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!

challenges and then some

This is going to be a short post by necessity, since my battery is almost gone on my laptop and it won't register as being plugged in!

So I'll share quickly! These first pieces are from my sketchbooks.

A little Trinket

This is one of my favorites, that I made shortly after Toodles came out. I also included some Torsdag, Pozer variations, and Telis in the background. Tipple here and there.

Leafline

I worked up this pattern, Leafline, when I was fiddling around with something else. Then I started with Leafline and created a piece in my large 

sketchbook.

Bridges

Refresher  169
Using Icanthis, Funsin, Infinity and Rainking

Another one from my large sketchbook. I think I posted this one recently.

Diva Heart Zendala Challenge

The string

Joey's challenge. I found a colored tile and added Rain, Ing, Tropicana, and swirly white stuff

I enjoyed this challenge a lot, because when I was looking at it, wondering what it needed, and something said "white" so I got out my gelly roller and started filling in random tipples...and when I put the swirlystuff between Rain and Abundies WOW! Oh, there is also some Msst drifting in there.

This was a Refresher.

This time I am sorry to say, no pictures of the baby. For some reason, my phone isn't letting me share to my email. :(

Thank you for reading! Thank you for Commenting! 

Quick blog post

It's late Saturday night, and I haven't made a blog post, but I've gotten three challenges done, and actually quite a few other things. So...maybe this will just be a showcase for some recent pieces.

The Diva challenge was to use nested hearts as a string. Mine weren't concentric hearts, but imbedded. And when I got done filling them with patterns, I ended up with something that might be on a dresser top in a rococo boudoir!

Joey has started another series of "finish my tile" tiles...yay! So we copy what she's made and run with it...I did a duo tangle...Onomato and Hi-bred. I sure enjoyed playing with Hi-bred.

This is the String Thing entry. This is my favorite piece of the week, probably because Golven is one of my favorite patterns and I also love Barney. Anyway, this one I call Jewels on the Beach.
 This is the string! I stretched it over the entire page in my sketchbook, and the string REALLY disappeared! ha! However, for a reference point, the second black Perl from the left is the original circle in the string!

 Made some more bookmarks

There's some Golven!

This is her start

One of the most fun things in my life right now is the Traveling Tangles Project on Facebook, where you start a tile and send it by snail mail to someone who does the ssame for you...a little swap that means getting some happy mail a few times a month. So much fun!

Jules Mack and I swapped....

This is how I finished it...Another favorite! 

 

Just look at my angel sweet baby bum!

Orion is nine months old, and enjoys being up steadying himself on the furniture. 

Here, he was eyeballing the cat or something up on the couch.  

I'm going to go hang out with him and his parents tomorrow. Many more pictures to be taken!

Thanks for reading and commenting!

A Challenging Week

This is my personal challenge this week: To put an entry in all the challenges this week: Diva, Joey, and IAST :)

Adele Bruno gave us a string and some tangles to play with
 Jester is pretty new to me, but the fun potential is huge! I'll be playing with it and exploring. This is my entry for IAST, which she posted on her blog this week.

And here is last week's Joey challenge... This was her 200th challenge! That is just too cool to pass up! So I did it and posted on Pinterest about it

Exeter was the featured tangle, with string 165. I started with a tissue dyed tile, and when Exeter was applied, Strircles called out to me. You can see Dave Hunter's Pinbawl in there, and some funky V thing (where I flubbed Exeter and made it into something new!) I like this one. Strircles uses a lot of ink, but it is STRIKING!

Last week's Joey Challenge

And from Joey this week, we have Drogon on a bed of String 157, and I had a lot of fun with it:

Reminds me of a treasure trove

Because Rumpus is fun...it's a fun word. When I was a little girl I had a friend whose home had a Rumpus Room in it! ha! With games and old furniture (I mean, sometimes we just hung out, and sometimes we played) So I used Rumpus and Drogon is in there large, and added my own Concert, then filled in the upper corner with Irradial...another VERY cool pattern that is fun as a filler. There's Tipple here and there, along with an Aquafleur element. Yup. Much fun was had.


the Diva challenge this week was to use the official tangle Rumpus, and I needed bookmarks, so this is what I did. The original piece is a postcard sized Bristol stock, and I divided it first into thirds. Then I put a string on it, across the dividing lines. Then I filled it.

I added Flux, Bales, N'zeppel, Paradox, Dewd, Hollibaugh, and something curly looking.

then I cut along the dividing lines and VOILA!

I am using one of those bookmarks in the book I am currently reading, and I plan on doing another project just like this one, possibly also using Rumpus. I will use these in the library books I have checked out...and then leave them in the books when I return them :)

This is Becky:

She is not a snuggle cat, but she more than makes up for it in her entertaining ways: box lover, will rub her face on most anything, and mighty q-tip battler. She NEVER gets up on the back of the couch that way, but now I have photographic evidence that she DOES.

another project I put together this week:

Isn't that cool looking? 

And I filled up with tangles! I enjoyed this a lot, but that page of circles with the shading...SO cool!

So, you ask, how is Orion? let me show you:

 he turned eight months old. He started sitting up on his own at six months and now is working on a crawl, though his military crawl is VERY good

His Great grampa made that cradle for his gramma when she was born

helping daddy

Though he is currently working on mastering the crawl, his favorite thing is walking with a grown up hunched over, holding his hands. 

phone love

 And that's all! thanks for visiting, and thanks for comments. I LOVE comments!

Totally, Dewd!

Greetings. It's been a while.

The Diva this week challenged is to use Dewd,  a new tangle from Zentangle.com. There's a lot of good information at that link, including a video on how to draw Dewd.

It is a fun tangle, and I went big this time:

It has been AGES since I got out my large notebook with the paper that I love so much. Dewd was a good start, but wow did I ever run with it. It felt like this one might get too busy, but I think there's enough open space to make it just interesting.

One of the things I thought of as I was thinking what pattern to choose...well, patterns.  Human beings love them, whether in art or looking for faces in clouds. And repetition. When you're listening to music, whether a favorite, or something new, isn't it a treat when a riff gets repeated, or a theme from the first movement shows up in the third movement? Or think about collections that people gather. I have my chicken collection...and no two of them are the same...but there are many of them and all of them are chickens. That's what I thought about when I finished here...it's a delight to see the same pattern appear in different places, or one motif from a complicated pattern showing up over in the corner, or changing it out a little bit, exploring the different ways to fill up spaces using the basics of the pattern...variations on a theme? Unity of shape filled with diversity of detail.

Well, creating this was fun. It took a couple of evenings, and I finished a challenge before Saturday!

Other projects:

On the Traveling Tangles Project, I finally finished up something one of my swap partners treated me with way back when...Stephanie Drewa sent me nine ATC's that had been started...well I did a lot of them right away, then between the new job with new hours and other life stuff just crowding out my free time, a creativity slump hit, and I forgot about them. Well, I found them this week and finished them up.

These are my finishes...she started with patterns according to the ABC's, and I finished with the ZYX's :)

 

And these are Stephanie's starts. It's the first Traveling Tangles stuff that I've done in a long time. But now it does feel like I'm back.

But let's face it, what you all have been waiting for all along...a picture of the baby! 

Orion loves his Opa. 

And isn't Wylie just so sweet with that baby? My heart is full!

Minimalist Post Today?

The Diva created a tangle and named it after her amazing little boy Artoo.  Artoo has always reminded me of the Japanese Lantern:

This week's challenge was to use Artoo, and this is what I did with it:

Artoo, purk, pokeroot, b'twined, schnek and something fescu looking
but it isn't Fescu

It is pleasing EVERY time, to make an aura around a section then put something in behind...add shading and viola! One of my very favorite techniques.

Joey also has a challenge this week...a Cube string, looking 3-D and use B-tween .... well, here you have it:

This is actually the FRONT of the tile that I did the Diva challenge on. I've been doing that lately. Turning a tile over and tangling on the back. Well this one came from a batch I made with the tissue transfer coloring method.

I was hoping the side and top would look more 3-D but the way they look over lapping on the edges is nice. Makes up for it a bit.

And that's it.

Except one more pic...Orion had a baby blessing, and I brought a gift for him...and his mom put the ribbon on his head...

Jolly baby!

he was a hoot...kept on busy with his playthings, but he'd toss his head back and forth, making the little sparkly tendrils dangle before his eyes.

Nine Tiles!

I have enjoyed the nine tile montage challenge from Joey this past couple of months. This week is the final tile, and the challenge was to use poke root. FUN!

But I missed last week, when Printemps was the challenge pattern...and this was how I did that tile:

This is how it looks, connected to tile number 7, 

with N'zeppel.

 this is the last tile, pre-tangling...LOTS of white across there.
One thing I've been doing with all the white spaces in the tiles, has been to pack lots of tiny Tipple in there...and this is A LOT of white space...so I did the tiny Tipple but it got to be too much pretty fast..

So I poke rooted in there, and the rest flowed very easily. 

 I dunno, I think it turned out pretty neat. The white space full of tipple and pokeroot...just nice.

(edit: AND
I just (carefully) read Joey's challenge for this week
AND
it is PokeLEAF not PokeROOT.
oops.)

This is what things looked like before starting.

 This is what I ended up with...now, I like all of it, and there are places where the string connects things together, 

But the bottom half of the montage seems more disconnected.

I may play around with it some, to get things  more unified. 

But this has been SUCH a fun challenge. Most enjoyable!

From our Diva, we received a monotangle challenge. A monotangle is a great opportunity to explore one pattern, use it in a variety of ways, or bring about that unity that comes from using just one pattern in a piece.

This week we were given Striping to work with. 

shiny 3-D funky worms on a psychedelic floor?

The fun part of striping is making it look three dimensional by curving the stripes. This one would be trippy if the stripes were colored!

Oh! I also wanted to share this fun little tidbit...my almost last swap on swap bot was a zentangle swap, where we were to decorate a postcard with our tangles, and put it in an envelope with a tea bag...individually sealed, of course...

Well look what came in the mail from Singapore:

This is the work of Debbie New, whose blog Tangled Pursuits has shown off many Diva challenges over the years.

This is on my wall at work and I look at it frequently.

Who knew that taking up zentangle as a hobby would get me happy mail from SINGAPORE!

Oh, and one more thing:

Orion is 5 months old!

He can roll over all by himself tummy to back. Once on his back, he can scoot around by kicking his legs...that IS pretty comical. He's eating solids once a day. His favorite is mashed yams. He's a happy boy. 

thanks for reading...thanks for commenting!