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.

Joey's Weekly Challenge #115 / Salad Days

Yesterday at lunch with my husband, I remarked that I had never been really clear on the expression "salad days". He whipped out the tablet and read: "Salad Days: noun. The period when one is young and inexperienced. The peak or heyday of something." Those two definitions, to my mind, are contradictory, and have always confused me. To my further puzzlement, I learned that this expression originated in 1606, in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, when the latter lamented her "salad days, When [she] was green in judgment, cold in blood"!
I digress.
Joey's challenge this week was inspired by her spring planting and the Roman numeral XV. The patterns all related to veggies: Chard, Corn Rows, Black-eyed Peas, Garlic Cloves and Seedlings. Pretty clever, that Joey!

Happy Planting, Joey! In closing, I "leaf" you with a picture of my salad days, circa 1992.

The Diva's Weekly Challenge #268: Ellish

Urbandictionary.com defines "ellish" as "a word used in the northeast for "great / cool / good". News to me! And also the newest tangle from the ZT mothership, as well as the focus of this week's Diva challenge. I wasn't particularly "drawn" to this tangle, but once I got started, I had an ellish time! I did leave off the bottom loop, which made it more 8ish, and even flipped one around for fun.

Thanks for visiting! See you next week!

PS: A second ellish! (It's starting to grow on me!!) This was done on Elephant Poop Paper. I love the feel of the microns on it. It's quite rough and very absorbent. Graphite doesn't really work on it, so I used some cross hatching and rounding for shading.

Joey's Weekly Challenge #114

My son-in-law messaged me on Sunday. "Thought you might find this interesting...You could always try doing a reverse of one of your zentangles." Glue gun stencils. I had a glue gun, and this looked like lots of fun. When I saw Joey's challenge on Monday, I knew I had to give it a try. I didn't have any ink spray, but I did have an old perfume bottle and a old pen nib that needed cleaning. I soaked the nib in the remaining perfume and watched a lovely teal appear.

(NB My attempts at Skye in the background!)It wasn't very dark, but I decided to continue. I'm rather pleased with the results. This might just be a first in the Zentangle community: a scented tile!!

Thanks for the inspiration, Drew!

And thanks to this week's visitors for stopping by! Have a wonderful week!

Back for Black!

I can hardly believe it's been over a month since my last post! With your permission, I'd like to share what I've been doing instead of blogging!

On April 24, I took off for a 10-day visit with my best girl friend, who lives in Normandy. She was about to celebrate an important (we'll leave it at that!) birthday, and I wanted to join her. She treated me to road trips to Rouen, Etretat, Les Andelys, Honfleur and Monet's house and garden in Giverny.

I returned to my beloved Lar on May 4, and a few days after, enjoyed  a visit from my dear English friend, Sonia, who now lives in Atlanta. It was quick, but delightful!

On May 14, my daughter graduated with her degree in web development.(Here's the card I made with her favorite quote.)

And on May 15, I started a new series of "Introduction to Zentangle" classes at our local library.

Whew. I rarely have that much going on at once!!! Interesting how I am easily overwhelmed now that I've retired!

Any hoos, I have been trying to get back into my Zentangle world. There were a few drawings in airports, and a couple to help me "digest" everything I'd seen in Normandy, but I'm still feeling a little rusty!!

The Diva's Weekly Challenge #268--"A bit-a-black"--was my first endeavor to pick up where we left off! I chose to use the demo tiles I made for my class last Sunday. (Apologies for the poor resolution. My scanner apparently reset itself to 60 dpi while I was away, and I just now caught it.)

Before:

After:

The next day, I decided to use the same string and tangles on a Strathmore black tile. I wanted to try my new white Uni-ball Signo, which Margret Bremner recommends for a hotter, more opaque white than the Gelly Roll.

By the way, you have probably seen Margret's new tangle "Skye", which is based on a Celtic knot pattern. It is GORGEOUS, and I have been desperately trying to learn it for the past 5 days!! Here's my latest attempt, which I had to sketch in pencil first :( 

Well, it's a start! 
So good to see you again! Thanks for stopping by, and for indulging me in this lengthy return to our wonderful Zentangle community. Have a wonderful week!

Joey's Weekly Challenge: VIII

Another "busy" week. April is National Jazz Month. Before you say, "So?", let me explain. I love music--classical, opera, rock, folk, world, you name it!--but jazz? Jazz is one of my vital organs. Durham, my city, is fortunate to have an incredible local jazz station, numerous jazz venues, 3 university jazz studies programs and more. Saturday last, Lar and I heard the Heart of Carolina Jazz Orchestra, with the amazing Stephen Anderson. Yesterday, we caught a free (!) show at the University of North Carolina with guest artist Bobby Floyd on a Hammond organ. Tonight, you'll find us at the Sax Appeal concert with the outstanding North Carolina Central University Jazz Ensemble from the UK! (Last night, Mary Stallings headlined there.) April in North Carolina is good for spring flowers, especially azaleas, and jazz festivals.

All this just to say that I finally sat down this morning to try to meet Joey's requirements for this week. As I am running low on white tiles, I took a crazy colored one and, colored pencils in hand, intensified the color. Out came my black 08 micron, just to embolden things a bit, and voilà. (The funky crescent moon came out of the Zentangle Primer. I had never thought to use triangles instead of half moons. Now that I have, I'm thinking it may be another pattern.  But this girl's stickin' to her story.)

Hope your week is filled with springtime or autumnal beauty and the music that makes you vibrate!  If you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what that is! If you need some new tunes, click on the links above.

The Diva's Weekly Challenge #263: Globular Grid

A globular grid??? This week, the Diva almost scared me away!!!! But then I remembered all the things that I've learned from her and other amazing artists. "Anything is possible, one stroke at a time." I thank her for teaching me how to make a globular grid. (Mine is pretty wonky, but that's okay!) When I started to fill it in, I saw all these little bits of different shapes and sizes and thought, "This might be an opportunity to try the new concept of reticula and fragments, as put forth by Rick and Maria in the new Zentangle Primer." I see this as mosaic work, as opposed to "color" work. (Maria says that tangles are like colors, right? Well, for me, the reticula and fragments are like little bits of crockery and tiles in a mosaic.)
If that doesn't make a bit of sense, no worries. Here's the finished product.

Thanks for stopping by! I'll be making the rounds of your blogs (a little late!) on this rainy Tuesday and look forward to seeing your work!