Trip to Paradise

My life just doesn't seem to slow down. I thought when I retired that life would be easier, that I wouldn't feel pulled in so many directions. Boy! was I wrong! I seriously need to learn the meaning of the word 'no' and start using it occasionally. Actually last night I did send an email to a friend who runs an ATC swap  through facebook and asked to be left out of the next swap. I have too many irons in the fire.

I just got back home last night from visiting up north. On Thursday I head south to a zentangle retreat at Paradise Beach. I can not wait! One of the fun things Jo-Ellen arranged for us to participate in is an ensemble tile swap. What you see above are the straight lined ensemble and the curved line ensemble that Zentangle® carries. I sell them in my Etsy store :). There are nine tiles in each ensemble with a running string throughout the nine. For this swap we were instructed to tangle each tile independently - that would be why they look a little strange next to each other. When we come home from Paradise, we will have 18 new tiles - from 18 of our fellow artists. Pretty amazing! And what a great way to collect artwork from other tangle artists! Retreat to Paradise? Here I come! (After I wash clothes, pack, find my supply lists and probably make a trip to Michael's, repack because I will have forgotten something. . . well, you get the idea ;) )

Retreat to Paradise

 Retreat to Paradise, a getaway for people curious about the art of zentangle! Kali and I went to this retreat in April and I am just remembering to post photos. I streamzoo-ed a few while we were there, this is a more comprehensive showing so to speak.

 We stayed in a beautiful Double Tree high-rise located on the bay. This is the view from our balcony. 

 The ocean was literally right outside our doors. Kali took advantage of the beach every chance she got. 

 It was even beautiful at night with the moon shining on the water. We could not have had a more beautiful venue.

 Classes were incredible! Canadian artist Cherryl Moote walked us through her tangled garden, as well as deconstruction of tangle patterns.

Our gardens that we drew were long and narrow. Look at my pictures and pretend they are attached to each other. Three shots to get the whole thing in.

I haven't added any more color because I am afraid I'll mess it up! I just love it! This was so much fun and I've come home and made literally dozens of garden pictures since this class.

 Zenspirations' Legend - Joanne Fink - was also there. Her new book Zenspirations: Dangle Designs had not even been released yet, but we were thrilled to receive copies which Joanne autographed for us.

This is the dangle design I started in our class. I finished it at home and colored it with Tombow markers.

CZT Cris Letourneau taught a session on shading, using her new book Made in the Shade. (Sorry, Cris, I have no idea why I don't have pictures of you teaching.)

 As much fun and instruction-filled that classes were, we still had down-time to walk on the beach and enjoy the feel of wet, squishy sand between our toes.

 I don't know who built this pyramid, but it was built strong. It lasted, even when the waves came in.

That's my daughter Kali walking on the beach, talking on her cell phone. Drawing tangles in the sand. That's my girl!

Extremely zoomed in photo - taken from our room on one of the top floors of the hotel - through the sliding glass doors. Haha! Mooka on the beach!

I shot this picture the first night we were there. Turned it into a scripture photo this morning. This verse seemed to be just what I needed today. 

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Retreat to Paradise is coming back to Melbourne April 4-6, 2014. Registration will be open to the public before long. If you are interested in more information, check out the website located here.  It is going to be so much fun! I hope to see you there!

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 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.)