Striping

When I first started tangling I didn't quite understand the tangle pattern Striping. The diagram with the step outs was clear enough but I couldn't quite understand how to do it myself. It's one of those patterns that - for me anyway - I needed someone to walk me through it. Now it's one of my favorite tangles. I love adding the highlights and the shading. These finished tiles make me happy! Thanks Adele for suggesting we do string 55 as a monotangle with Striping.

This was done on a blue/green handcolored tile with a blue Micron pen. Then colored pencils added the shading.

Alphabet Soup - Y

We are finally up to the letter Y in our alphabet soup. There are some fun tangles that start with Y this week. Fun to draw and fun to shade! The tangles in the tile above are;

Y-ful power - Shoshi

Yabbut - Margaret Bremner

Yoga - Margaret Bremner

Yuan - Margaret Bremner

Stripes

Stripes. There are many tangles that work well in the stripe category. I enjoyed this challenge the first time around so I was game to go again. I looked through the many tangles I have in my book and there were SO many choices! Then I looked in the back of my book where I have just the tangles that I have named myself. Well, there were more than enough stripe tangles right there! So the tangles shown here are all under the tangle pattern gallery tab on my blog.

Wix

Kiev

Coil

Vigne

Ditto

I wanted to do it on toned paper so I could add both highlights and shading. This is actually my hand colored paper that approximates the color of the renaissance tiles. I normally would use the Renaissance tiles but I knew I might be aggressive with some of my shading so I opted for my hand colored tile which can take a little more abuse. I used the Micron black pen, the brown pen, the white gelly roll, colored pencils in white and brown and my regular pencil.

Ice bucket challenge

My son challenged me to the ice bucket challenge. I thought I might escape this, but NOOOOO! I thought I'd try doing a little something different so I decided to tangle my bucket first. Those of you who have seen it before know that you need to do it within 24 hours. So I needed to do some fast tangling!

Thankfully the Sakura IDentipen has a nice thick nib on one side, so I was able to do my bucket fairly quickly. I think what actually took me the longest was deciding what tangles to use. Sorry - no shading - but I was on the clock!

hoot class pictures

Hoot 2014 is all done now and I've finally gotten a chance to go through all the pictures and see what all the classes did in detail. I taught 4 classes plus a free demo - plus working a booth with Cris Letourneau at the trade show. I was glad I had my husband there to help!

I want to give a special Thanks to Leslie Crumpler at Sakura of America. She sent along a few sets of Sakura Micron pens for special door prizes. That made for some exciting draws and some very happy people!

In the tote bag class we started out with a basic tile to get everyone familiar with the frame, string, fill, etc. I didn't get a picture of the tote bags but their tiles look great!

This was the two hour class where we worked on these strips to go around small tin boxes. They were so cute!

The Zentangle Christmas was the largest class - and we did cards, ornaments, and small boxes - so lots of pictures!

And the last class, on Friday, was the Zen Garden class. We started out by coloring the background of a paper with a watercolor wash. While that was drying we did some of the tangles on a regular size tile so we could go over the basics of zentangle at the same time.

Alphabet Soup - X

Alphabet soup - X  - getting close to the end of the alphabet. All the tangles shown here have names beginning with the letter X. This is a great way to challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone and explore new tangle patterns. Tangles shown here;

X - Lila Popcheff

Xeni - Jacqueline Janssen

Xenso - Sue Clark

water world

The theme of the Diva's challenge this week is 'water' and we are to interpret that in any way we desire. I envisioned all sorts of underwater flora and creatures, as viewed from a porthole. I used one of my hand colored tiles with a blue Micron pen and colored pencils for shading and highlights.

Alphabet soup - W

This is my take on using tangles whose names start with the letter W. I can't believe that we are almost through with the alphabet. It's been fun.

Columbus, Ohio HOOT

The Heart of Ohio tole painters convention in Columbus has begun. Cris LeTourneau and I have banded together in a booth at the trade show.  On Thursday, Friday and Saturday it will be open to the public.  Come on down to the convention center on High Street and say hi!

And if you tell me you saw this blog entry-  I'll have a little surprise for you.

Happy birthday Adele

This week we are celebrating the first birthday of Adele Bruno's string challenge.  This string is a fun little one that Adele came up with.  She suggested some of the newest tangle patterns that have been published.  It was fun to play with them.

I'm looking forward to many more string challenges in the future.

Alphabet soup - V

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 on her site  http://cherylsartfulcreations.blogspot.com/, I decided it was time for me to get going again too.  Here are the tangles I used starting with the letter V.

Volant - Solveig

Verity - Lila Popcheff

Vortex - ?

Bijou and friends

Bijou has joined the Zentangle family! Bijou tiles are small tiles that measure 2" x 2". They are made from the same high quality paper that the regular tiles are made from. They are from a little snail named Bijou that Rick and Maria met in Paris. You can read all about him (or her?) on the zentangle page at http://www.zentangle.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82&Itemid=174

 I have been doing Twinchies for a little while now and hand coloring them. So when I got my official Bijou tiles I just had to introduce Bijou to my twinchies. Wouldn't you know, they formed a fast friendship! The twinchies above were hand colored to approximate the color of the Renaissance tiles from zentangle. I used the same pens and shading and highlighting that I use on the regular Renaissance tiles.

string 51

String 51 from Tanglepatterns.com is pretty straightforward. It's just some straight parallel lines that run at an angle. But the tangles that Adele Bruno suggested were so pretty! I decided to use the strings as suggestions only (as we always should do) and let the patterns show off in all their glory. Oh, I threw in a little lacing too just for grins. I used a blue hand colored tile, a blue micron pen, and colored pencils for shading.

Alphabet Soup - U

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 on her site  http://cherylsartfulcreations.blogspot.com/, I decided it was time for me to get going again too.  Here are the tangles I used starting with the letter U.

Undiala - Cris LeTourneau

Undling - Susie Achter

Up-n-down - Kathy Barringer

I tried something different here. I used my 005 pen for the Undling (in the U) and then went back to my o1 for the rest. I liked how I was able to get finer lines with the 005 for that pattern.