Midsummer Tangle

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."    Franklin D. Roosevelt

A couple of weeks ago I went to Buffalo, NY for a Zentangle retreat for CZTs hosted by Kelly Barone. I was hoping to escape the heat and humidity of SC, but that didn't work out so well. It was hotter than normal in Buffalo and not too different than at home! Despite the heat, I had a great time meeting people I had only met before through Facebook, and learning new techniques and new ways of incorporating Zentangle with other artistic endeavors. 

One of the activities was learning to marble paper, from Diane Yaciuk. Diane is an expert, and her papers are gorgeous. I, however, did not have quite as much success as Diane does. It was  a fun process, but I have to say that because of the messiness of it, I probably won't be doing this at home any time soon. Here is a picture of one of the very few papers that I thought turned out well.

 

Of course it had to be tangled!

Another project was "suntangles" taught by Kelly. We first tangled on a large piece of acetate, then brushed a special dye onto a canvas bag, placed the acetate on the bag, took it out into the sun and let it sit there for 10 or more minutes. Lo and behold, this is what I got.... the negative image of what I had tangled in black. Pretty amazing.

Kelly also gave us a brown ceramic tile to tangle on. We used black Sharpies, white gelly rolls, and gold metallic gelly rolls. The tile had quite a bit of texture on it which made for some challenging tangling, but it turned out better than I expected it to.

The last thing I have to share with you today is a combination of paper quilling with Zentangle. I have to say that as much as I enjoyed the whole 3 days, this activity was my favorite. It was taught by Sonya Yencer, whose Zentangle art work I have admired for a long time on Facebook. In case you are not familiar with what quilling is, according to Wikipedia, it is  "... an art form that involves the use of strips of paper that are rolled, shaped, and glued together to create decorative designs." Below is the Zendala that I quilled while in class, but then took home to be tangled there. I love the way it came out, and think that the combination of tangling and quilling is genius. 

Quilling doesn't need a lot of expensive supplies and is also quite relaxing. In case you would like to try it yourself, Sonya, along with Jenny Perruzzi, has created a kit that is available here. I'm working on some more quilling projects and hope to share them soon in another blog post.

What I've shown here is only some of what we completed during the retreat. I left there with lots of creative inspiration and some new friends. What more could I ask for?