Easy Zendala cards

Ever want to know what to do with all those Zendalas you are accumulating? Besides displaying them, you could send your art in a card. These are easy in standard A7 cards (5 x 7 inches) and envelopes 5.25 x 7.25 inches. You can cut a piece of cardstock to 10 x 7 inches and fold in half, or purchase precut blank cards (try your local art store) or perhaps even recycle a card you received. The card above was a blank white A7 purchased at a craft store.

• YOU WILL NEED a completed Zendala
• A blank A7 card (Want to vary the size? see *)
• An A7 envelope
• 2 pieces of cardstock cut to 4.5 x 6.5 inches, one scrap as a test piece and one in a coordinating color for your finished card
• A craft knife and cutting mat
• Adhesive of your choice

Try your scrap rectangle first. Using your Zendala as a template, place it about a quarter of an inch from the right edge (see photos) centered top to bottom. Lightly, in pencil, trace the outline of the Zendala from approx 1 o'clock to 5 o'clock. More accurately, 12:30 to 5:30. Set your Zendala aside for the moment. Using a craft knife and a cutting mat, cut the line you just traced. Try sliding your Zendala thru the cut. You want the cut to JUST be big enough to hold the Zendala without binding, but not so large that it slips right through. You may need to cut the opening a little more, but a small cut goes a long way, so go slow. Once you know how far to cut, try it again on your coordinating piece of cardstock.

Center your Zendala in place in the coordinating piece of cardstock so it's the same distance from both the right and left edge. Turn the whole thing over. You'll want to add adhesive to the cardstock now but avoid any adhesive on the Zendala. (If you have the Zendala in place while you do this its easier to avoid getting adhesive where it will obstruct the Zendala.)
Turn it over and adhere to your card base, centering it on the front of the card (do a double check that you have the card face up before adhering....it happens). Note, if your Zendala slides out too freely, don't panic, just put a touch of repositionable adhesive on the card to keep your Zendala in place.
You or your recipient should be able to easily remove the Zendala. They can choose to keep it as a card, or keep just the Zendala, so be sure to sign and date the back of your Zendala just like you normally would. Feel free to embellish the card further from there. You can have a few of these made up in advance too, just awaiting your completed Zendalas.

*Although these instructions are for the A7 card, you can easily change it up for other sizes. As long as the card is larger than your Zendala, it should work. Just slightly reduce the size of the rectangle from your card size. If you are going to make your own envelope, you might want to consider trying to make the envelope from a standard sheet of paper. I've found that I can make an envelope from an 8.5 inch square piece of paper that fits a 4 7/8 by 6 1/8 inch card (if you have the Ultimate from Crafter's Companion and the envelobox insert, score on "F" and "I" ). And my mat cardstock is 4 1/8 x 5 1/2 inches. I still make the slit no closer than 1/4 inch from the right edge and it works great for me. I also have the grand nest abilities circle dies from Spellbinders. Although I don't die cut the slit, I do use the die as an edge to cut against with my craft knife. It makes for a nicer cut vs trying to follow a pencil line. You could also try using the edge of the Zendala tin, but you may need to shorten the cut as it is larger in diameter than the Zendala.

Here are some examples I've sent out in the past couple of months, these vary in size as you may be able to see.

I used a balloon stamp from Penny Black with a stamp positioner on the following Zendala. I also used a Mini Mandala Designer for the segments. And the idea for the curved Hillibaugh came from a student. Thanks Akiko!

You can find more details of the last two Zendalas from this post. The paper I used for the envelope in the background is from Paper Parachute.

That's a freeform Huggins on the very first photo inspired by Sandy's video over at cloudtangle.  Watch it here if you haven't seen it....it's awesome!

Have a great week!

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Blue Renaissance

I've been enjoying my blue Strathmore Art Again Series 300 60 lb paper. I'm not sure what the color is called, as mine came from a multi color pad and the color names aren't listed but it is a nice gray blue. When I made my bullet journal, I included several sheets of paper suitable for drawing on in addition to regular paper for my calendar and lists etc. This is one of those drawing pages.  The blue is very nice using the blacks, browns, grays and white traditionally used for the Renaissance tiles. I'm not quite sure why the brown works so nicely with the blue, but it does. I was really happy with the dew drops enhancer on Finery (thanks to Lynn Mead for the tutorial).

That's Pendrills and Quipple you see on the second tile. If you'd like to see my earlier blue Renaissance, check it out here. Have a great week!

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Fleavy

Fleavy ATC

I've been playing with a new (to me) tangle by Hanny Waldburger, CZT of Zenjoy called Fleavy. It's an awesome tangle that I've enjoyed all week. It's sort of evolved, some Fleavy, some Zander and add a dash of Diva Dance here and there. If you'd like to see my earlier slider pen boxes check them out here. Have a great week, and thanks for sharing Hanny!

Slider pen box beginnings

After watercolor and some shading

Completed box with ATCs

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WooHoo! Maryhill as a challenge!

Maryhill Zendala

Wow! Maryhill as a monotangle was Joey's Weekly Tangle Challenge #76. I'm sorry to say I haven't participated before, but how could I not this week? So, OK, I might have "zenned out".

I started with a Zendala and got my compass and drew a bunch of circles, (too dark, I might add) no measuring. Next I connected a bunch of points. Yup I got carried away with the string. I ended up overworking the paper as I erased (the first step is admitting it) all the unused strings. Then I added some more!  Maryhill fits so nicely in any triangular shaped area!

Before shading and thickening some lines

I also wanted to participate in The Diva's Challenge #233 even tho I posted Zenith last week. (Check them out here.) So I drew another Zenith strictly as a border for a page I wanted to laminate for my bullet journal. I thought some color would be nice and I used my Copic markers. The colors are included in the photos in case you are interested In the color palette. As Copics bleed through most watercolor paper, I barely put down any color and I only blended the lightest colors, the yellows. They played together very nicely and I will be using that color combination again.

I used the middle 4 colors on the border and the darker when airbrushing below

Since I was liking that color palette, I thought I'd try another Maryhill using the Copics. I chose a Cheery Lynn die and used the cut out as a stencil, airbrushed Copics over it onto watercolor paper. (No bleed through with the airbrush). I die cut it into a circle a little larger than a standard Zendala. (I get a lot of use out of my nesting circle dies by Spellbinders.) I tangled with a Sakura pigma micron in black and shaded with pencil as usual. I also added white with a Sakura Gelly roll for hilites. I liked it but immediately wondered what it would look like with ink other than black.....
So I made another one and tangled with orange, red and green microns. I shaded with Faber Castell Polychromos, pencil and white Gelly roll.

After airbrushing with stencil and before tangling

I had fun as usual, just playing around trying things out. I really enjoy seeing lots of people trying Maryhill and I hope you all enjoy it too!

Have a great week!

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