Aquafleur

Maria Thomas recently shared a new tangle she's called Aquafleur. It's quite lovely, both organic and bold. This new tangle is the Diva's challenge this week, which is wonderful as I had tried it once (in the lower right, here) and have been wanting to give it another whirl. You can find the how-to in the Zentangle newsletter here.

Here's my first tile, in black and white.

It's so lovely I thought it deserved to be tried in aqua, or water-y, colors so I did an acrylic wash and tangled on it.

For a really beautiful example of this tangle, see Carole Ohl's Christmas tree here.

Maxwell Smart

Agent 99, it's the old "tangle-on-the-hotel-coaster" trick.

Tangle: variations of Tripoli
(The sea star was already there.)

I did it again (ATCs)

More upcycled ATCs from a piece of unsatisfactory artwork. Fortunately I'm involved in two very large ATC exchanges, so I have lots of use for all the ATCs I've been making lately! For one swap I made 47 (I think) and for the next one I'm committed to 106! Yes, really!

I love fractals and encountered the Koch Snowflake design some time ago. It's composed of equilateral triangles and each triangle has a smaller triangle off the middle of each side. It continues like this, with smaller, tinier, ever more miniscule triangles. While the perimeter of the Koch Snowflake is fascinating, the middle is blaringly empty. Paradox (a favorite tangle) seemed like a marvelous thing to put inside the triangles. I didn't like the tiniest stars I could manage to draw; they seemed to make it look fuzzy.

Here's the original artwork, divided in pencil into ATC sizes. I saved the edges for potential bookmarks.

Thirteen cards to play with. Two have almost nothing on them.

Six of them received a background wash in various colors.

 

I also added collaged bits to some of those. Here are the above cards completed, and in the same order as above. Some I've decided I prefer 'upside-down'.

Five received initial collage elements of various sorts.

Here are the five above, now completed, and again in the same order. Little gems were added to the two on the right.

Two were left alone at the beginning but the one on the left got a bit of collage along the way. Finally, here are the last two.

'2014' Diva challenge

Tangles: Braze, Bunzo, Crossview, Florz,
Knot Rickz, Rain, Tipple, Yew-Dee

Laura challenged us to use the new year 2014 as inspiration for this week's challenge. There are some really interesting results flowing from participants: a word for the year, Roman numerals, simple numbers, a thought or aphorism. It's going to be a wonderful slide show!

I decided to simply use the numbers 2, 0, 1, and 4 overlapping to make my string. For some reason I did this on the diagonal. Here's the string I began with:

I really quite liked it despite some rather tiny sections. I reminded myself that the string is a guideline, not a Rule and that I could ignore some or combine sections if I felt like it.

More eye candy (part 2)

Here is the second half of the ATC 'deck' I made for an upcoming swap among CZTs (we're a fun group!). The first half of the deck is here.

More eye candy!

As promised, here are close-ups of some of the ATCs I made for a swap among Certified Zentangle Teachers (CZTs). The original idea has morphed somewhat. We were to do 53 cards that could - in theory - be playing cards, to make a deck of cards. We're still making 53 cards (yikes!) but the idea, and the possible materials, opened up a lot. I still love paper and pen and pencil, and occasional gems!

This is the first half of the cards, numbers 1-24. Numbers 25-53 coming soon.

Angular Ensemble

Whoopee! I'll be attending the Retreat to Paradise in April 2014 in Florida. On Saturday I'll be teaching about mandalas and related topics. I'm still figuring it all out.

The organizers have also planned an Ensemble swap for any interested participants. Ensembles are one of Zentangle's products. There are two sets in a pack, one curvy and one angular. Each pack consists of nine pre-strung white tiles. The string runs over all the tiles and the tiles compose a 3x3 tile piece of artwork. Just complete one tile and put it aside, pull out another and do it, etc.. Forget about whether the tangles match from tile to tile; the string holds it all together! Brilliant fun.

Here is my 'angular' ensemble. Now to do the 'curvy' one!

TANGLES:
Tile #1: Auraknot, Gneiss, Ninja Stars, Paradox, Pearlz
Tile #2: Bilt, Chebucto, Cruze, Diamond Drop, Elven, Florz, Fohbraid
Tile #3: Black Pearlz, Bunzo, Jalousie, Screen
Tile #4: Black Pearlz, Knase, Romanancy, Tipple, Tortuca, Zedbra, stripes
Tile #5: Beadlines, Cyrano, Knot Rickz, Palrevo, Phuds, Tipple, a spiral
Tile #6: Black Pearlz, Braze, Cockles'n'Mussels, Paradox, Snugz, Tipple
Tile #7: Black Pearlz, Knot Rickz, Moving Day, Paizel, Tripoli, Wud
Tile #8: Bales, Crescent Moon, Crezn't, Ixorus, Lotus Pods, Romanancy, Tipple
Tile #9: Aquafleur, Black Pearlz, Diamond Panes, Krli-Q, Pearlz, Tipple