Swish and Flick!

 I can not believe I am posting all these pictures - hahahaha! One of our favorite places to go to is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We have all the required paraphernalia - the wands, the butterbeer mugs, the pygmy puffs. ($ for Honeydukes.)

 We made one last visit before Kali moved up north for school. While we were there, Kali got a HP photo frame and wanted to get a picture of the two of us to put in it. So, yesterday we set up some photos and had Mark take pictures.

 Some of these really speak for themselves. It's too bad we don't have an audio track to go with these. I had no idea what we were doing. Can you tell?

 I was getting closer to the right idea, I think . . . 

 . . . and then Kali lost it. Hahahaha!

 So we gave up on that idea and went with collecting memories for the pensieve. Good one, hmm? We almost look like we know what we are doing.

 And then there's this one.

 We finally got lucky and came up with a couple pictures where one of us doesn't look like a dork (the dork would be me.) Mission accomplished.

 There's my beautiful girl! And when we were done, she told me I could keep the wand :). What a great daughter! Yay!!!

 Mark did a great job with the photos.

This is the one we decided to frame. A cropped version of one of the above. From here it's all swish and flick!

One More Day

We are on a countdown here. Kali has one more day before she flies to her new home up north. Moving in to her new apartment. Starting a new job. Starting a new school. A whole lot of firsts coming up for her. And for me. One more day. What does that have to do with this ATC? Not a single thing. Sorry. I just needed to vent a bit. 

New Dangled Drawing Complete - I Think

A couple nights ago I posted the line drawing of my most recent 'dangle.'

Kali and I went to a class taught by inspirational artist Joanne Fink. She had copies of her new book available for us. It's called Zenspirations Dangle Designs. Joanne took us through the fine points of dangle study.

I started this drawing in her class, worked on it some in the hotel room, and finished it up here at home last week. A couple nights ago I added color to it. I think it's finished. For now at least!
You can check out Joanne Fink's books at amazon. com. Zenspirations Dangle Designs is due out June 1, 2013. Pre-orders are available. You just can't beat a sure thing, so order it now :).

It Helps if You Follow the Directions

Although I like the way this turned out, I just realized I didn't follow the directions to the letter. (That wouldn't be a first.) Once I laid down the color around the outside, I was supposed to use a wet brush to make a color wash. Ack! I used the tombow blender pen, which mostly worked but made it really hard to be successful with the color wash. I may be trying this again. I used watercolor paper, Sakura microns and Copic multiliner pens - which I heat set and they both bled anyway, and Tombow dual brush markers. Tombow does have some pretty colors!

Second Shot at Irojitens

 I wasn't super pleased with my first efforts with these Irojiten pencils, so I started over. I moved away from the tangles Marie had offered us this week, (I think that was part of my problem - making myself stick with those.) I used some tangles that I enjoy playing with and drew my tile first. I had already started laying down color before I thought to take the above photo.

This is what I ended up with. I like the results a whole lot better than the previous tile in the last post. I used a different paper and didn't concern myself so much with the color wheel. I think I have a decent head for color, so I just went with the flow. I layed in more pencil layers and I really like the results this time. Now, on to the Tombow dual-brush marker part of the class. This should be fun!

Time to Tangle in Color, Lesson 1

I have been waiting for some time to take a class with Tombow's Marie Browning and yesterday we started our Time to Tangle in Color class. For lesson one, I jumped right in by taking things out of order - what's new, haha! I had never worked with the Irojiten pencils, they are a wax-based pencil that is not water-soluble. That would actually be two things I had not worked with: wax-based and non water-soluble. I like where I'm starting, but I believe I need to add more color. I am used to having a wide range of colors to work with in the Derwent product line, so this is really strange to be so limited in color options. I hope that I will learn to blend and mix color, thereby creating more color. OK, got to go work on that. Hope to post another tile tomorrow, with more progress and better results.

Dangle Designs

You may recall that recently Kali and I attended the Retreat to Paradise where we had some awesome fun and got to learn from some incredible teachers!

The instructor for our second session was the very unique and distinctive Joanne Fink. I loved her book Zenspirations, where she had one page dedicated to dangling. I was so excited to hear that Joanne was going to be at the retreat with copies of her new book Dangle Designs, which isn't even available to the public yet. We each got our own copy :).

In class, Joanne took us through the steps to creating our own dangled pages. It is so much fun and there's really no wrong way to do this. Above is a project I started in class and finally finished up last night. At least as far as the black and white version goes. Now to add some color - cause you know I'm all about the color! Thank you, Joanne! You rock!

A Zentangled Jury Duty

For what seems like the 9th time in the past so many years, I once again had jury duty today. Gotta tell you I am sick of jury duty. It's always when I have doctor's appointments scheduled for someone and they have to be cancelled. Today's cancellations were eye appointments for Kali and myself. Two doctor's appointments for my mom in the next couple days have been saved. So, on the jury summons was the suggestion to bring reading material or writing material, because there would be a lot of sitting and waiting. (Trust them on that one!) Like a true CZT, I took a sketchbook and a copic multiliner. While we waited for the judge to enter the courtroom, I drew the above. I was practicing my dragonaire.

It wasn't long before the judge had about 40 people lined up, waiting their turn to pitch why they should be released from jury duty. (I'm telling you, if I couldn't get excused after 27 years as a police officer, a bunch of middle aged men weren't going to get off because their knees hurt. You go, Your Honor!) But, while they were pitching, I had plenty of time to tangle up the Scales of Justice. (I'm not sure if Lila Bean is waiting for the judge to throw the book at her, or if she's waiting for Lady Justice to show up.)

I was selected to one jury panel. While we were going through voir dire, the attorneys asking us a gazillion questions person by person, I started mindlessly drawing lines. That's one thing I love about the art of zentangle. You don't have to always have your head in the game. You can draw lines while you listen to 5 prospective jurors trying to convince the attorneys and the judge that the defendant "looks familiar." Might I just repeat - - - You go, Your Honor!

Earth Day Swap

Earth Day is April 22, 2013. It is a day to celebrate environmental protection. In preparation for this event, a group of CZTs participated in a post card swap. Our tangles were supposed to start with the letters e, a, r, t, or h. We swapped four cards. For whatever reason I did not take pictures of the first two cards I made. I remember that one went to Dilip in India - I used henna drum on that one. In the card above, I tried out a new pattern on that background wall. I do not remember what the pattern's called, but I really like the way it looks. It will be a new addition to my steampunk collection.

This was the 4th card I drew. I stuck with the flower-ish theme with rock 'n' roll surrounded by H2O Lilly across the top. The color on both these cards came from Derwent Inktense Watercolor Pencils.

So far I have received this card from Laurie Doucette. It is the map of her home state - New Hampshire. She tangled each county in a different pattern. I love it!

A Tangled Garden

Earlier this week, Kali and I went to Retreat to Paradise. It was an art gathering of some CZTs, and some not CZTs. A group of us wanting to further our artistic knowledge . . . and to eat some really awesome walnut chocolate chip cookies that the hotel concierge gave us every time we asked for one. It was the best hotel visit I have ever had.

We now step away from this free commercial break for Double Tree Resort's shamelessly awesome cookies to explain the purpose of our first class.

The incredible Cherryl Moote of Moote Points, Toronto, Ontario, was our instructor. Cherryl has just released an ebook about tangled gardens. She also happens to be a CZT (which I did not know before our arrival) and really had her act together tangle-wise. Cherryl walked us through the basic steps for creating this beautiful garden. We started with a blank 22" x 4" strip of mixed media paper and we started filling sections in with leaves. As you can see, I will be filling it up with wonderful Derwent Inktense Watercolor Pencils. And I can not wait to finish it! You will be seeing the finished product very soon. Thank you, Cherryl, this was fantastic! (I say that like she totally reads my blog, haha! You never know.)

With a Promise of More to Come

 Two weeks old. Five pounds, one ounce. Home with mom and dad, and on this day visiting her 88-year old great-grandmother whose name she shares. 

And of course family pictures needed to be done while we had the opportunity. That would be my son Jason right there with his beautiful wife Bobbie.

Four generations in this picture: great-grandmother, mom, son, and daughter. Pretty awesome! I'm sure you will be seeing more pictures before too long!

More ATCs

 I love this ATC from Pat Peterson! So beautiful! And it's the perfect ATC for me since I love me some steampunk! Can you see the nifty little bits of metal and jewels attached here and there? Thank you so much, Pat!

I also received this ATC from Judy West from Australia. Judy hosts the Celtic Challenge each week and I love her new tangles. She has something new practically every week! She's been so kind to let me share her tangles on my 4-H Facebook tangle page - Treasured Tangles. I love this ATC, Judy! I keep studying the various sections, the linework, the stitching, the hearts - I love it all! Thank you so much for drawing this for me :).

This is the set of four tiles that I received for the Missing U Swap. We each had the same string, we tangled four tiles with that string, and the host mixed and matched, then mailed us back a set of tiles. This is the set I received back and I love it! Each tile was done by a different CZT. Here they are:

• top left, Julie Evans, Hawaii,
• top right, Denise Knobloch, California,
• lower left, Judy Burkett, Tennessee, and
• lower right, Nancy Roth, Rhode Island.

This is a set I will treasure! I may even end up framing it and hanging it in my studio for inspiration.