Thursday String Idea #13

 Welcome to Thursday String Idea #13.

Sorry I missed the past two weeks,

I was in Maine with no internet.

This week's string is a kind of a 

loopedy-loop kind of string.

To print the string out at 3.5", click here.

As for myself, I am going to start moving away from the 3.5" tangling tile. As I get older I find that little tile is too small. I need a larger work area.  In my tangling string #13, I opted for some white space in my work.  I like the contrast and the way the string of  TootsieMoon holds the gnarly tangle in place.
Want to try string #13 for yourself? Just go here and print out the string. To use this same string on a larger work area like I did,  just extend the ends of the lines. My tile is 4" x 6". Have fun!

Tangling in the Round

There is a wonderful tangle artist named Michele Beauchamp. She is also a CZT and I have followed her work online for two years now. Shelly lives in Australia and does the most exquisite linework. (You should go google her right now and look at images.) Recently she tangled a piece in the round and it was so beautiful that I wanted to give it a go myself.

I drew this a couple nights ago while watching reruns of M*A*S*H. (I don't believe I've ever drawn something this big in one night before.) This is the unshaded view. I hate to shade, but I figured this piece deserved a little shading.

So I added some very basic shading in a few areas. What a difference it makes! Can't wait to frame this piece.
Why don't you give tangling in the round a try? You might just fall in love with it. A friend of mine called this piece - stacking on steroids. Yep, pretty much! Hahahaha!
Zentangle has these cool large tiles now. I tangled this circle piece on a 10.5" square official tile called the Opus. I used microns, a Sharpie fine point pen, graphite, and a tort. 

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 ;) )

Confused About Twinchies?

There are still several sets of twinchies I want to share with you. Fifty-four of us are swapping these little two-inch pieces of art and - as you can well imagine - it is hard to make a little two inch piece of paper become spectacular. You don't have a whole lot of room to work with in two inches. (There are a whole world of people who make inchies - I couldn't even imagine. Haha! Good for them, I say!)

So. Where did I start? 
Where do I many times start? 
I can hear Nancy Wigley chiming in here - I start with Dylusions Ink Sprays.   Yes, I do know there is other product on the market but why go there when I get these bright, luscious, beautiful colors with Dylusions? Seriously. 
When I am working on projects I save any scraps of paper in a ziploc bag and add to it as I go. There is always a scrap bag on my work table. (It's usually buried, but it's there.) Twinchies are a great way to use up some of that scrap. Some of the pieces I used already had color on them. (I don't waste scraps with pretty color on them. I horde, uh, save them.) For the ones that didn't - I spritzed water onto the pieces, followed by spritzes of a couple different colors of dylusions. Then you just let it all sit for about 10-15 seconds and watch those colors blend. A paper towel blotted to the paper surface will stop that mixing/blending action. Remember - if your color is too dark when it is dry or almost dry - you can lighten it up with another spritz of water. Dylusions are not color fast. They will start reacting again when you add 'wet' product - be that water or another color. 
You will notice some of the tiles above have designs on them. Take your dry colored tile, lay a stencil over the top, hold it in place, and spritz water over the top of the stencil. Let it sit for 5-10 seconds, then carefully lift the stencil and watch the color lifting start to work. After about 15 more seconds, blot the tile with a paper towel - and continue to watch that color lift leaving behind the design of whatever stencil you used. Remember - dylusions inks are not water fast, they react with wet product. So take advantage of that and make it work to your benefit.

Since I am a tangler - I went back and added various tangle patterns to the tiles. Some are more elaborate than others. This wasn't one of them :). I loved the little fish and how well he turned out. (He came from a stencil.) I went simpler and just added tangle bubbles to his water, leaving the fish to be the focus of this twinchie. There are so many things you can do! So - save your scraps (or hack up a big sheet and have fun!) and get to making some twinchie awesomeness! Cause it's fun!

On a Roll

I found a postcard I forgot to post. It's on its way to someone lovely. Now it's time to gear up for the two ATC swaps I signed up for. And somewhere in here I need to find the information about the bookmark swap Sandy is doing - because I forgot all about that! But it's all fun :) and I love it!

String 041

This string came from Cheri Hartwick. Kind of intimidating to me at first. I never know what to do with those loops other than use purk. The background started out with a grid, that segued over into diamonds - that was kind of fun! This is what the string looked like without tangles:

You can check out Linda Farmer's weekly string challenge at Tangle Patterns. You really should give it a go!

String Challenge 056

Here is another string :). Hahaha! Just 21 more until I am caught up >.< ugh, it might take awhile! But I am trying. This is what string 056 looked like before I started working on it:

I turned it on its side, so you could get the right perspective. This string was courtesy of Jill Dobis. You can check out the weekly string challenge on Linda Farmer's page - Tangle Patterns. They are a lot of fun and really handy when you are having trouble deciding on a string to use.

Mandala Practice

This post is going to have lots of photos, walking you through how I made the above mandala.

I am taking an online class with Marie Browning and one of this past week's assignments was to make a mandala and color it with Irojiten pencils. I was in Maryland, 800 miles away from home, and didn't have my normal supplies with me. As I was walking around a fabric store, I came across these quilting templates hanging on a rack.

It dawned on me that these templates would make pretty good mandala templates. I started pulling them off the rack and layering them on top of each other, trying to see what would match up together and look like a mandala. I ended up buying four templates and used these two for this project.

I placed one quilt template onto my paper and used a micron 01 to trace within the lines. Then I played with the second template, moving it around until it lined up in a pleasing format. Then I traced those lines. I didn't use all the lines, on both templates, just the ones that looked like they went together.

Next I started filling in lines, connecting paths that seemed to go together. A flower started appearing, so I added some small leaves and started outlining some larger ones.

A few more lines made those larger leaves start standing out more dramatically.

I filled in some seed pods with some purk, finished the larger leaves, then used the tangle phicops to start turning the rest of the design into flower petals. A little fescu soon became stamen.

Once I got my flower mandala looking the way I wanted it to, I used my Japanese irojiten coloring pencils from Tombow to start laying in some color.

These are some pretty incredible pencils. Not watercolor pencils, just coloring pencils. The shading and color variation comes from dropping in layer after layer of color.

I think this was the second time I used these pencils, so I still have a way to go with them before I feel competent.

I used five different colors to lay down a technique called scrumbling around the outside. The scrumbling gives an almost drop-shadow kind of cast to the mandala.

All in all, I think I used 15 different pencils. Here is the finished product and I love the way it turned out! If I can do it - anyone can do it!

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. 

ATC Swap

It has been really hard lately to find time to tangle. There is so much stress in my life right now trying to make arrangements for Kali to move out of state for school. She leaves in about 5 weeks and we still don't have anywhere located for her to live. My mom has been in and out of the hospital four times in the past 2 months, and is in a rehab house now. It has been one really hectic time. I finally decided to stop everything else I was doing to just draw. I mentioned the CZTs were doing an ATC swap. I've stayed away from posting my tiles anywhere online, so they could be a surprise when they arrived at their destinations. I did go ahead and post this one, though. It has two of my own patterns in it - netz in the background, and 8ball across the bottom. This ATC swap is a lot of fun! I plan on posting all 24 of my cards at one time - after they've been received :). And - I only have 16 more to draw >.<

String 029

This past week's string challenge (I am running late) was shared by Sue Zanker, hosted by Tangle Patterns. I finished this up in the hotel, so really no editing is done or anything 'fancy' to this tile. Posted totally as is, photo shot with my phone. Tile displayed on standard hotel bedspread :). String challenge 030 coming up next!

Preparing for Hurricane Sandy

Kali and I are in Maryland waiting for hurricane Sandy to hit. We expect much rain and wind and some flooding, no power, you know - all the nastiness that comes with hurricanes. We have an appointment at the culinary school on Tuesday for Kali to take an entrance exam. I don't really think at this point that this appointment is likely to happen, but we'll see. In the meantime, I have a nice cozy hotel room and lots of time to create art! Not much editing ability, or sizing photos, so what you get is what you get. I've even thrown in a pattern I messed up inadvertantly made. I'm going to call it punkin' in honor of the fallish pumpkin appearance it took on as a life of its own. Enjoy! 

Black Water

Really just playing around with some of my favorite tangles. There are two of them that I don't even know the names of, but I use them often. So, I should probably figure that out!

And once again, I realized that I forgot to shade. Shading really does make an incredible difference, adding depth and dimension. Some of the shading is done with a pencil and tortillion. Other parts are shaded with a light grey colored Pitt artist pen. At this point I probably couldn't tell you which is which. You should get your pen and tile out and draw something. You'll be glad you did!

Practicing

I am trying to work on some homework assignments for an online class I'm taking - getting further and further behind. (And it's only week two.) BUT - I want to post something every day - if I can. I started this last night. It's in my CZT field journal. I am trying to have a go at every official pattern. Some of the new patterns I tried here are meer, orlique, and cyme. Aura-leah and springkle are not official zentangle patterns, but I like them a lot!

Diva Challenge #90 - String Theory

It's week number 90 at the Diva's Challenge. Laura  took us back to Tangle Patterns' very first string challenge and asked us to try that out. 

This is what our string looked like. If you look closely, you can match it up with what I tangled above. I started doing the string challenge when Linda was in the second week, so now I am finally caught up! Thanks, Laura! Head on over to the Diva's page and check out everyone's strings. Hey! You could even tangle one of your own and share it with us!