Tangled Owls

This little project falls into the crafting with recycled materials category. Yes, The main material is the core of a roll of TP. You could also use the tube from a roll of gift wrap paper and cut it to shorter lengths. It's very easy to push in one end to create the ears and then the fun part of adding tangles comes in. I used a Sakura IDentipen and a white graphite pencil. It was quick and easy and I did all three of these in a couple of hours.

If you live in an area of the country where rain is predicted on Halloween - this would be a good project to keep those little goblins busy!

side view

Full disclosure - I saw something similar to this on Pinterest and realized that tangles would be a great addition to this project.

Almost Halloween - W2

This tile began as a way to do a montangle with W2. I laid out all my little squares and was about to start when I spotted one of my rulers that has a serrated edge. It's a ruler that's meant to be used when you want to rip paper and get a perfectly uneven deckled edge. Somehow that inspired me to do my lines in a wiggly, shakey fashion. (I didn't actually use the ruler - just was inspired by it.)

I've always liked to add linework to my W2 and as I started it I continued with the shakey lines, and that led to the Msst tangle. Now I could see it was starting to become kind of strange and spooky. I thought of adding spiders but that would be a little too representational for Zentangle. So then I came up with a few Tipple like orbs - and with the dots inside they can be seen as eyeballs. Lots of deep shading finished it.

I'm happy with the way this came out. Especially because I frequently have students who complain that their linework is too shakey. Well, now I can show them that if they just go with it they can come up with all sorts of possibilities!

Leaf Zendala

With fall coming there is lots of inspiration to include leaves and fall colors into our artwork. I started with a colored tile (seen below). I used the Zendala dare # 112 from Erin Olsen at The Bright Owl. This is a lovely Zendala template that I'm sure I will use again. I only used two tangles - Poke leaf and Meer but the template has such lovely lines that I didn't need more. Tangles were done with a brown Micron and shaded with colored pencils.

Yes - this is the tile I started with - but I took this picture late at night with artificial lighting. It's frustrating when you try to take pictures and it comes out so different form what you expect. You can see the lines from the template. I lightly penciled them in using a light box.

Nymph

Playing with the tangle pattern Nymph from Melinda Barlow. Nymph begins with the Zentangle pattern N'zeppel. I did most of the tangling with an 02 size pen and then did the linework for Nymph with an 005. This is done on a regular 3 1/2" tile and just turned on the diagonal.

On this tile I did Nymph two ways. The center area starts with Nymph in a grid based N'Zeppel. In the outer area I did a random N'Zeppel. I did the grid in a wonky fashion so my resulting Nymph has a very different feel. Then I added some Paradox on top.

Gemini Munchin

The car saga has come to an end. We made it home safely. We will still follow up with the Ford dealer and see if they will reimburse us for expenses - (since I had them inspect the car for any problems two weeks before we left). So after a day of doing absolutely nothing, I'm back to my tangling.

The Diva linked us to the video that Molly Hollibaugh made for the tangle pattern Munchin. I haven't used that tangle too much and I don't know why. It's actually easy and fun to do.

Since this tangle begins with random dots that remind me of the night sky, I decided to use dots that were not quite random. My dots represent the Gemini constellation. I googled it and found multiple images to inspire me. (See below) From there I used my gelly roll pen, the white graphite pencil and the Zenstone around the edges.

Rocky roads

The East coast vacation was fantastic. I saw family, we got a chance to get a last sail of the season, great seafood dinners, and teaching Zentangle at the New England Traditions convention.

Coming back home however has not been so much fun. It's been a long drive. That's OK - I anticipated that. What I didn't anticipate was the last day when the car started making noises and the rear end started shimmying as we were driving at highway speeds on the Interstate. We limped into a rest area and began a 5 hour ordeal of contacting our insurance to get a tow. We ended up with two different tow trucks as the insurance approved company wasn't authorized to pick up on the Interstate. So now I'm sitting in a hotel room as the dealership works on some very expensive repairs.

So I tangled on my rocks to keep calm and pass the time.

I finally got a chance to do the Diva challenge with the Tri-bee tangle pattern.

I did this one as I was thinking about the repairs being done to my car!

And I tangled with Zenith some more.

The car up on the tow truck. My husband is on the right - looking rather frustrated.

Tangling on rocks

This tangled rock was left at my sister's home tucked among the other rocks by her fireplace.  Her home in Rhode Island is near the coast. I love walking along the rocky coastline looking for perfectly shaped rocks.

This rock was tangled with an IDentipen.  Highlights were added with a white charcoal pencil.

Color Strings

Color! - Oh, how it excites me! This weeks challenge is to use color as our string. One of the suggestions was to use a stencil and to spritz or daub the color over it. I ended up going more free form with my color. In the tile above I dribbled three colors of ink onto my tile and kind of played with it. I purposely left areas of white space. When it was dry I outlined everything and tangled in the white spaces. There is also a little bit of shading with colored pencil to make those areas more defined but it's hard to see that in the photograph.

This is another tile I did at the same time as the first one. I've done the outlining but haven't started the tangles yet.

This tile was done with a wet into wet technique. I used water to wet the whole tile first and then added color here and there. I didn't have the white spaces to tangle within so I used my colored pens and tried a different approach.

This is a group of tiles I did at the same time while I was playing with my inks. As you can see, you will get quite a few unexpected results as you try to get the one that inspires you.

The two tiles below are ones that I think will be next to go up on the drawing table. Stay tuned!