The Diva's Weekly Challenge #273: Tangle Remix

The Diva's challenge this week included some of the sweetest and funniest kid pictures ever! Ice cream, mustaches, hats, cupcakes...you really must take a peek if you haven't yet! At the end of her post, you'll see that she asked us to take a previous tile and do a remix. I chose one from a black and Renaissance tile class I took last year. I still struggle with the Renaissance tile and black,brown and white ink idea. My tiles never seem to get the glow and depth, that rich feel that others have. I've made a note to create a Renaissance mosaic in the Mosaic app, so that I can study this. (A task made much easier by the new app for iPads!) I wanted to keep the tangles, Renaissance paper, black and white ink from the old. I replaced the brown ink with pink and made a few changes:

Do you have any tips for working with the Renaissance paper? What are your go-to tangles for using it? Do you use more of a certain color ink?

Thanks for stopping by! Have a fun week!

Gnarly!

Joey challenged us this week with another circle string and the tangle "Gnarly". I had to practice this one quite a bit, until I finally found a way that worked for me. Of course, the phone rang, and when I came back to start my tile, I had forgotten "my way"!! (I sometimes have the attention span of a gnat.) What was I saying? Oh, yes. I did my tile all the same, thinking that it might come back to me. I don't think it ever did. Molygon kept taking over my hand muscles, as I forgot to make bass clefs instead of bananas. All the same, it helped to Zen me out. As if I needed it, after all that delicious Cuban food I had for lunch with my newly retired colleague, who is Cuban, and his wife, who recommended this new place. Well, it's not new, but it was for me and.....

Thanks for a fun challenge, Joey!

Joey and the Diva and my indecision!

Sometimes, I can't decide. For years, as a middle school teacher, I had to make hundreds of decisions of day, most of them involving whether a student could go somewhere--to the front desk, to the library, to their locker, etc., etc.! Am I now suffering from the occupational hazard of snap judgement? Maybe yes. Maybe no!
Friday found me trying to squeeze in Joey's and the Diva's challenge in one tile. Joey gave us another circle string, Maryhill and a ban from using Maryhill in the center circle. The Diva said, "Don't take yourself too seriously! Use a little red."
And thus it went:

Any preferences? Do you suffer from indecision? How do you cope?!?

Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful week!

The Awesome Simplicity of Zentangle

This week, Adele Bruno's Wednesday Words of Wisdom was a quote by Charles Mingus, American jazz genius, double bassist, composer and band leader. It inspired me to start a series of favorite quotes. (I have a terrible memory for quotes, so I like to have them where I can see them.) I printed the quote on ivory 8/12 in x 11 in cardstock, drew my string and started tangling. When I finished, I thought, "So much for simplicity!" But I truly believe that the Zentangle® method, rather than my drawing, embodies the meaning behind Mingus' words. Through a series of "awesomely simple" strokes--i,c,s,o--our creativity blossoms and blooms. Thank you, Rick and Maria and Charlie.

Beads of Courage

In this week's Diva Challenge, Laura Harms explains: Beads of Courage is an arts in medicine program that helps kids with chronic or life threatening illness tell the story of their medical journey. Each bead represents something different. A different procedure or appointment or special circumstance. For example, when seeing a doctor or getting a poke, instead of getting a sticker when they leave they are given a glass bead for each thing. (Blue for doctor, black for poke. Some other beads are yellow = night in the hospital, pink = respiratory support, magenta = trip to emergent care, teal = tube insertion or removal, rainbow = therapy--physical, speech, occupational, respiratory. Every child's necklace is unique to their story.

Laura, our darling Diva and Beads of Courage mom/supporter,asked us to be inspired by this wonderful organization and / or the Color Run she recently organized for its benefit. Her son, Artoo, is a brave heart, whose favorite color is green. This tile is for him, and all the children who battle illness every day.

My beads are fragmenta from the Zentangle Primer, vol 1.

Thank you, Laura, for all the inspiration you and your family offer us every day.

Joey's Weekly Challenge #117

Ahhhhhhhhh. Joey just treated me to a brain massage!! A circle with three interior circles touching each other. Socc was our tangle. 

Such a wonderful challenge to start the week! Thank you, Joey!

Joey's Weekly Challenge #116

Hope you've had a wondrous week tangling since we last met! This week, I found myself tangling almost daily--which is sometimes difficult of late!--in purposeful and also random ways. My purposeful tangles? This card for my beloved Lar's birthday on Monday:

Then these two, in an effort to zen out after some stressful home improvement involving winged mammals:

Today, I had time to finally sit down and do Joey's Challenge #116. Having just one suggested tangle--Flux-- to use in the string made it really relaxing for me, as I just let it happen. I had no expectations when I started, and really had the notion that tangles are used to fill spaces, like colors do. Thanks, Joey!

Many thanks for your visit! I'm still catching up on my rounds to see your amazing work, which I always enjoy! 

Diva's Weekly Challenge #270

Skye. Rhymes with "sigh".
I love this tangle. Sigh.
I still have to use a pencil first. Sigh.