Diva Challenge #231: Guest Blogger - Sharla Hicks, CZT - " The Undulating Tangles in C and S minor"

This week's guest blogger has an interesting challenge. It is to take a couple of the basic strokes and play with them. There are a few more suggestions. One is to take familiar tangles and work in a series. The other is to take a new one and begin a new series. This makes a little more sense if you look at her entire post here. She developed her style by redoing the same tangle and changing or pushing each attempt. I think this is what she means by a series.

When I hear undulating, the first person that I think of is Helen Williams. She has a way of weaving her tangles and lines across the page that is unique to her. So I chose to use one of her patterns, Tumbleweed. Cannot say that it is undulating as what hers would be, but it was interesting doing it. At some time I would like to try to do a little more with it. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Tumbleweed, Stripes, Tipple

Shading done with 4B, 6B, and HB pencils.

I think I may have gotten a little carried away with the shading. I thought of using gray Prismacolor pencils to do the shading but I only have 2 gradients, 30% and a 50%. Did not think this provided enough variance. For some reason when I try to do Tumbleweed, I do not get that nice broad flow that I would like. Need to keep working with it. 

I have not had a chance to look at many of the things that others have posted. A few have shown up in my blog reader. Hope can look at them during the rest of the week. If you have not all ready looked at the other post at I am the Diva, would encourage you to do so. Give it a try yourself, even if you do not post it. 

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

Go Tangle !!   

Diva Challenge #230: "Let's all be ZenDivaDala - Guest Blogger The Bright Owl, Erin Olson, CZT

This week I did not have to make a choice between doing the Diva Challenge or the Zendala Dare as the guest Blogger is Erin Olson, the CZT that does the Zendala Dare. Since she has returned she has definitely come up with some unique templates. This week is no exception. I am not sure about this one. I usually use tangles to complete the different sections. While I used some, or variations of some it is mostly line work. That is different for me. I have seen some people that can do this with really stellar results. Mine are not in that category but it is okay. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles, or variations used: Betweed, Scena, Verve, Munchin

Shading done with 2B pencil.

Lately have been spending more time trying to get my inventory back up. That is one reason that I have not had as much time to participate, or even respond to recent challenges. It also a reason why my blogs have been pretty simple and maybe a little terse. Hopefully things will slow down a little soon. I have not looked at what others have posted. I am sure that there are a lot of interesting creations. If you have not checked them out all ready would encourage you to go to I am the Diva to do so.

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

Go Tangle !! 

Diva Challenge #229: "+/ - ", Guest Blogger Sandy Hunter,CZT

These week's Guest Blogger is Sandy Hunter. She may be best known for some of her tangles and her tangle remix. They are fun to do . Her challenge is not just to have some negative space, but to make it the focus of the tile. This was harder than I thought. I have not used strings for a while. I usually just pick a tangle and start. I though about doing this and seeing what negative space was left. I decided to not do this and settled for a string with a basic star/flower shape. I had some ideas of what I wanted to do but I am not sure that it ended up leaving the white space as the star of the tile. I decided to use the black/brown color combo and this may have taken away from having the negative space be the focus. The tile itself, I like but not sure that it was successful in addressing the challenge. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Zander, Shattuck, Merryweather

Shading done with HB, 4B graphite pencils. Color highlighting done with Prismacolor Pencils (Golden rod, Burnt Ochre, and White. 

When I decided to use Merryweather, did not realize that it was a tangle developed by the Sandy Hunter. Went to check the step-out and then saw it. Decided to keep it as it seemed to fit. If you  have not all ready done so, would encourage you to go to I am the Diva to look at the pieces of art that have been posted. 

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

Go Tangle !! 

Diva Challenge #228: Guest Blogger - Cari Sultanik, CZT

Have another newer CZT being the guest blogger for the Diva Challenge. Cari Sultanik is also the lady who started the FB Zentangle Prayers for Hayden. This was to support a little girl, and her family, that is struggling with cancer. People she asked that people do a tile and post it to the page but a number of people also sent the tiles as well. But that is not what this challenge is about. This is about celebrating things organic and natural. She stated that she has always liked the tangles that imitate nature.

I have been busy the last couple of weeks getting ready for classes, an event, deciding to put items in a local consignment/reuse store, and my job has kept me busy. I did not even do a tile for last week's challenge. I was not sure that I would do anything this week either. After I started it, I was glad that I did. It was nice to do something just to tangle and not preparing things. Was definitely ikn production mode before. This was just relaxing. I enjoy doing the organic tangles also but there are times when I can be frustrated by them. I chose to use some old faithful tangles for this one. This is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Featherfall, Phicops, Abundies, & Tipple. 

I am not sure about the pod tangle. It is kind a cross between In-a-pod and Sandy Steen Bartholomew's Awdry. It may also be one that someone else has done and I just do not know the name of it.

Shading is done with HB, 2B, and 4B pencils.

Carol Ohl's Featherfall is one of my favorite oranic patterns. I like the way that you can have them close together and it still looks nice. Did not really intend it, but after I was doing this had an aquatic character to it. I am pleased with the way this turned out as well as enjoyed doing it.  

I have not looked at many of the pieces of work that others posted. I saw a few that were in my blog reader. Probably will not have time to look at a lot of them, but hope to get to as many as I can. Will have to see how many I can comment on. I know I like it when people take the time to comment on my work. By this time, as this is really a late post, I am sure that most people have all ready looked at the posts but if not go to I am the Diva and check things out.

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

Go Tangle !!

More tangled gift bags

I did not intend to post a lot of these but some unique things happened as I was doing them. Here is the first one that I did. It is on brown craft paper and is about 5" x 8" I used Prismacolor pencils using a single color with white to create a tone. It generally lightens the color.

I purchased a number of other bags as well. These are larger and measure about 8"x 9". Here is one that has a silver frosted finish. I again used Prismacolor pencils with white for the tone and tried to do some with just the white. That did not show up as well in the pictures and it is not as strong in reality unless the light strikes it just right. I kind of reminded me of working with the frosted glass ornaments that I did a couple of years ago. as I usually do, I used a blending pencil on the Prismacolor pencils to smooth out the color.  Here is what the frosted one looked like.

I used a purple and a green Prismacolor pencil. For the black shading, I used a regular graphite pencil but also used the blender on this as well. I layered it to get the different intensities.

Here is the last one. This is the one that was the most surprising. The bag is the larger size and it is just a plain white paper. It is almost like working on a tile as far as the color goes. The paper is not the same quality. I say that as I approached it with the idea of using both black and brown microns. It developed in true Zentangle® style. I had no idea of what I wanted to do. I did not want to use a string so I started with a single circle. I did the one in the upper right first. I then did the one with Gneiss and the one with Drupe was last. I liked the combination of the black and brown. Then there became the issue of how to finish off the background. Probably got carried away with Opsess on the bottom but Florz was an easy choice. I did not want to do too much embellishment with it. I again used Prismacolor pencils for the highlighting and fill in Opsess. I am really pleased with the way that these turned out.

For those of you familiar with different tangles, I did not really make that many mistakes on the bag. A couple of the Bronx Cheers were to cover up some errant pen marks. Most of them were additions to provide a little balance after having so few on the cover.

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

Go Tangle !!

Tangling for fun: Flextangles and Tri-hexaflexagon

Getting ready for some events early in August. Wanted to have something fun. Not sure if I will sell these are do something to give them away as a way to attract customers. Either way they were fun to do. There are two different things. I only have one done with a little heavier paper. That is the flextangle. This post will have a lot more pictures than I normally post just to show you the different sides. and templates I have created.
Here are pictures of a completed Flextangle.

The tangles are done with microns and gel pens. The other sides are done with colored pencils. I did not make a copy of this so there will only be one like this. 

I did do a couple of other templates. Here are those. I have not made copies of these and put it together yet.

I did a little shading on the second one. Not sure if I will do any shading on the other. I kind of like it without. May keep it that way for the variety.

This last template is a little different.

The Paradox was done with colored Microns. The one above it is colored using Tombow markers. I have not used them a lot but they worked well on this. This is a Tri-hexaflexagon. If you are not familiar with these, here is a link to a page to see them. http://www.auntannie.com/Geometric/Flexagon/.  The Flextangle is easier to change the pattern but is a little harder to put together. The opposite is true with the Tri-hexaflexagon. It is flat so it is easy to put together but it took a while to figure out how to change the sides. I also think that it works better when you have patterns that are the same and you change the colors. 

The templates and the completed items were done on 90lb drawing paper. It is not as stiff as some of the card stock I have used, but it is heavier than copy paper. It withstands the flexing fairly well. 

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

Go Tangle !! 

Square One Focus Tangle: Hollibaugh

This week's focus tangle on the Square One FB page is Hollibaugh. This is an interesting tangle. It is usually one that I always teach in the Basic Class because of the drawing behind technique. Wanted to do something a little different with it.  Not sure when I did this before. Seems that maybe it was part of a challenge or maybe it was in response to a post in one of the FB pages. I like it because it adds a little flair to the tangle. Have been seeing Hollibaugh tangles that people have been doing at  Can-tangle. Not sure exactly what they were doing as there were just pictures with little information. Think that it is doing tangleations and trying to stretch tangles a little more. Because of the way that this is done was also able to include last week's focus tangle, Finery as I was not able to post a tile. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

 Tangles used: Hollibaugh, Paradox, Tipple, Finery, & Shattuck 

Shading done with 2B pencil

Have been a number of interesting things posted on the FB page. If you do not regularly follow this page, would encourage you to do so. You can see some great work and get some inspiriation about things to do. Is not really a site to post questions but can contact the poster in a private message with questions.

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

Go Tangle !!