String 24, January 24, 2016

I am a day late posting, but better late than never.

This is the string I drew for the 24th of January.

In our Facebook group Zentangle All Around,

the prompt for this string was to do it as a monotangle.

Using just one tangle, variations or tangleations were acceptable as well.

For mine, I used my tangle TootsieMoon.

It works very well when you have several sections that

meet and intertwine.

Shading really makes it yummy!

It is not too late for you to get involved in our year long endeavor -

A String Symphony.

Just head on over to Facebook and join us in

Zentangle All Around

by using this link.

Hope to see you there!

Quick Stacks

My life is consumed with books. Literally.  It is rare for me to sit and tangle just for myself. This piece was just for me. In a little journal I made, I intentionally did not shade this piece,  so the graphite wouldn't ruin the adjacent page. 
From top to bottom: flying geese, bits of TootsieMoon here and there, florz, All Boxed Up, netz, and curlz.
Here's hoping you have a great weekend,  and that you make some time for yourself!

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!

Thursday String Idea #12

 Welcome to Thursday String Idea!

This week we have a stacked straight-line string

that can be filled with both straight and round tangles.

The string is all ready to print at the official 3.5" square tile size 

just by clicking here. 

For my tile, I wanted to incorporate both types of tangles. I started with the longer dividing lines and  filled those with TootsieMoon, rain, coaster,  and folie-form. Then I started filling in the other spaces with printemps, ahh, flux, shattuck, and portholes.  Quick to tangle, this little stack was complete.
Won't you try out the string this week? Here is a link to print. 

New Tangle: Dropz

This new tangle just came together as I was circle stacking. Dropz. So easy to do and it looks really cool!

 See that band across the middle?

That is dropz.

Someone asked for the step outs, 

so here they are!

 Those are the steps.

Just below this sentence you see what dropz looks like when it is completed.

Below that are two tangleations.

 Really versatile and you can make it look different

by adding highlights, or changing up the dark sections.

Dropz. Across the bottom.

Why don't you try it out today and see what you can do with dropz?

4Mom, Jane Eileen's New Tangle

 Here is a pretty cool new tangle my friend and fellow CZT Jane Eileen created for Mother's Day!

Jane was playing around with this new tangle. As she drew it out, this is what she saw on row two and the name right away became 4Mom.

Jane has a pretty fantastic blog called  See Jane Run  where you can see her beautiful renditions of 4Mom,  as well as a host of other goodies!

Here is a little two inch Bijou tile I drew,  stacking Copada with 4Mom.  A lot of punch in a little tile!

This is another 2" Bijou tile, stacking 4Mom with flux.
My tile at the very top of this post stacks 4Mom with crescent moon and my own tangle TootsieMoon.

 4Mom is a versatile tangle, with lots of tangleation possibilities.

We'd don't you join us and give 4Mom a try this week!  

Trying to Get Back in the Routine

Wow! It's been twelve days since I posted. And, yes, I realize my blog looks weird. Having a bit of an issue with photobucket, hopefully Cindy will be able to figure it out soon.
I had a wonderful trip to Colorado, and the great news is I did not have an issue with the altitude. The medicine the doctor put me on worked! Hallelujah! I was pretty groggy the first several days, but eventually I was able to do a little tangling. This is the biggest project I worked on. A little flux, rock n'roll, rain, beadlines, cruffle, TootsieMoon and blox. A fun piece to draw!
I'm working in the studio - re-organizing - again. One of the CZTs started a facebook group for studios and it has started a desire to re-organize. Stay tuned in a couple weeks for new studio shots.

Tibetan Teal Starburst

This was a fun tile. Primarily I made this one to see how the ink spray would turn out. I used Lindy's Stamp Gang Starburst spray. The color is Tibetan Poppy Teal. These starburst sprays are so much fun -  you get the main color, and you also get a hint of another. Here you have the teal, with a hint of blush. Tangles are rock n' roll, a partial TootsieMoon,  and cheesecloth. I really love cheesecloth.
It's been a busy day here -  organizing, re-arranging. Pretty soon I won't be able to find anything. Except Aurora. She will be hiding right here:

I told Mark we could turn this into a kitty condo. Lower level - litter box. Middle level - bed. Upper level - food and water.  Hahahaha! I love my kitty, but this is so going to be full of paint come tomorrow!

The Diva's Bi-Zen-Tennial Celebration!

Laura Harms hosts the Diva Challenge each week. This is her 200th offering. Each week Laura posts a prompt,  a tangle, an idea, an event -  something specific for us to tangle and share.

Wow! Getting brave here! This was my drawing the very first time I participated. I'd been tangling for a couple weeks and this was the first drawing I ever posted online. It was April 18, 2012, her 66th challenge. (I've learned a bit since then.) The challenge was to use auras.

Jump forward to almost three years later . . .

. . . and this week's challenge is to use our bread and butter tangle, the one we turn to most often, and draw a monotangle using it. All the way to the edges. No frame. And to have the number '200' on the tile somewhere.
Basically what that means is to use only one pattern and make it go all the way out to the sides. I chose to use TootsieMoon, which is one of my own patterns. I showed it in both the positive and negative formats.
Thanks, Laura, for 200 awesome challenges! Happy Bi-Zen-Tennial, y'all!

The Diva Challenge

Twinchie Time

Twinchies are tiny little works of art. Drawn on a 2" square tile of paper, twinchies are shared and traded between artists.
I have a really hard time deciding what to do with a 2" piece of paper, so for this new year I decided to try to draw one twinchie a day.  Above are my twinchies for January 1-7, 2015.

I'm starting to get the hang of this a little more each day.  Here is week two, January 8-14, 2015.
So far, so good. I'm not falling behind although some days I do have to do more than one twinchie because I missed the day before. Minor technical difficulty. It's all good.

String 119, and More TootsieMoon

 Time for another string challenge. Each week, Linda Farmer posts a string challenge on Tangle Patterns.com.  This week's string came from CZT Linda Fine.

This is what Linda gave us. I took the string, drew it lightly on my 3 1/2" tile in pencil, then began with the basic steps of TootsieMoon along the string. Then I just kept auraing the Tootsie filled string. Last? Shading. What a difference shading makes with TootsieMoon! Love the way it turned out!
Seriously, check out Tangle Patterns for all the newest tangles, some looks back at what we were drawing a year ago, and some pretty fun strings!

Stringing Along With TootsieMoon

Each week at Tangle Patterns - Linda Farmer posts a string for us to try out. I have saved every string since Linda started this. I organize them in a desktop folder according to year. A little anal-retentive much? (That's a hold-over term from my police days. Sorry.) The most recent string - #118 - comes from Barbara Finwall. This is what Linda gave us:

For tangles I used rain - a stand-by favorite of mine lately. That is what you see in that top wavy line. In the bottom section I used a tangle of my own - called TootsieMoon. You can see the steps in this post. TootsieMoon and rain work very well together, as they are similar in appearance. The steps are a bit more complicated for TootsieMoon, but so worth the effort! Thanks for the awesome string!

TootsieButter?

 Some time back, my friend Sandy Hunter did some experimenting with taking two tangle patterns and turning them into one. Kind of a mash-up, if you will. Last night I was drawing Michele Beauchamp's blooming-butter and thought it would really mix it up well with the TootsieMoon that I've been working on.

This is a drawing of blooming-butter that I posted a couple months ago.

And here is the step-out for TootsieMoon. I took those arms of the blooming-butter flowers and turned those into arms of TootsieMoon. What shall I call it? I think I'll call this drawing . . . TootsieButter!

Linking up to the Artist's Play Room. 

TootsieMoon and Color

 Last week I posted the step-out for my tangle TootsieMoon and gave some examples of it in use. Below is the tile in straight black and white. I have since come back and added color by way of Prismacolor Pencils. And I added that cute little snail. He (or she) is fresh from CZT training in Rhode Island and will begin popping up all over the zentangle pages you follow very soon. Meet Bijou.

As much as I love the color - it's hard to beat the plain ol' black and white version.

If you haven't tried out TootsieMoon yet, here is a link to the step out. Have fun!