Friday, August 28, 2015

Zenith et al.

Zenith

Zentangle® released a new tangle this week, Zenith. As a CZT I had the privilege to play with it a while longer. This is a very versatile and elegant little tangle, and I can't forget to add, easy. Lots of room for variations, lots of shading opportunities.

I put together a class for Zenith and border tangles (Bordering on Bliss), complete with this little 4 x 4 inch tri-fold card. It's perfect for border tangles and you can add a sentiment to the center, or mount or draw in either a 3.5 x 3.5 tile or a Bijou. The card is made from Fabriano studio 140 lbs cold press watercolor paper that I trimmed to 12" x 4", scored and die cut the concentric squares. I should warn you that running the paper thru the die cutting machine did take some of the watercolor texture away, and pressed in some additional texture from my cutting plate. You could also use a ruler and craft knife to cut the openings.

As usual, I wanted to make a gift of this card, but I needed to hang on to it for awhile. I wanted to share with my students how the leaf behind Bijou wasn't originally going to be black. A mis-step challenged me to rethink my options and I ended up with something even better than I had planned (in typical Zentangle fashion).

Student tiles
Origami envelope for card

Unfortunately, I only had one student after all that planning! No worries tho, we had fun trying out different variations of Zenith, different shading options and we made Zenith turn a corner too! One good thing about being the only student, you get your choice of the give away and you pick what tangles you want to try! We tried some other border tangles and we played with paper and made this little origami envelope for the card. And, I have another gorgeous little payment envelope!

Enjoy some more Zenith examples....

Recently, I awoke. thinking about tangling (so much better than the old days when I'd think about work) and how I should start a segment called "fix that!" Where I show a before and after of something that didn't go as planned! (The Bijou card above would have been perfect, but, alas, I have no "before" photo. I do, however, have another example:

This was my attempt at an all over Zenith. Instead of going right to left, or left to right (which should have been easier) I sort of drew around a couple of corners and then tried to make them meet towards the center. As you can see, it wasn't quite coming out. So after some appreciation of what I liked, some consideration of what I wanted to either downplay or downright cover up, here is the outcome.....Fix that!

I've got to say tho, that I need to change the name from Fix That! I don't mean to imply there was a mistake. More to the point is the challenge...that we all need practice making the best decision from where we are now. This could be to leave it or to add to it. Nobody really gets to start over. So, I've been thinking of other names, like "I wish I meant to do that", or "Making Lemonade", "Things only get better from here", "Panning for gold", "Art is too precious to wad it up and throw it away" and "Why not try again?", but I think I may have hit the mark when I thought of "Still Hanging in There! (And I won't even talk about the acronym.) What do you think?

Enjoy your week!

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Friday, August 21, 2015

C and S minor

Enyshou
I do think of tangling as a way of seeing music. Most of the patterns can be so very rhythmic. So to me it was a little funny that The guest Diva challenge #231 this week included a reference to music (C minor). The challenge is to use an old favorite undulating C or S curve tangle and work in a series. To me, that says Enyshou. Not really a question about which tangle to use! And yes, Enyshou does take on a life of its own from my pen and I think you can probably see those flats in the key signature!
Enyshou
For the first "tile" I put down three gently curved esses In pencil as my string and then in pen, Cs and Ss and then my pen just took over.
I really liked Sharla's Isochor example, so I thought I'd try that filled with Enyshou for my second tile.
Enyshou/Isochor
And because I forgot to show you these ATCs, and because you can see C and S there too, maybe just not in a minor key, here are a couple of examples that have already been given away.
Phicops, Maryhill, Msst, Tipple, Zander, Flux, Rain, Printemps and Sparkle
Thanks for your comments, have a wonderful day!

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Friday, August 14, 2015

Welcome!

Welcome to Zentangle! Here is our class mosaic, our own moment in time visual journal.

 

 

Saturday, August 8, 2015

+/- add color

I had so much fun with this challenge, this is my second entry! I thought I'd add some color this time. The tangle is Sparkle by Sharon Caforio. I adapted it to the triangle. This flower of life is approximately 7 by 7 inches. To see my first entry and for a link to the challenge, click here.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Less is more. Focusing on white space.

Maryhill
This week's Diva Challenge #229 piqued my interest. I was going to go on and on about how my contribution came to be. Then I put it together that "Guest Diva" Sandy Hunter's post didn't lack for brevity. Perhaps that's part of the message. So, I'm contributing to white space here too.