Halloweenish

So fittingly, Laura Harms's challenge for us this week is to make some Halloween themed art. I found an orange tile, and put some rather creepy stuff on it. Abundies can look like a pumpkin,

then I added leaflet along the bottom, and Ropuz has always reminded me of fungi, growing in the dark, damp, hidden places. Those little "stick out your tongue" bits are called Lumpi,, goofy looking and creepy alien looking...Rain, and lava lamp (?) and some shading along with white gelly...kinda creepy fun, eh?

But I can't leave out one of my favorite pieces I ever made, which was was from last year's Halloween week String Thing challenge. Adele Bruno set us with a Candy Corn shaped string, and gave us Chartz, Cadent, Cracked and Confettus to play with...well I had so much fun with it, coloring it and such, so I include it here. :)

clearly, I had the most fun with chartz eyeballs hahahaha and I didn't put cadent in anywhere...but the colors were fun, and I tucked it away, and when the time came this year I put it on my wall at work and took a picture of it for this challenge.

DuoTangle Flux and NZeppel

This was a fun challenge. I like both of these tangles. Flux is always fun, and N'zeppel is my mac n cheese pattern. I use it in most of my pieces.

And, the challenge came along as I was revving up an interest in gemstones.

So, this is my entry.

My new gray tone sketchbook...mmmm!

The shiny turquoise flux was first. It was so enjoyable, as I was doing it at work, so I'd come and go, and whenever I came back to my desk, I got to see the shiny all over again. The other flux I was trying to get a matte silver patina, not sure how successful that was, but then I comforted myself with shading the Nzeppel...of my most favorite things to do in the world. I used Prismacolor pencils, graphite, and white gelly roller
And the round of nzeppel up in the corner made me think of something...so I did this one:

I haven't done a single smidgen of shading on this one yet, but I thought it was a good choice for the two patterns. It is on a regular tile that I made myself from tiepolo paper.

Lots of fun...and still playing with gem effects.

How to draw Celtic Knots 1 - The Celtic Triskele

Fun with Torn Paper

   

Joey's Challenge...we've been having fun for a few weeks doing challenges modeled after the Traveling Tangles Project on Facebook. Joey "starts" a tile for us, and we finish it. This week, the start is a torn paper tangle.


I didn't know how to do this, and there are no official stepouts as such, so I just went ahead and practiced it a few times until it got looking okay. And then I forgot to take a picture of my "torn paper" before tangling it! ha!


but here is the finished piece   

 
About the time I was thinking I wouldn't participate in the challenge this week, I started fooling around with heartswell/heartstrings by Helen Williams. I love the way she has it drawn on her blog, all sort of swelling and bulging. I did a little sample of it, and thought...wait a minute...what if...


So, going with the idea of hearts welling up out of a constricted flat surface, after I got done doing the heartswell, I thought the "flat" part needed to look like stationery (wall paper? hahahaha) and that's what I did.









Truth be told, my old Rosie cat pretty much did this to a wall near the back door. There was a ding where the knob dented the wall, and she saw it, reached up with a paw/claw to find out what it was, and had a hey day. She really did tear it up, literally. My wall didn't swell up with hearts though.


So, Joey is challenging us with Traveling tangle style, and I am also participating sparsely in the Facebook group.




Here are a few tiles I started and sent to another team member:

To Raye Burnett, who also sent me a couple of starts.

Sandi sent me several in September that I did up, and forgot to post anything about it on FB (in my defense, we were without internet for a while.)

You can see the started tile and two tiles with some color background. I started on the one with the pastels, to send to Raye. The other one has this lovely soft silver and gold sort of glitter background that I can't wait to play with my sparkle gel pens.

Here are some finished tiles:

 



Sandi's first tile started with sixmail.



starting with the flower upper left
finishing with squid, beelight, sanibelle and some tipple.


How to draw a simple Triskele




I learned how to do a Triskele! easy!
along with Tropicana, Onomato, B'tweed, and Pozer.

Challenges and Handcut Tiles and Ensembles

Wow, has this been a creative couple of weeks. A year or more ago, I bought some Tiepolo paper from DaVinci Artist supply. Tiepolo is the paper that Zentangle.com uses for their official tiles, and it is absolutely wonderful to work with. I bought my own large sheets of paper, in order to cut my own tiles. I did many 3.5x3.5 tiles and three opus size pieces at the time. Haven't started anything with the Opus sizes, but I've had lots of fun with the regular tiles.

Due to a snafu in shipping, the first piece was damaged and they sent me a replacement, which I just opened, so I could make some more tiles. And I decided to do an ensemble.

This is the string, before cutting into tiles:

You can see the first cut. The string is there, promise.

I worked on it here and there over a couple of weeks, and these three are the first ones I did. My favorite is the one with hollibaugh and niuroda...

here is the entire thing, completed and in order. You can see where the string was.

Playing with this has been lots of fun. I have it all assembled on my cubicle wall at work...lots to look at. And I have a good supply of tiles again. Maybe I'll start on an Opus soon!

Now, on to some challenges. It is UMT week with the Diva, and this month it is a fascinating tangle called Dreamcatcher...It's very easy to do, and as you work it, voila! a fibonacci spiral develops! Love it.

It's lots of fun, just free hand, but it would be cool done with exact measurements, too.

 

A Ferris Wheel?

 Dreamcatcher, tipple, and mooka. 

And, along with the Diva challenge, I am enjoying Joey's "traveling" tiles every week. This time, with Relly telly one in the corner. 

 

A new tangle for me, and I added another new one, called Interwyned both can be found at patterncollections.com, a terrific website packed with lots of tangles.

similar to Relly telly one, Interwyned has an alternating dot grid to start.

A day without a ninja throwing star is like a day without...sunshine?

This was so enjoyable. I had fun with the alternating dot grid, the flowers, the spirals. The shading!

yup, a week of tangling creativity.