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!

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