Paradox Dance

HI Eggybuggy!

This happy boy has taken his first steps.

So it's been a busy week for Orion, and mama and dad-oo. And me.

Let's start right off the bat with the Diva Challenge: Paradox Monotangle. Boy did I have fun with this! I started with the frame and then created squares and triangles inside, and went for it. I thought about some embellishments such as perfs or other ribbon tangles inside some of the "blades" but then thought better of it...Paradox is so cool looking on its own, eh? 

This is a bijou tile, from a Traveling Tangles Happy Mail...I finished with Wud and some swirly thing, along with the flowery looking thing in the upper corner. Some white gel on the perfs. 

I just loved the rich, warm tones of the paper!

Looking SO earnest! 

Patterns: Diva Dance, Pillows, Cubine, Crest, Opus, Telis, Onomato, Fescu, Tipple

Now, here is the entry for Joey's challenge...she "started" us with Diva Dance, and I turned it and it just shouted "ocean waves" to me so of course I put a building in there.

When I was done, I noticed that there were lots of 3's...three curves on the Opus, three waves of Crest, three rounded smashed looking flower looking things. 

So I call this "Threes" 

From my sketchbook. I started with all those Onomato orbs on the left and sort of just went wherever with it. I may add some shading. 

This is another Traveling Tangle, from the March "Flower" theme. I added PokeLeaf, PokeRoot, Toodles, PixieOzie, and Zinger. 

the start, from Linda Levin Brown

  There was a piece of plain blue paper in the happy mail...and I decided to do Bales all over it

  For Bales, I start with a dot grid, and do the "inner" shape first...as you put them in the grid, Bales begins to form.

This is how that one ended up :) 

Dude, why so skeptical? hahahahaha!

And that is all for this week. 

Thanks for visiting and THANK YOU SO MUCH for comments. 

I love comments!

This Week's Challenges Including St Patrick's Family Feast

So....this is Aidan, my first grandchild. He will be 15 this year!!! How is that EVEN possible? Me? With a HALF GROWN boy-man grandson? Next thing, they'll be saying I'm old or something. But I had to share it, because it is VERY rare to get a picture of this feller. Not long after this picture was taken, his Aunt Abbie (Orion's mama) did a French braid in his hair, but he shook it out pretty fast. 

St Aidan?

This was at the family St Patrick's Day feast. LOVE LOVE LOVE my fam!

L to R: Jason (My firstborn); Marci (sis-n-law); Curt (bro-in-law)
Hilary (sister); Sheila nee McSharry (mom...see that Irish name?
Now do you see why St Paddy's is a favorite for us?)

Not in the picture: Dave (brother) Alec and Preston (nephews) Lily and Sarah (nieces) Nadia (granddaughter) Lakota (dog) Wylie (my sweetheart and Orion's Opa) Kristi (daughter-in-law)...What a FAMILEEEEE! 

Got busy yesterday with tissue transfer colored paper again. On the left is the "up" side of the paper, but then I turned it over!!! Look how cool the bleed through is! I mean, it looks like a star field in that one corner! I'm super excited to do something with this awesome paper!

Now, on to the Diva Challenge: she asked us to use our name as a string

which I did...and then a faint memory from my grade school days came to me...

We wrote our signature, and then did a mirror image of it by folding and tracing, with a window behind it for light. Once we were done, the project continued into making a sort of insect looking thing...SO much fun! Fast forward 46 years... I didn't have a window handy, and I didn't want to fold my tile, and the challenge wasn't about insects...but I think I did a passing job of mirroring my name:

making it bold

And this was my result. I used Verve again, because it was so much fun last week. Then Bunzo, Flux, Well, and whateverthatisundertheH's. By going "behind" with the patterns, and then the shading...I think it turned out pretty cool. 

here is Love Bean again, sitting on daddy's lap. It was a large gathering, and he wanted to sit and see who all was there before venturing out into the crowd. Didn't take long...he wanted to bolt for the stairs in the kitchen, so he ended up being held or guarded by one or another aunt, uncle, cousin, Opa, or YaYa, throughout the night.



Here he is with Aunt Marci, after a change of shirt.

JOEY'S FINISH MY TILE CHALLENGE

The squares look like Drawings on a Half Grid, and then some upward Msst, some black perls, and some shading

Joey continues her Ribbons and Curls "finish my tile" challenges, and this one started with Coil. I didn't take a picture before this one, but I did of the one I "flubbed":

Joey's start

Jules's Start

This is a Traveling Tangle! Jules Mack sent it to me a month or two ago, and I finally finished it up:

I thought it looked like an old ivy covered library on a University campus. 

This happy baby! 

Short and Sweet

Finally I got sat down with some free time, to make a blog entry!

This week's Diva Challenge was to use the tangle Verve. It's a relaxing pattern, with loads of auras around a center circle.

This is my entry:

This is the first page of my new small sketchbook. I bought a Canson mix media, a smaller version of my "large" sketchbook. I LOVE THE PAPER!

Well, I drew a string and filled it up, starting with the Verve. I added my own Concert (looking like sunrays) and Nippa, Tipple, and up in the corner, Earjools. That's a fun one, like a  Celtic triskele, around a circle rather than a triangle. Fitting for St Patrick's Day.

Then came Joey's challenge We are having SO MUCH FUN with these "finish my tile" starts that Joey is giving us. Unfortunately I didn't take a before, but tapping some Michele Wynne creativity, I made a duo challenge out of it:

The Diva Challenge section is shaded with graphite, and I decided to do the shading on the Joey Challenge section in stippling. There's some verve in there, too!


One last minute thing: The IAST challenge for St Patrick's Day, which I did ON the saint's day, and which I tried to make VERY Irish. :) 

 The challenge called for Cruze, which I could NOT make happen. I finally got it, and can do it correctly but it just didn't want to be in this tile. So...I did put in Lucky and Lukiline, and added Floose along two edges. And a bunch of pale Celtic Triskeles in the background. It's energetic and leafy and full of life, and I like it.

That's all I have. Can't believe it, but I think starting this new sketchbook with its elegant, luscious 98 lb paper has made me hesitant. But that's okay...I'll get over it. Going to spend some time tangling in it right now!

The Creative Flow

This has been a productive week for me with tangling.

I got the urge and made some colored paper

cut it into tiles...it's a treat just looking at them. Color is so cheering and uplifting!





















Every chance I got, I had my sketchbook and pens out and was creating something, practicing a new thing, or making something!

The bookmarks! the tile...that is 5x5 and I used the color sections as my string..

This is how the tile turned out. I started out with Joey's start and went from there. Having the colors as a string was perfect. Notice: There's a little bit of Siri in there, which was the Diva's UMT challenge this week.  Joey's challenges have been fun, similar to traveling tangles.

But Siri was a challenge. I worked on it a lot

It kept me stumped until I played with the elements in it and figured out how to round the ends of the X's.

So I'd say this is my Diva challenge tile...it's got Siri and Lee Bee and lots of open space!

A baby picture! He had his tongue out and I zoomed to try and capture it but blurred it instead

 Some pages from my sketchbook.

 developing a pattern based on a lamp I saw.

 One day I was in the mood for flowers and curls!

another page from  my large sketchbook

This was the week's String Thing, using inapod and roloflex. Roloflex is another pattern I didn't just take to right away. I can never get it looking like a pile of stones. This time, it looks like a tower! but I did enjoy it and the cast shadow N'zeppel was way fun to do.

I really
 liked this refresher 168.  using waybop, 96x, loop blossom, paravan, e'rutats and a sunray looking string.  I call it India Sun.

 we had the baby over for a day, while his mom and dad did some deep cleaning at their house. He had a terrific time, ignoring almost all the toys he brought with him to focus on the pot and wooden spoon that YaYa supplied.

I think he'll be walking real soon. !!!

but we did have fun!

 At the Traveling Tangles project, we are doing a "rescue" theme...that is, if you have tiles that you don't like, send them on and see if someone can fix it

this was Gwen's start

and this was how I finished it. 

 these are just regular starts from Jules, not rescues

and these are my finishes for those starts. Traveling Tangles really IS the most fun!

And this is mama and baby...my sweethearts! love smooch kissy face yummy mama and baby!