Tangle It! Journal Study Week 2

It is week 2 in our

Tangle It! Journal book study!

Over on Facebook in my group called

Zentangle All Around,

we are working our way through

this book that I co-authored and illustrated. 

Above is my entry for today.

Trace and tangle your hand.

To join us in our journey, get your book here.

Then head over to Facebook and join

Zentangle All Around. 

I'll meet you there!

Tangle It! Journal Study

So. Our study of the

Tangle It! Journal

has started over on Facebook in the group

Zentangle All Around.

I am one of the author/illustrators

for this best-selling book

and 

the admin for Zentangle All Around.

Want to join us for the study?

Head on over to Zentangle All Around,

knock on our door,

and I will let you in!

Here's a link to check out the

Tangle It! Journal on Amazon.

Get Your Coloring Page Published

Would you like your work published in a book? 

Want a free copy of the next book 

in our  Tangle It! series?

Get out your pens and start drawing! 
To begin the New Year, the Simalinas -

Alice Hendon, Ina Sonnenmoser, and Simona Cordara 

- 

 came up with the awesome idea to hold a competition. A coloring page competition!

Artists are invited to provide a coloring page and post it in the Facebook group

Tangle It! Coloring Club

OR

Tangle It! Mandala Club

 before January 10, 2016. 

On that day we will start a poll where group members can vote for their favorite coloring page. The top 3 entries in each group will be published in our next book and the winners will receive a free copy of the book as soon as it becomes available (end of February/beginning of March, 2016.)

Entry requirements:
1. The drawing area is 6"x9" - anything exceeding this ratio will be cropped.
2. The drawing should be black and white without shading.
3. Your artwork must be signed and dated (copyright, ya know.)
4. Users from the group are allowed to download and color. By posting you are giving your permission for them to do so.
5. Keep a scan of the original artwork at a resolution of 300 dpi available. If you win, we will require this scan to include in the book.

The poll will run-through January 17, 2016. 

The winner will be announced on Monday, January 18th.

Happy drawing and good luck to all participants!

Tip: You are welcome to participate in both groups - twice the chance to win. 

This competition brought to you by the authors of the best selling Tangle It! series. 

Available on Amazon.

Bow*Petal, a New Tangle!

Here is a new tangle for you to try.

Bow*petal.

It is fun, it is easy, and it always looks good.

 Bow*petal made its debut in the 

Tangle It! Journal.

(Available on Amazon, just click the pink link.)

 I use lots of round elements in my tangling.

Bow*petal fits in with geometrics and organics.

Flexible and pretty.

 Here I used bow*petal in a coloring page.

See what I mean about lots of round elements.

Hahaha!

Please use bow*petal.

Make it your own, use it in your tangling,

have fun with it.

Big News! 3 New Books Just Released!

 This has been a super exciting week!

Ina, Simona, and I have been busily working away

on some incredible new tangly goodness for you!

At the beginning of the week our

Tangle It! Planner 

was released - the ultimate planner for tanglers:

101 brand new tangle patterns,

monthly and weekly planner pages,

weekly goals, challenges, project pages, 

a tangle index including thumbnails of all 

101 patterns, and so much more!

Here are a few of the inside pages.

 Practice blocks for every tangle.

An alphabetized index and thumbnails.

 Today we release the new

Tangle It! Practice Book

to accompany the Tangle It! Planner.

The deluxe edition is full color!

 We wanted a book where we could store a lot of step outs for our favorite tangle patterns, 

and also draw our tangle art.

This books has it all -

step out blocks for 256 tangles,

240 blank squares for tangling,

and 144 pre-strung blocks. 

It is going to take you a long time to fill up this book!

Every page is in full, beautiful color 

in the deluxe edition.

The paper is heavier and suitable for markers.

 We also released the Tangle It! Practice Book

as a black and white edition.

No color except on the cover.

The paper is a little lighter weight,

so markers are not recommended - 

they may bleed through.

Microns and fineliners are perfect!

 The information in the two editions is identical.

The only difference is color v. black and white.

 We used a lot of my colorful backgrounds.

I can't wait to get my hands on this color copy

and see how it all looks!

Above is a sample of a full page string.

 A page of step out blocks for 4 different patterns.

 And a page of 6 strings - 

some blank,

some pre-strung.

The Tangle It! books series is available on Amazon  at www.amazon.com. OR you can click here: Tangle It! Journal Tangle It! Planner  (price just reduced and interior pages are now visible) Tangle It! Practice Book Deluxe and Tangle It! Practice Book Black and White.
To those of you who have already purchased and are using our books, thank you so much! We appreciate each of you!

Bringing Back the Free-Hand Mandala

We spent a wonderful week in Maine. You will be getting inundated with photos in the next post.  It's only fair to warn you. Hahahaha!

 We had no internet, so I wasn't able to post.

AND, I need to post a new challenge on my

Facebook Group - Zentangle All Around - 

so I decided to bring back the

Free-Hand Mandalas.

 Two years ago I wrote several posts about the art of the

Free-Hand Mandala.

You can find those posts here, here, and here. 

The first link will give the steps to making one of these awesome artworks.

The other two links will give you more ideas to create your own.

This week's challenge is simple. Create your own free-hand mandala and post it. You may do it without the color if that scares you. Hahaha! Me? I live for color!
Also, I want to let you know about a new Facebook group affiliated with out Tangle It! Journal series. (We have just finished up our 4th week being  the #1 Hot New Release on Amazon. Whoot! Whoot!) The new Facebook group is called: Tangle It! Mandala Club. I am going to go over there right now and  post one of these free-hand style mandalas. I hope to see one of yours there soon, and on my Zentangle All Around page as well. Have a great artsy weekend!

NEW TANGLE: Knights of the Round Table

 I love introducing new tangle patterns!

Here is one I designed that you will find in our new book

Tangle It! Journal!

 This is a fun tangle that came to me one night

as I was watching Merlin episodes on Netflix.

Lots of ways to vary this pattern.

 As well as plenty of ways to incorporate it into your art.

Shading really makes this tangle stand out.

You can just go crazy mixing it up with other round tangles like I did here.

Or other tangles. They don't need to be round.

Knights of the Round Table is a fun, versatile, 

easy to incorporate tangle

I hope you love it and use it alot!

To pick up your copy of the Tangle It! Journal,

click here or here. 

One Great Big Dream Come True!

It has been an amazing, quick, exciting seven days!

 On September 24, 2015, Ina hit the send button and our book 

Tangle It! Journal 

was submitted to Create Space for publication.

So exciting!!!

We literally built this entire book through Facebook chat, 

a Facebook group, and email.

We never talked to each other live.

We never did a face to face.

The whole book came together through

internet technology.

Awesome!

And this was the full cover. In the color it is supposed to be - haha!

While we waited to see what the reaction to our book would be,  I made an author's page on Amazon. We are still putting all the behind-the-scenes touches together. Never in a million years would I have believed that one day  I would have an online author's page that anyone could find.

 We were told that it would take 3-5 business days for 

Tangle It! Journal to go live on Amazon.

So not true.

The very next day - September 25th - I went to Amazon on a lark and typed in the name of the book.

And there it was!!!

Hahahaha! I went to Facebook and sent Ina and Simona a message that read:

WE ARE ON AMAZON!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I went back and looked again and saw that red box in the middle of the page. #1 New Release! Oh my word! Things came together so fast and there has been no looking back since. Almost immediately we were on the Best Sellers List. We made it all the way up to #2 at one point.

 Answering emails and Facebook messages has kept me super busy this week. 

Looking at art, answering questions,

maintaining Facebook groups and pages,

posting when I got the chance.

It's been a busy, exciting week.

I'd love to clean up my desktop,

but who has time for that?

 Simalina - that's our business name - is on the move.

We are busily working on another project.

Or two.

Mum's the word,

BUT you are going to seriously love it!

Yep. A wonderful week. Now time to get back to work making magic happen. If you don't have your copy of Tangle It! Journal here are two links for you.  (Of course I want you to buy our book. Shameless hustling going on here.) Amazon or CreateSpace. Click on either of those. You can find our Facebook group here, and our website here.  
(Remember anytime you are in my blog, Pink = link.) #tangleitjournal #tangle!itjournal

Whoot! Whoot! And a Big Thanks!!!

Here, let me zoom in on that!

 Oh my goodness 

AND

thank you, Lord!!!

You guys rock!!!

Thank you for buying our book!

We are Amazon's #1 New Release!

I can not even begin to tell you what an incredible feeling that is!

Tears, sniffs, smiles, and thanks!

You are the absolute best! 

Ina, Simona, and I are so thankful for you! We appreciate that you trust us enough to purchase our book virtually sight unseen. We are working on getting those interior pages visible.
And just a little hint, that most people probably won't pick up on -  look at the Amazon ad. At the end of the bold type. What do you see in parenthesis? Hahahaha! Whoot! Whoot! Thank you, everyone!