + punzel with dangles

Punzel and Well, that's the challenge. To combine JUST these two tangles into a 'duotangle'. 

It took a while to figure out what I wanted to do with this challenge. I surfed the web as I always do when I am procrastinating. Then I saw this new video by Joanne Fink for Sakura. And 'DING" I knew what I wanted to do. The Punzel turned into a bendy rod and the little Wells turned into dangles. If you haven't seen the video yet, I've embedded it here. Joanne does such fun work. I've admired it for a long time now!

Then, after the tile was done and photographed, I decided to go back and add a little color with my moonlight gelly roll pens. It certainly gives it a different feel. I haven't decided which I like better yet. 

Tangling on the table

Yes! You can tangle anywhere! My husband took me out on Mother's Day to a restaurant where the cloth is covered with a big piece of white paper and they provide some crayons too. My children are living at a distance now - (but they had all called in earlier) so it was just my husband and me.  I saw the crayons and that big piece of paper was just crying out to be tangled! The waitress had filled the water glasses and there was a big wet spot on the paper under the glass so I looked at that as an inspiration to do a circle around it. And more circles came next. It was a very relaxing design. No pre-planning - I just went with the flow. I would have kept going - but the food came, and I had to move my plate to the side so I could take a picture. I wonder what the busboy thought when he cleared the table?

Ocean tiles

At my recent convention of CZTs we had a tile swap among ourselves. The theme was 'Oceans'. I enjoyed doing these a lot. (And if you are familiar with Margaret Bremner's work, the concept for the first tile was inspired by her!)

The second tile is an underwater zen garden. Fellow CZT Meredith Yuhas is well known for her zen gardens.

These two tiles are the beautiful tiles that I received in return. They are by Virginia Slawson from Maine, USA and Sheila Jarvie from Wellesly, Ontario, Canada. Thanks Ladies! I love them.

Alphabet Soup -K-

Alphabet soup is a challenge I issued to myself a while back with the idea of using a wider variety of tangle patterns. I decided to try to use as many non-official tangle patterns that I could find.  Now that Cheryl has begun her version of the challenge here, I decided it was time for me to get going again too.  I did an extra K tile when I couldn't find the first one I did and I'm glad I had the opportunity to try out more tangles.

The tangle patterns used here;

Khirkee - Claire ?

Kandysnake - Vicki Murray

Kilroy - Moon Attic

Karv - Ruth Howell

Kooba - Sadelle Wiltshire

Kuzek - ?

Keeko Zentangle

Kitty - Jane Monk

Kardes - Donna Hornsby?

UMT Diva Style

The Diva's new challenge is to try out a new, as yet un-named tangle. She posts the steps on her blog here.

It's an easy tangle to do. It sort of reminds me of the tinker toys and erector set my brother had as a child. 

As I did last week, I used the embossing technique on a black tile and colored pencils to get this effect. I do love playing with color so this was a pleasure!

Camelia - black magic

When I was at Tangle U we had a wonderful assortment of teachers who taught us all sorts of new techniques with a variety of products I hadn't tried before. One of the classes was with Marie Browning using the Irojiten colored pencils. We used a black tile and an embossing technique. It was a fun technique to use with this week's challenge, the tangle 'Camelia'. I'll be adding this technique to my advanced classes in the future. 

Tangle U - Busy Week!

I just got back from Tangle U in Portland Maine. Tangle U is a conference for Certified Zentangle Teachers. We had three days jam packed with classes from some of the biggest names in the world of Zentangle. I am so inspired to bring what I've learned back to my classes. We had Sandy Steen Bartholomew - That's her hand holding her sample board on the right. Marie Browning showed us new tricks for working with the Irojiten colored pencils.

We had a show and tell from attendees. I was especially taken with the quilting piece by Barb Round!

The pictures here only show a portion of what we did. I somehow left my good camera at home and had to make do with the camera on my phone.

I'm glad to be home now and back to my family. More on them later!

We exchanged tiles based on the ocean theme. I loved seeing the different interpretations.

The architecture in the ballroom had me thinking about new tangles.

Molly Hollibough had us go back to the basics of a beginning tile. I was blown away by this class mosaic!

All in all, a wonderful, stimulating conference. It was great meeting so many other CZTs that I had previously met only through Facebook.