Meshing Tangles

To say I'm getting discouraged tangling would be putting it mildly. It took me three days to draw this simple tangle, but at least I tangled something. 

 I frequently get asked how I decide which patterns to use

and how I make them work together.

One of the weekly prompts in my Facebook group Zentangle All Around was to use Julie Beland's tangle gooberz. I love that tangle! I knew that I needed something else to go with it, so I went to Julie's Pinterest board and looked at the other patterns she has designed. Beauchamp is similar in style and the roundness of each tangle works well together. So Beauchamp became my second pattern.

I began by setting up a section of gooberz

to the left-hand side of my page.

Those thickened lines really make this

tangle special!

They also help cover up any boo-boos 

you may make.

Hahaha!

 I needed to segue from one tangle to the next.

The obvious way to blend the two was to keep

the curvature of the line going.

I placed my first line of Beauchamp to the

right of an unfinished gooberz.

 Then I filled in the right-hand side of the page

with more curvy lines that were to

be filled with beauchamp.

 I connected gooberz to beauchamp with those

straight lines and began drawing in the orbs

for the beauchamp design.

 I felt like the drawing needed to begin and end

the same way, so I added one last

line of gooberz out to the right. 

Blackening in those fills between the

beauchamp blobs really made that tangle pop!

And it gave the bit of contrast I needed.

The last thing I did was to tangle up all  those blobs. Any tangle works here for fills. And the more tangles, the better. I love variety.
In a couple months when my eyes are better I will come back and shade this piece. In the interim a couple people mentioned  they wanted to color this one. Go for it! I'd love to see how it turns out!

Zentangle Challenge

 I admin a group on Facebook called

Zentangle All Around.

We focus on tangles that have some element

of roundness in them - 

a curve or oval or circle - anything round at all.

And we are currently doing a year long focus

on strings. The thought being that at the

end of 2016 we will have 366 pieces of

zentangle art with some element

of roundness to them.

Yesterday I offered the challenge to try  Caren Mlot's tangle navaho  with my tangle All Boxed Up. So this is what I did with them. I worked on a square about 4 inches across. The top tile shows my work unshaded. Across the top is Julie Beland's beauchamp mixed with my baubles, then All Boxed Up to the right. Across the middle is my tangle semaphore. Then in the lower right corner you see Caren's navaho. (Sorry, I haven't posted step outs for semaphore yet.)
The second tile shows the piece totally shaded. I don't do heavy shading like some pieces of art you see online, I go for the lighter touch. But even in the lighter touch, you can see the difference shading makes in your art. Caren's navaho stands out a lot more, the beauchamp baubles are more 3D-ish, and All Boxed Up looks like a completely different tangle.

Challenge for you today? Try these two tangles and let me see what you do. You can post them directly on our Facebook wall - Zentangle All Around.
In case you are new to my blog ~ anywhere you see pink, click there. It is a link because . . .  pink = link. SaveSave

Working On Some ATCs

By this point all the Christmas gifts have been opened, all the cookies and cakes and pies have been devoured, Grandma and Grandpa have headed back home, and all the new toys have been played with and left laying around the living room floor.
I hope you had a wonderful holiday spent with someone you love. I am going to prep a few blog posts and schedule them to post over the next couple weeks. They will feature a set of ATCs I've been working on for an upcoming swap. This particular one takes a new tangle called  Beauchamp by Julie Beland, and mingles it with Baubles - a new one of mine that debuts in the Tangle It! Planner. The colorful background is Brushos Color Crystals.
Enjoy the rest of your holiday!

Thursday String Idea #17

It is another Thursday String Idea! I missed last week because I was in Maine and just wasn't prepared. Sorry. But it is all good now, because we have a new string this week! Should you want to print the string above at the  standard 3.5" size, click here.  This is what I did with string #17. I know it is hard to follow, but trust me. The string is definitely in there. I used two tangles - one of mine called baubles, and one of Julie Beland's called beauchamp. They work very well together! You can find those tangles in the Facebook group Zentangle: Tangled and Journaled, Too!
I would love to see what you do with this string! And here is the link one more time if you should wish to print the string. Right here. 
Coming soon - a bunch of photos from Maine!