string 95

This tile is a challenge from Adele Bruno at Tickled to Tangle. It certainly has the shapes of candy corn so it's perfect for this season. I took a few liberties with String 95 for this challenge #64. The string that's pictured on Tanglepatterns.com has the lines from the shapes crossing each other and making additional smaller shapes. I decided to break each shape out separately and tangle them simply. That way I could concentrate on the shading of the shapes to get more of a 3D look. 

The tangles pictured are; 

Charlie by CZT Erin Olson of Zendala Dare

Owlz and

Roxi both by Beth Snoderly

N'Zeppel by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. 

Betweed Halloween

I really did wait to look at other peoples posts. I guess several of us had similar inspiration with the holiday coming up. So anyway, here is my spider web and pumpkin using betweed! Happy Halloween!

Sometimes he's right

My husband was looking at the tiles I did last week.  When he came to this one he said it was just Ok. He thought it needed something else.  And as I looked at again with his perspective, I knew he was right. Adding the blue color added just the right touch and then he was impressed. 

Look back at the post last Friday for the 'before' picture.

Zentangle on The View

We have celebrities that are tangling! If you saw The View on Friday, Oct 24, 2014, you will hear Rosie O'Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg discussing Zentangle. You can see the entire episode on the ABC website - search for the full episode of The View. Watch for the Zentangle discussion at 4:35. here's the link to the website - Just copy and paste

 http://abc.go.com/shows/the-view/episode-guide/2014-10/24-friday-october-24-2014

And if you can't access this because you don't live in the US try my video on YouTube. I did it standing in front of the TV with my cell phone. The grand-baby is making noise in the background and the audio needs to be turned up to hear it. So the quality isn't very good but at least I got it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0kTWSFE_IA

string 66

Back to black and white techniques for string 66 today. The tangles used are Quandary, Quib, and Quiltz.

I was glad that the string is merely a suggestion as I found I wanted to adjust it slightly to accommodate my version of Quib. Quiltz was a challenge to draw behind the Quib. It took a little longer and more increased focus to work out which part of the tangle went were. Quandary is a tangle that hasn't grown on me as many others have, so I was glad to do it in smaller areas.

Pink ribbon

Since October is breast cancer awareness month you will notice a lot of pink in tiles this month. It's a disease that has touched so many lives. My godmother died from it so this zendala is meant to honor her. She loved ice cream so I did the string as a swirl inside the ribbon - and added the cherry on top. And many of my happy memories of her were at the beach - so I did the Cockles and Mussels tangle around the edges. The ribbon is done with the Coil tangle pattern. The tangles were done with a pink Micron pen and the colors were done with Tombow markers and a watercolor technique.

Class pictures - Harper and Banbury

These pictures are from some recent classes. At Banbury in Bartlett we did jewelry using shrink plastic. Fun projects!! It's wonderful to see the creativity that came to play.

The pictures below are from a two week class at Harper college in Palatine. They added their own twists to the tangles we learned and came out with some beautiful tiles! Harper added a bit of a challenge as we had to change classrooms from one week to the next. Once everyone found the location, we were good.

Inspirational words

My grandson was christened recently and I wanted to do something special for him.Gifts for boys always seem to be harder than gifts for girls. And since this was for his christening, it narrowed the possibilities even more. I ended up being inspired by the work of Joanne Fink. She has a couple of books out under the Zenspirations titles. I combined inspiration from her with inspiration from design work from Margaret Bremner CZT to create this.

Our special grandson. May God bless him! He is wearing a christening gown that my grandmother bought for me as an infant. Since then the gown has been worn by many different family members. 

I ended up framing the pieces vertically instead of horizontally - it will work better in his room.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about a kickstarter campaign from Joanne Fink, the artist that inspired this project. There are only a few days left in this campaign so don't delay!

Yuma

Yuma is a tangle pattern by tina-akua hunziker, CZT. Her tangle came up as the tangle to try in the Diva challenges this week. You can find the instructions on her blog here. It's a beautiful tangle and I had so much fun playing with it this morning. When I first try a tangle that's new to me I like to use as a montangle, focusing just on it.  The bottom picture shows my first attempt in just black and white. Then I pulled out one of my colored tiles and did the tangles with a brown Micron and shaded it with a coordinating colored pencil.

Next I got out some additional colored pencils and tried to enhance the shading with different colors. This tangle gave me lots of opportunties to play with shading so I'm sure I'll be using it again soon!

The black and white tile I did before my colored tiles. 

Rainbow zendala

Still with my granddaughters,  I saw the new challenge but I wasn't sure how to approach it when I only had my basic supplies with me. But then I looked at all the craft supplies the girls had and I knew I had this.

One of the gifts I had brought was a mini mandala maker and it turned out to be perfect for the size of my Zendalas. A few colored pencils borrowed from the girls, and what fun!

Crafting with Grandma

I'm called the crafting grandma.  When I spend time with my granddaughters they are always excited to see what I brought to do. The older one is especially excited if I bring special crafts that her little sister isn't old enough for. The bags below are from that project.  As I worked on the bag for her, she worked on all three of the rest of the bags for her family.

These bags were done with Sakura IDentipens in multiple colors. I don't expect them to be washed much so the pens will hold up fine.

Flying the friendly skies

Another tile I did during my flight.  Looking out the window inspired the clouds of course. As I was thinking about all the people also traveling from one destination to another, I decided to use the tangle pattern Schway. All the different tangleations were fun to come up with and helped pass the time.

Blind string

On a trip to see my granddaughters in Texas I saw the new challenge had been posted. I only had my basic supplies with me but I knew that would be plenty.  I pulled the tray table down on the plane, closed my eyes, and went for it. The slight turbulence in the air made me slow down as it drew the tangles, one stroke at a time. I didn't stress about flying and the time literally flew by.