It's a String Thing #45

I worked on It’s a String Thing and wanted to get it posted today. This week the string was #108, and a very straight-line string. I normally go for ones that are a bit curvier. We used these tangles,

Diva Dance
and
Dex - official Zentangle® patterns
Demi by Genevieve Crabe
Diamonds & Squares by Deanne Stewart-Mills
Dooledo by Ksenija Vojisavlijevic

Lots of grid based tangles here, and unless I morph them, curve them, or do something so I don’t have to be really even, they are not really my favorites. I like the more organic ones better. The problem was that with this string, that wasn’t really an option. I did manage to get them all in though, so it was fun to figure that out. Here is the result.

My many thanks for all the kind comments you send my way! 

Enjoy, and have a great Weekend.

Tackle it Tuesday, The O's

It was the proverbial raining Cats and Dogs, and everything else that you could think of yesterday.  There has been lots and lots, of area flooding, and still more to come.  I figured that I would tangle (even though I should have been doing some more household duties.)

I worked on the Tackle it Tuesday, using tangles starting with “O.”

This tile was done with Oke, by Michele Beauchamp, aka Shelly Beauch, Onamato, by Maria Thomas, and Orbs-La-Dee, by Anneke van Dam. Enjoy, and I hope that someone is enjoying nice summer weather!

Have a great weekend and Tangle On!

Weekly Challenge #172

I am in a serious “Quandary” this week with the AruaKnot and Mooka Duo-challenge from the Diva. I worked on this yesterday and got it to this point, and hit the wall. I really like the stark black and white quality that it has; so it is, one of those do I shade it? (Part of me wants to go really intense with the shading, as I love to do that.) Do I add color? (Also like to go there.)  Do I add shading and color? I have had it sitting across the room from me all day pondering which way I should take it. I finally decided that I was going to throw this one out there, just like it is, and get some feedback from all you good folks. I have had a rough beginning this week and the tangling has saved me. The crazy explosion of both of these tangles sort of fits the week, and I worked on a much larger piece of paper. Let me know what you think.

 Have a Terrific Tuesday and Tangle On!

Whimsy and Zen Day 12

Today at Whimsy and Zen the art prompt for the 30-day challenge is growth. It was a day of professional development and meetings for me for the majority of the day, so the easiest way for me to show growth today was to grow using three new tangles in my work, that I had never used before that were on my list to try. Here is the result.

 Tangle On!

Diva Challenge #171 and Whimsy and Zen #11

The challenge this week from i am the diva, was to work with Beads of Courage that helps support children and their families that are dealing with life threatening and chronic illness. You can read about it here. I was so pleased to see that Minnesota has a number of hospitals that participate in this program to help the kids, and families, through this trying time.  

I used Shelly Beauch’s, Mak-rah-mee tangle, and some inspiration from Helen Williams and her strings, in my piece, for two things today. I gave away a bit of a sneak peek on this one yesterday, using it for my Whimsy and Zen 30 days of creativity for the day. So since this is that last day with students for me this year, I am using it finished for day 11, and the diva's challenge. 

I am dedicating these beads of courage to Ci! 

I'm rooting for you, and wishing you a speedy recovery.

 Happy Hump Day and Tangle On!

Whimsy and Zen Day 10

Just a tease today, as it is the second to the last day with kids at school, an afterschool meeting to go to, and family activities this evening. I got a start anyway, and managed to get something done. It will be interesting to see what I can do with the rest that you can’t see. Stay tuned for the finish of this one.

Have a Terrific Tuesday! Tangle On!

Whimsy and Zen 30 Day Challenge....

As they say a day late, and a dollar short… but in this case a week. I just discovered the Whimsy and Zen 30 day challenge, to do something creative everyday. I always, at least during school, am doing something creative, as I demonstrate various things to the kids daily. That’s not always for me though, and even though I am starting late, and might have a real struggle this week, being the last week of school, to complete the challenges, I decided I would do what I can. Here is the tile I did for today. This was a new tangle for me, and I really had a lot of fun with the shading.

Happy Manic Monday and Keep Tangling!

It's a String Thing #43 and Diva Challenge #170

It’s been a wacky week for me. It’s the last full week of school, so all the final projects for the year are coming in. I have been grading non-stop, so I can get them back to the kiddos next week during our last three days. Woo Hoo! I can see the end in sight. I had a few minutes and needed a break, so I went to get out a tile and pen out of my book bag, tiles, no problem, a pen, that was a different story. Where were my pens? I always have my pens. Not this day. The only pen I could find was a blue micron, so this week’s It’s a String Thing is in blue.  Check out Adele’s challenge here. 

 

I started the diva challenge on Monday, lost the tile for awhile, found it today mixed in with a stack of work that I was grading, and decided I had to get the UMT, use my tangle challenge finished up. Not my best tile. I just couldn’t get it to do what I wanted it to do this week.

On a brighter note, here are some of my sixth graders large Zentangle tiles. I had them on a large display in the front foyer case in the school for the past couple of weeks. These tiles are 9” x 9”. I could only get far enough away to show you about half of the board while taking this photo inside the case. I was so proud of them, I think they Rocked It! 

Here is a close up of one of the tiles.

Last is just a tile that I did for fun last weekend.

My thanks to all of you for the lovely comments and checking out my pattern Tropicana over at tanglepatterns.com. I didn’t know that it was going to be featured this week, so it was a very pleasant surprise.

Everyone have a great weekend and tangle on!

Weekly Challenge #169 and It's a String Thing #42

Happy Saturday Everyone!

Hope that you are all enjoying your weekend. This week the challenge from i am the diva was to use circles for your string and then tangle them. I was working with the 7^th graders this week in watercolor and using glazes, so I used circles to show them how thin veils of color can change when put over another. After I was done with the circles, I tangled them and threw in a few Dew Drops too. Here is my piece for the challenge this week. I used watercolor, mixed colored pens and colored pencil. It is also a larger piece, 8 1/2 X 11.

I also have started to play in Adele Bruno’s, It’s a String Thing. This week we were to use Knightsbrige, so here is that tile too.

My many thanks to those who visit and also for your very kind comments!

Have a great rest of the weekend!

It's a Sting Thing #41

I started out my day today with 16, 6^th, 7^th , and 8^th graders working on the courtyard gardens in our school. We had a great time together on our service day, weeding out the gardens, replacing a couple of trees, moving another to a new spot and planting some annuals to fill in the empty spaces around the perennials in the butterfly garden, that we started a number of years ago. However, now I’m ready for a nap!

This weeks It’s a Sting Thing, started with Margaret Bremner’s string 026. 

In honor of the r’s in her name we were to use these tangles.

River by Suzanne McNeill, CZT
River Stones by Lori Howe
Rixty, an official Zentangle® pattern
and to add a grid based pattern to the mix,  Ripples by Helen Williams

I decided to use one of the round tiles for this challenge. I first washed it in some watercolor, and then tangled using two different blue microns, and finished with a little shading in color pencil. Enjoy.

 I appreciate all your wonderful comments, so thanks!

Everyone have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Weekly Challenge #168

I really enjoyed using rain in my tile for this weeks challenge from i am the diva. We had torrential rains on Monday, but now we have finally been enjoying some sunshine and warm weather! School has been super busy with lots of major projects coming in for me to grade, so I hope that I can find a bit more time to play with rain yet this week. I feel like I have just scratched the surface.  

I also managed to get this ATC done for a trade.

Have a Happy Hump Day!

See you all later.

"It's a String Thing" #40

I was looking for something different to do last night and wandered over to It’s a String Thing, CZT Adele Bruno’s blog. It seemed like a good time to try it out. The string this week is from Beth Snoderly and in honor of her name the tangles we were to use to work it all started with Be. You can find all of them on TanglePatterns.com

Beadlines

Beeline

Belite and

Betweed

Here are a couple of tiles that I tried with them.

The first uses just Betweed.

For the second I used them all, on one of the Renaissance tiles.

Your comments do make my day! Thank you!

Have a great weekend everyone! Tangle on!

Weekly Challenge #167

Greeting everyone! I wonder if Laura over at i am the diva, heard the big groan that I gave out when I read this weeks DouTangle challenge. I love Well, but Punzel and I have one of those love, hate relationships. I love the way it looks, but I can’t ever get mine to be as even as I would like.  I even had some of the other CZT’s at Tangle U, show me how they did theirs, and got it so nice and even. Their tricks still haven’t worked for me, so I am going to follow Maria’s advice from her latest blog post, and embrace the imperfections! Here is my piece for the challenge this week.

 My thanks to all of you who leave such lovely comments, I so appreciate them!

Have a Terrific Tuesday and Keep Tangling!

More on the Weekly Challenge #166

I just couldn’t stop playing around with this weeks challenge. I really wanted to try another of the new techniques that I learned at Tangle U. Molly brought us a “gift” as she called it, from Maria and Rick.  She showed us how to work on the black tiles using a “wash” of Zenstone on top first.  You can see Maria using it in her work here. The first one is from my time at Tangle U and uses a black micron on top of the ghosting of Zenstone. Of course I couldn’t leave well enough alone…. I had to many of those, what ifs, running around in my head.  My what would happen, for this one was, to add some colored pencil to it also. I used the Irojiten colored pencils from Tombow for the colored parts.

Here was my next experiment using this technique, and the, i am the diva challenge for this week. I ghosted the tile first and this time used a Sakura glaze pen, which gives a very shiny black line. I also used a silver Uniball pen, and both gold and bronze colored Slicci pens for accents. The shading added here and there was done with Caran d’Ache supracolor II soft colored pencils. I love how this one turned out. It reminds me of a bunch of pulley systems.

Thank you all for your lovely comments!

Here is to a great rest of the week, Happy Hump Day!

Weekly Challenge #166

Happy Monday everyone. I was able to start my week off right with a new tangle, provided to us by i am the diva. Laura doesn’t have a name for it yet, but has one idea. I think that she should name it in honor of her birthday. Anyway here is my rendition of it….

A shout out to all of you who comment.

My thanks to you all!

Have a great week and keep tangling!

Weekly Challenge # 165

Hi everyone!  I didn’t have time to post last week, as I was getting ready for Tangle U. I had an awesome time seeing old friends and making new ones. All the CZT’s were so great and I had a blast. I am still unpacking goodies and trying to organize everything in my head and notes, as it was truly a whirlwind. I will be sharing more of what I learned here and there. For now here is my tile for this weeks, i am the diva challenge, using Camelia, a tangle by Anne Marks. I tried taking this one out of the grid to see what I could do with it.

This is a technique that Marie Browning taught us using Tombow Colored pencils on impressed black tiles. I also used some Caran d’Ache, and a white Prismacolor pencil that I had in my stash too, to blend out the color a bit more. 

Here is the tile using the same technique that I completed at Tangle U.

Your comments from the weeks challenges make my day! Thank you.

 Hope everyone is having a good week, and Happy Hump Day! 

More on the Weekly Challenge #163

I just couldn’t stay away from playing with Rixty this week. It has been unseasonably cold again here in Minnesota, and very gray skies, so I needed some color! I used prismacolor pencils for the color, but couldn’t get them to blend quite like I wanted them to due to the slickness of the paper, but I still had fun! Here is a second one for the challenge. I titled it.. 

Ramblin’ Rixty!

 Many thanks for the lovely comments!

Happy Hump Day! Have a great rest of the week and enjoy tangling!

Weekly Challenge #163

Happy Monday! Wow this weeks challenge worked well for me! This morning I just finished an ATC using the new tangle Rixty! I'll continue to play around with this one, but for now, with a busy week of state testing coming up at school, I'll show you this. 

You can also see some of my other examples of using Rixty here, and also with this post.
Thanks to i am the diva for another great challenge, check out the other wonderful art! 

Thank you for all your kind comments from last week!

Happy Tangling!

More on the challenge and CBS Sunday Morning

I am happily participating in a worldwide effort to encourage the CBS Sunday Morning Show to do a story about Zentangle!  Anyone that wanted to participate was asked to send a letter and a tile in a square envelope, and mail it on April 1st. Mine went out, but the photos were on another SD card, so just wanted to share with you, what I sent along. Here is the tile/card, the envelope, and then the letter. 

Also my second try at using my initials for a string, from the, i am the diva challenge this week. 

 My thanks to you all, for your lovely comments. They make my day! 

Have a great rest of the week and Tangle on!

Weekly challenge #162

Greetings! I am back from a week of sun, rest, and relaxation. My spring break was last week, so I gave myself the week off from posting or doing anything on electronic devices. I had a great time, on a beach with the sand between my toes, and after the weather here this year it was much needed. I even missed the last, (I hope) snowstorm of the year, that dropped 9 inches of the white stuff while we were gone.

The challenge this week from i am the diva is to use your initials as a string. Here is my string, and finished tile.

 Many thanks for the lovely comments!

Have a great week and tangle on!