Colors of Summer

"People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy."        Anton Chekhov

Happy summer to those of you in my neck of the woods, and happy winter to the rest of you. Summer is a time full of flowers and color, so this is going to be a colorful post.

The first tile I'm sharing with you is one of my alcohol ink background zendala tiles.

Just because it's a round tile doesn't mean it needs to be tangled with a zendala. I love the swirl in the tile, so I decided to tangle along with the flow. This is the first time I've used the pattern Floral Waves. I think it goes well with the swirl in the tile. Then I added some Mooka and Tipple to finish it off.

But (almost) no tile is complete, in my mind, without shading. So out came my trusty pastel pencils, and blues and pinks were used to add the finishing touches. 

Then it was onto another zendala tile, this time one of my "pre-strung" alcohol ink backgrounds. The designs formed by the inks can be used as a string to tangle inside or outside, or just tangle right over them.

That big shape going right up the center of the tile reminded me of a tree trunk, so after tangling that with Sand Swirl, I added Pokeleaf "foliage" to the tree. And once again, pastel pencils were my choice for shading.

In case you're interested, these colored tiles are available, along with many more, in my Etsy shop here.

Until next time, happy tangling!

Lazy Day Zendala

"Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous."     Bill Moyers

I love Zendalas. Sometimes when I'm feeling really creative I start from scratch and design my own using various methods: compass and ruler, stencils, freehand... But this time I didn't want to have to think too much, so I chose to start with a mandala pattern from a coloring book I have called Mandala Designs, which you can see here. 

This is what the page looked like before I put my hands (or should I say my pens) on it. 

I transferred the design onto a piece of off-white Stonehenge paper, one of my favorite surfaces for tangling and shading on. Cadent was used for the border, Fassett for the triangular area, and Coil for the...other sections... not sure what to call them. I love the way Coil looks, but boy did it take a lot of concentration. That was certainly not the most relaxing part of this Zendala for me! So much for not wanting to think too hard.

I'm really happy with the way this one looks and like the contrast of the dark parts. About half of the book I mentioned has designs great for tangling (the other half would be for coloring), so I have lots more to use when I'm having another lazy Zendala kind of day.