Hex 1 fragments - or puzzling with hexagons!

Reticula and Fragments.  A different way of talking about grids and grid patterns but inclusive of different shapes.  After all,  in the Zentangle® world our grids can be much more than squares and rectangles.  If you are considering buying the Zentangle Primer vol 1, there is a whole chapter, or lesson on Reticula and Fragments.  They've been around for awhile.  I think it started, for me at least, with this Zentangle newsletter post.  (So if you don't have the Primer, this is another very good reference document.) Eventually, I was filling in Tripoli, and ING and more recently, this hexagon card (Consider this post Hex 1A fragments) and Molygon even was lost in it's fill pattern. 

Hexagon fragment example

 But it really wasn't until I die cut a bunch of the same shape, (for me, the hexagons from a Papertrey ink cover plate die) and started filling them in and repeating the pattern, rearranging them to form different patterns, that it really began to sink in for me.  I'll warn you tho, it's extremely addicting!  And the fragments are pretty quick because of their size, so you just think, oh what if I did this? And then an hour later you have umpteen more examples!  As I was progressing, I kept thinking that I needed to get a blog post up on what I was doing, but by the time I came up for air, I had so many examples that it was too much for one post!  Hence my title.... Hex 1. I plan on quickly providing you with more examples.  (Hex 2, 3, 4 etc)

Who knew? triangles from that first fragment!

Notice the border between the triangles

or you can put them together to form a large and small triangle instead of the border

I hope you play along too.  If you're a die cutter, check your stash of dies to see if you have any repetitive geometric shapes that you could use.  But you don't need a die! How about cutting the same shape by hand. Maybe you have a stencil that has basic geometric shapes?  Squares and rectangles are pretty easy to cut by hand.  Or, what about drawing a "grid", cutting out each shape to fill and later put back together and rearrange? Or, use your bijou tiles as large fragments....you get the idea, just play around with repeating patterns, tile rotation and mirroring and just play!  Make it into a puzzle!  

9 more fragments 

This shows the size and that I had several of these!

And an example of fitting them together!

In case you lost the hexagons in the previous example, they're easier to see in this reticulum

Check back as I intend to put up several posts a week until I've shown you my examples.  And since I can't seem to quit, it should last at least until something else catches my eye!  

Another fun example from the "Grid (Un) Locked" is The Diva Challenge #122. 

See you soon!

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