Diva Challenge #299: "New Official Tangle: Drawings"

I did not get to last week's Diva Challenge but did get to this week's. Probably helped that I did a class on Wednesday introducing the 4 new tangles released during Zen Again. This week's challenge is on using one of these tangles, Drawings. I have to admit that this tangle was a little bit of a struggle for me at first. I think that part of the issue was that I was too focused on making it look like Maria's examples.  After seeing some experimentation with the tangle by some other CZTs, notably Shelley Beauchamp, I let go and gave it another try. I think mine has more of an organic look than a wing but I am pleased with the way this turned out. One of the things that I have incorporated in my classes when I am introducing tangles is that the end, I have them do a tile. They can use some, or all of the tangles introduced in the class or they can use any that they know. This was a tile that I started in and was showing some things that they could do with the tangles. I did not get a mosaic of their tiles. I left my Ipad at home and did not have anything to take a picture with. One person did Icanthis in way that looked like a vine, I thought it was a nice, unique variation  of this pattern. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Noom, Icanthis, Drawings, & Ahh,

Highlighting done with General white charcoal pencil and Prismacolor white pencil

I have not looked at many of the things submitted. The ones that I have seen are of ones that have been posted on FB. If you have not done so, would strongly encourage you to do to I am the Diva and look at the great pieces of art. It is always enjoyable. If you can take time to comment on people's work. They greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go tangle !!

Last project before Christmas: Tangled Gift Bag

Nothing like working up to the last minute on things. I was going to finish this last night and got side tracked helping someone else finish some things. I thought they were going to help with them but it did not work out that way. Oh well, it all got done. This was the last thing I  needed for a present for a family member and finished it about 4:30 PM on December 24. Did  not have time to think about much and just went ahead on did it.

I used Shelly Beauchamp's tangleations of Drawing as my inspiration. If you have not seen them, click on this link,  to view her fantastic art work.  I saw the ensemble that she did and really liked it. Mine to do not have quite the flow of hers but I was pleased with the end result.  Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Not sure what happened with this picture but the bag is really a bright orange. It is not a brown.

Tangles used: Drawings, Stella, Nooms, & Indy-rella. Used a white PrismaColor pencil for the highlighting. If I would have had time, I should have taken a picture of what it looked like before I added the highlights. They made a significant difference.

Want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, and if you celebrate another holiday, Happy Holidays. I want to thank those of you who do follow and read my blog. The fact that people actually would find what I post and write about interesting is very humbling. I know I have not done as much here at the end of the year, but am hoping to be more consistent next year.

Again, Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and greatly appreciated. 

Go Tangle !! 

Diva Challenge #218: "White on Black on Found"

This week's Diva Challenge is a choice. Can do white on black or tangle on something found.  I have some rocks that I want to get to but they were not found, they were bought. I ended up using a Zendala tile as that is the black tile that I had in my bag that I carry. It worked out well. I did not use a template for this and just started. I did the dividing tangle and then just added others. Cadent is a favorite so I wanted to include that and I wanted to include some organic tiles. I did try a new tangle/pattern from Helen Williams. Guess I have to add to the challenge. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Cadent, Heartrope, Zander, Flux, Zinger,Tumbleweed, and Ahh

Shading done with Prismacolor White pencil with a blender.
I used both a Sakura White Gelly Roll pen and a Signo Uni-ball Angelic White pen for the tangles. Can you tell which tangles I used which pen on?

The new pattern that I tried is Tumbleweed by Helen Williams. It is okay for the first attempt, but not as flowing as I would like or even close to what Helen accomplishes. I will keep trying. 

I have not had a chance to look at many of the other posts but hope to do so during the rest of the week. Would encourage you to go to I am the Diva and look at the great art that is posted.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!

Zendala Dare # 97

This may be the only post that I get done this week. I was intrigued when I saw the template. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I just was not sure exactly how to proceed or how it would turn out. I wanted to use the sections in the template as negative space. I did  accomplish that. I am generally pleased with the  results of the Zendala. The highlighting with the white pencil did not turn out as well as I would have hoped. I do not remember it being a problem before as I had used colored pencils on the Renaissance tiles before. The paper seemed to break down when I tried to do any blending. Was frustrating. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Vache (variaiton), Stripes, The rest is just line work.

Shading/highlighting done with colored pencils, Prismacolor white pencil, and 4B pencil. The colored pencils was a mixture of pencils. 

I have not had a chance to look at many of the things that have been posted on The Bright Owl. Would encourage you to take a look and check out her giveaway. You may want to try it yourself, even if you do not post.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!

Diva Challenge #195: "Turning Old into New"

This week's Diva Challenge is courtesy of Sandy Hunter, whose blog is tanglebucket.blogspot.com. I first became aware of here blog through my sister. Sandy had developed some tangles but she also had a knack for combining two tangles into one pattern. She labeled this as her tangle remix. Was interesting. I cannot say that I tried to do too many, but I think I did try a few. They were fun but my brain does not think that way. This week's Challenge is to take favorite, or go to tangles and do them differently. If you picked a grid based tangle, do it free form and if you picked a free form tangle, use it a grid. I did the best I could with this. Not sure I was totally successful with this with both of the tangles that I chose. One tangle I chose was cadent. I use this a lot and like it. I usually use it in a structured way. It is not really grid based as I would define it, but I usually use it much like a grid. The other tangle I chose was Antidots. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it. Oh yeah, I used a Renaissance tile as that was the only tile that I had in the kit that I usually carry.

Tangles used: Cadent, Antidots

The shading was done with a white Prismacolor pencil and a Zenstone.

I did not get last week's Challenge, "Embracing the Yuck", done in time to post it. Am including it in this post only as it was some work. This is the second challenge I did using the non-dominant hand. I had started it and felt like I needed to finish. I have to admit that I did not really enjoy doing this. My idea was to start out with Knightsbridge to get a little practice. After I started it, there was such a large time gap before I could continue that it was not of much help. Here it is. I hope that somebody enjoys it.

Tangles used: Knightsbridge, Tripoli, Betweed, Ixorus, Paradox

I have not looked at many entries from either week's challenge. Not sure now much I will be able to look at #194 but definitely want to look at what people have done in this week's Challenge. Encourage you to go to I am the Diva and look at what others have done. Would also encourage you to try it yourself, even if you do not post it. Would encourage you to post it though if at all possible.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !! 

Diva Challenge #190: " Pink for Ardath" second tile

Was able to get this finished sooner than I thought. Have not used my gel pens for a while and that is what I used mostly in this tile. Is not quite as free flowing as I imagined in my mind but it turned out okay. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Nebel, Cadent, Mooka, Zinger

Nebel is a tangle from Sandy Steen Bartholemew's book Totally Tangled. 

I used Sakura Metallic gel pens and Stardust pens. They were both pink but was disappointed that the Stardust color does not show up well on the black tiles. It does show on white paper. Have not tried it on the Renaissance tiles, but thinking it will show up at least a little on those. I also used a white Prismacolor pencil for the highlighting and shading. 

Go to I am the Diva to see all the other great pieces of art. 

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!

Playing with Betweed

This week's prompt on Square One is Betweed. I all ready did a tile but wanted to play with it a little more. did not really want to do it on a traditional tile. Saw some great examples of Betweed and wanted to try some different things. Used black and white but in this case I used a black Zendala tile with a white pen. Still did it more symmetrical. If I have time may try something that is with more random spaces. I just wanted to try different ways to do the lines. As is sometimes ( read most of the time), the case it did not turn out exactly the way I envisioned it in my head, but that is okay. Gave a chance to get some practice highlighting and shading the black tiles also. Here is what I ended up with.

This ended being a exercise with Betweed and Indy-rella. The shading was done with a Zenstone and a white Prismacolor pencil. The more I look at it the more comfortable I am with it. Have not used my white pens for a while and they seemed to be a little sticky. Did not cover quite the way I would have liked. Had to go over a number of the lines. I used the Uniball Angelic white gel pen and the Sakura white gel pen, medium point. The string is random radii. Then filled in the spaces with Betweed. Was not anything special.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !! 

Diva Challenge # 177 : " Truffle by Caroline Broady, CZT" #2

While the first one I did was okay, did not think that I really did justice to the tangle. I also wanted to try a few new things so I made a second tile. This time I used a larger scale for Truffle and I did the work on a Renaissance zendala tile. Probably the biggest thing was that I wanted to do more with color. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Truffle, Maryhill, Scrawlz

Probably not the best choice but I used a combination of different colored pencils. I did want to see how smooth a finish I could get with my generic Loew-Cornell® pencils. I got these because they were inexpensive and could get a lot of different colors. They do not cover, or go on as smoothly as my Irojiten, Inktense or Prismacolor pencils. The white is the Prismacolor and the green on Scrawlz is the Irojiten.  I did learn that I have to be patient to get a richer color with the Loew-Cornell pencils. Needed many more layers. Over all I am pleased with the results and did accomplish what I wanted.

Want to try some more experimenting with different things. If I have time and get them done, will post them later. If you have not, make sure that you check out the other postings on I am the Diva. If so inclined, make a comment. I know that most enjoy hearing what you think of their work.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!

Diva Challenge #173 : Redux, Remix, Revisit Your Comfort Tangle

This was an interesting Challenge. Basically it was about change. It could be about the way that you do a tangle or something different such as your tools or technique. Right before the challenge I did something similar but it was not really with a comfort tangle so I did not want to just re-post that tile. Coming up with comfort tangles was not really much of an issue. The harder part was deciding what I wanted to do differently to stretch what I did with them. Some of this is that I was not really sure how to do something different with them. Some tangles are just easier to do tangleations or embellishments. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: My comfort tangles are Shattuck, Cadent, and Cubine. I like Annee but do not use it that much ( that is one of the other challenges, to mix it with one that you do not use often).

What is different about this is that I never used the blue on the tan tiles before. It is a 01 blue Micron. I have never done this variation of Cadent before. It is one in Margaret Bremner's post on Cadent variations. You can find it here. I also used Inktense water color pencils for shading. Before I had only used these pencils for a color wash. I had shaded with colored pencils before, but generic ones. This one is Sea Blue.  The white highlights are with a Prismacolor White wax pencil.  I do like the way that it turned out. It was done on a standard Renaissance tile and it was a little tough doing the Cadent. 

Earlier I mentioned that I had just finished something similar. This was with Mooka. I do use Mooka, but do not consider it a comfort tangle. After seeing some of the entries in the last Diva Challenge, I decided to play with Mooka a little.  I originally posted it on my blog on Sunday June 22, 2014. I am just including the shaded version here.  I used a Sakura White gel pen, white chalk pencil, and grey Fabrico marker. 

I have not had a chance to look at many of the other things submitted. I hope to do so over the next couple of days. If you have not looked at them, I would strongly recommend you do so. After looking at some of them, or even before, you may want to consider trying your hand at it also. If you really get into it, you may even want to post it on the Diva's blog.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!

Diva Challenge #164: "Amanda (Earth) Day"

I was not exactly sure what to do with this week's Diva Challenge. My brain does not tend to work well on these types of challenges. After a little bit of thought I decided what I could do is finish the Organic Garden, ala Meredith Yuhas, that I had started. Was not sure if I was going to get it done or not. I had fun doing this. Still working on the highlighting and shading on the gray paper. Am pleased with the way that this turned out. I hope that you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Sanibelle, Dragonair, Mooka, Flux, Antidot, Poke Root, Poke Leaf, Scroll feather, Ahh, 'Nzeppel, Msst, Featherfall, Wist, Chainlea, Zinger, Angel Fish, & Fescu. 

  

I think I got the names of all the tangles that I used.

The highlighting and shading was done with a white chalk pencil, Prismacolor white wax pencil, and HB graphite pencil

I have to admit that I did sneak a peak at a couple of entries this week before I was finished with mine. Do not think that I was influenced by them. I hope to get a look at all the rest of the entries over the next several days. If you have not all ready done so would strongly recommend that you visit The Diva's blog and look at the other great posts.  

Thanks for visiting. As always comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!

More play with the Renaissance tiles - Shading

A few days ago I posted a Renaissance tile using the new tangle Rixty. When I was done I indicated that I did not think it was done but I was not sure what I wanted to do. Well I did do something to finish it. It is a different shading than I usually do. Not sure what I think of it. It definitely does make the Rixty stand out a little. I did find out why people were making some of the comments about the Renaissance tiles. When shading, did have to be gentler with these tiles. Was not just when blending, but also when using the white pencil. I used a Prisma white wax pencil for he shading. I tried a few areas with the Zenstone but that was too light so I went over it. I will keep trying. I think I need to get out my copy of Made in the Shade and do a little practice. I hope you enjoy it.

The original shading using the colored and graphite pencils did not seem to impact the tile as much as the white wax pencil. Did not try using a white charcoal pencil. Nest time I use the Renaissance tiles, may have to try shading with that to see what difference, if any there is. 

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcome, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!

Playing with Renaissance tiles and white highlights

Have been wanting to use the Renaissance tiles for a while but just have not set down to do it. As much as I enjoy doing the Zendala Dare, not having one this week did give me some time to experiment. It also gave me a chance to practice some techniques and tangles that I will be using in a Zentangle® Garden class in a few weeks. Definitely takes a little planning not only for planning out the different size tangles but what to do.

Besides this I had the opportunity to try highlighting with some new tools. I had used the Zenstone a few times but have not used it a lot. I also received a PrismaColor White wax pencil in a package from my sister. I received it a while ago but had not gotten around to trying it yet. I was pleased with it and like it better than the white charcoal pencil that had used before. I think the Zenstone and the charcoal pencil blend similarly but the Zenstone leaves a smoother effect. Maybe is just a difference in how I am using them. I feel it is easier to completely blend out the charcoal pencil. Not as easily with the Zenstone.  Did not use a white gel pen to do any highlighting on this tile. I was having fun with the highlighting and may have gotten a little carried away with it.

I know that Zentangle is not suppose to be representational but because of doing the class I did start out with ideas of what I wanted to do. I used Pea-Nuckle to create a basket to put my organic tangles in. I have not used it a lot lately, but I really do like this tangle.

Well enough rambling, here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.