Woah! Waybop!

The Diva Challenge this week was to play with Waybop, the new Zentangle (tm) that is so impressive, and SO much fun!

I started the tipple corner at work, thinking it would be a traveling tile, but when I sat down to this challenge, it was the one I grabbed...tipple ended up playing a pretty big role.

the aura was fun, too 

This week's String Thing Challenge looked interesting, too. I liked the string a lot, for some reason. Usually curves are more my thing. Well, I decided to try this one "Lori Byerly Style"... 
She likes to "bigify" things, and every SINGLE thing she creates is striking and unique. Well, I bigified the Flec to start:

A creek with little cairns along the banks

I ended up liking this one a lot. Oh! that's Lori's "Bublz" pattern in the corners. Even though Edgar doesn't turn me on, I managed to include it.

Also keeping me busy this week have been some Traveling Tangles.

I stayed inside Stephanie's border

 Stephanie Jennifer, from Singapore...SINGAPORE!... sent me this sweet start with Dicso and Bales. I finished it off with Footlites, a little bit of shading, some color int he centers of the Dicso flowers. Such fun! Singapore. wow.

Another Stephanie, Stephanie Drewa from Wisconsin, sent this bright colorful tile, and her Blorbs start

I added some more Borbs, and her Butterflyz along the right...and see the one little orange feller there? he broke away from the ribbon. My Cypresses, and then some round bits: Niuroda, Hamail, Proza, and Phicops. Then tipple...seems that Tipple spilling off the edge is a theme with me lately.

Stephanie's Lovely Bold Card

Stephanie and I are going to swap back and forth:

an Opus size tile. I'll start, she'll add to it, and send it back

then I'll do some more! until we are done.

Won't that be fun!

The fun mail from Stephanie was all packed inside a blank card with the cute Citrus, cruffle, and Barberpole in the bottom left corner. I had so much fun finishing this, and can hardly wait for an occasion to give to someone. :) that motif in to the right is called Proza, which I learned around the same time as Waybop. 

So, I found the most adorable bird picture...a Splendid Fairy Wren...and isn't he JUST splendid! Then looking at him, I realized...I can do this...so I did:

I maked something

Wouldn't it be truly splendid to get that brilliant shade of blue on his cheeks? But...it's still adorable.


And, one last picture. It's an ATC tile, cut from a sheet of watercolor paper that I colored using the tissue paper transfer method...when I had this one in my hand, I just knew it needed Fronds, so that is where I started:

Suzanne Fluhr's Aloha just hollered out to be included, and then Fescu here and there.

Oh, these colored tiles!

Valentine's Diva and Lovely Family

this has been a fun week for me, because my son who lives in Denver has been in town since Monday night! We've all been hanging out, he's been staying at his sister's new house...who JUST moved in literally the day he got to town. So, with her moving, and her little sister moved into a new place one week before and I helped with that...hahahaha...supervised is more like it, since my knee is out of commission. And at work, moved my desk. I knew it was coming, but didn't know the day it was supposed to happen UNTIL I arrived last Friday.

Long story short: I need a drop shelf for my keyboard, for ergonomic reasons. They uninstalled my drop desk from THIS desk and installed it at my NEW desk during my days off. So when I got to work, I found out: NOW is moving day. And I like my new location, but a day's advance notice would have been nice...

But more about my wonderful kids.

Santa put fake noses in their stockings that year for Christmas. These three are Abbie, Robby, and Katie on Xmas 2010. Robby is the one who now lives in Denver.










but since this picture doesn't include their oldest brother Jason, I have another:

all the hands! hahahaha!

That's Jason wearing orange. Real mature, Jay...and Rob. This was two ish years ago. That's me in the middle with the sideways head.

Yes, we are always generally this goofy when we get together. And now my Robby lives in Denver; Abbie (the dark haired girl on the top layer) is expecting her firstborn in May and just moved to a new house. Katie on the right is head over heels in love and just moved to her first apartment "with" someone. :) Jason has two kids of his own. Yes, I'm a gramma. And the year this one was taken, the oldest was 11. Which means he is now 13. Good grief. How old every else has gotten.

Well, it's been over a year since we've seen Rob, so we've been enjoying his company. He's hanging out with siblings, took me out to lunch on Tuesday which was lovely. Pizza and unpacking the kitchen together at Abbie's last night. And tonight, with even more family, hanging with my mom, and then out to dinner, all of us. Yay! And he drives back tomorrow. Boo.

Now on to the art!

We were challenged to do something Valentiney this week, for the Diva Challenge.
Valentine's Day isn't all that important to me. I found a card for Wylie this year, and made some inchies with hearts on them and put them on a few friends' desks at work. And Wylie got me some earrings which are lovely. Well anyway, I wasn't wanting to do all kinds of hearts and lace and such. And this is what I came up with

Looks sort of heart and lacey after all doesn't it?

Luffline is the main pattern, with a few perfs nestled in there, and floatfest along the edges. Floatfest is one of the first complex patterns I learned. I hadn't encountered Hollibaugh yet, and here I was drawing "behind"...I just loved it and it was fun bringing it to this pattern. The shading is"pen flick" method, using a ball point pen...a REALLY fun technique that I enjoy so much and it looks very cool when you're done.

Still enjoying all the colored tiles, though with all the family activity I haven't had time to make any more or to cut tiles...though I do have lots of starts on colored tiles.

Anyone want to swap? Let me know in the comments and we can arrange addresses, etc. I'll wait a few days before posting on FB.


Meanwhile, I also have a couple of starts that came to me, from two Stephanies! One from Wisconsin, and one from Singapore...now who would have thought when I started tangling three years ago, that I'd be getting mail from Singapore!

I'll share those starts and finishes here, when I'm done.



Haven't gotten to Joey's challenge yet. Maybe today. 

Hamadox, F String, and More!

It's been a fun and busy little while, as I got some color transfer tissue and made some just amazing sheets of stained paper. Made some regular tiles, and colored some opus size papers, and have one piece I'm just in love with

Isn't this one funny...you can see where I pressed down on the tissue with my fingers.

an opus piece I may leave it whole

This is one of the opus pieces. I might do more with it, to tone
 down or balance the brilliance.

This one, the colors are muted because it's the second run with the tissue. I really like how the tones get muted when you use the tissue a second and third time.

a third run with the same tissue, plus some new indigo

This is my absolute favorite. I just love the tones, and the marbling effect is just stunning. It's pretty enough to frame, I think. Well, my mom gave me a great idea...take it to a professional printer, where they can make a high quality print...frame THAT, and then use the paper for art. 

Nice, eh?

 The colors on this individual tile were so pretty. This was my first one. That pattern on the right is Helen William's String Rose. I want to play with it some more. It isn't as easy to do as she makes it look !!! but I know with practice it'll get better.

Now, on to the challenges of this week.

the Diva gave us hamadox for a challenge this week. It's a pretty fun pattern but I had a hard time making it part of a tile. It just had to be the star.

Hamadox with Squid and Tipple, on tan toned paper and shaded with brown, red, and dark purple. Some white charcoal pencil.

Joey's alphabet string challenge is up to F which she started for us with Festune...

Festune in the lower corner and I added Fescu, and I put Fang in the F, Fronds at the base of the F, and Fiore. After all that color work, this one needed something so I did the edges of Fiore in pink and yellow. 

And a string thing challenge

It reminds me of looking out a cottage window into a sweet little garden. 

the Traveling Tangles Project on FB has been keeping me pleasantly busy. I've swapped with Michele:

My start to Michele: cypresses by me on an ATC

Michele's start to me: rooster colors and Elven on a regular tile

 My finish on Michele's glorious tile. I had so much fun doing these gems! And sort of wish I hadn't done that Gnarly "rooster tail" but there you have it.

And Michele did this amazing finish on the start that I sent. It's like a little babbling brook with a leafy bank. Love it!

all kinds of things

so, I spent a few days catching up with Joey's alphabet challenges.

C is the only letter I've joined at the time, so I did A, B, D, and E this week. Here they are:

I used Arundel in the background, Antique on the cross beam of the A, and A-dalfa. Colored with various hues of red.

the b string is a little harder to see...it was downright invisible before I colored violet in the back of the B-twined.

b has B-twixed, then B-twined in the background, with a big puffy Bales behind everything else. Haven't used Bales much, and I like it a lot kind of puffy and shiny this way.

This was the most fun of all the alphabet pieces. D with Dicso running up the side, and Didada...which really got cool looking when I put color on it and blended "back"

Didada is a neat background pattern that gets downright dimensional with shading. 

 I loved El Prado the minute I saw it, a few months ago. Echo and Eye Wa on the e. I tried to make the e look blocky. It was fun playing with Echo.

It felt like it needed some color, but looking at it now, it would have been better with graphite shading.









 
Also, tickled to find the diva challenging us to a pardox vs. diva dance challenge, a la' the zentangle.com video that came out this past week. I actually sat with the video on and did a piece just like the one Rick showed, only I threw some Nippa in there along with the Diva Dance.


But I did all this before the Diva's challenge this week, so I decided to make another duo tangle

 The best thing about this was the zen place I got to, doing it. I didn't try to make anything happen, just put the pen in the next place. The repetition of both patterns was so relaxing, and I was really detached from the end result. I simply kept making lines and curves until I was done.

One other Diva challenge, that I did at the time but didn't get around to blogging about it was the Moebius challenge. I made this the first day, and lost it! But now it's found again. I created it on a Z3 tile, sent to me by a fellow Traveling Tangler on FB, Kristen Kostelnik.

I used beelight and Nekton on the moebius strip, and random lavender triangles as a background.

Something exciting: I am exchanging tiles with Stephanie Jennifer in Singapore! can you just imagine...I've never gotten mail from the far east before. Also, Michele Wynne and I are swapping.




I just finished a couple of tiles from Sue Olsen:

Here are the gorgeous tiles she sent. I'm really excited to do the tissue paper transfer/color technique from her FB page. Also Michele has a tutorial about laying color on paper. Both look like fun, and I get to start when my tissue paper arrives by mail. Couldn't find it locally, so...Amazon, eh?

This one, I did while I watched the Mary Tyler Moore special on TV, the day after she passed away. I wish the photo did justice to the luminous quality of the colors. SO wonderful!

This one I finished, from Sue's Ibex start, in the corner. I added Ginili and Venetian, along with some more Ibex in pale blue in the background. Again, the colors in person on this tile are stunning.