Introducing my New Tiles!

"Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul."     W. Somerset Maugham

Hooray! The day has finally arrived when I can officially introduce my new tiles to you. You may have noticed over the last couple of months that I have been sharing a lot of my work on colored tiles. I've been developing this new line of tiles for a long time, and I'd hoped to have these ready a while ago, but life kind of got in the way! The tiles are now in my Etsy shop, but let me tell you a little about them. Warning: This will be a long post with lots of pictures.

I love playing with alcohol inks. I'm not very good at creating anything realistic with them, but boy do they make great backgrounds for tangling. I start with alcohol inks on yupo paper, play with them, manipulate them, and let them do their own thing. Beautiful designs emerge for tangling. I scan them and print them on Bristol vellum paper and cut them into 4 inch tiles, as well as Zendala tiles. But then I decided to take it one step further. I began editing the backgrounds in Photoshop and wow! Amazing special effects were created - waves, spirals, pond ripples, geometrics, zig-zags, etc. The possibilities are endless, and addictive too! So, after many, many hours of playing, I have created hundreds of new tiles to add to my Etsy shop. 

So let me share a few more with you now. 

Before...

And after...
 

 Before...

And after...
 

 Before... 

And after...

Zendala before... 

Zendala after...
 

Then I designed some with geometric shapes, but since these were so different than the others I decided to make them a separate group and listing in my shop.

Before... 

After...
 

Before...

After... 
 

But that's not all! I decided to also make these designs into digital papers for crafters to use in so many different ways: scrapbooking, invitations, origami, and on and on. Here are some samples of the papers...

And just when you thought I was finished... No! I also made these into lined papers for writing and journaling. Some examples here...

NOW I'm finished. That's all I've done....square tiles, zendala tiles, geometric tiles, digital papers, and lined digital papers. If you'd like to check them out in my Etsy shop, go here. (Where you will also find my pre-strung pathway tiles!) You'll be able to see many more of the tile designs in my shop photos, although not nearly all of the designs I have.

If you have tangling friends and family, or other crafty friends and family, or writing friends and family, I would be most grateful if you'd pass my shop information on to them.

And of course, if you decide to try any of these for yourself, I would LOVE to see what you do with them!

Reflections of an Alcoholic

"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment."    Claude Monet

It's been about 3 months since my last post about tangling on alcohol ink. You can see that post here if you missed it. I still had several colored "tiles" all inked and waiting to be tangled. Here's the first one I decided to use this time around.

Since there were obvious circular shapes on this, I thought I would tangle each of those circles. As I was working it began to take on the look of flowers, so I went in that direction. I added stems and ended up with this little flower garden.

Patterns used: Arc Flower, Floral, Garlic Cloves/Bloom, Dandi, Betweed, Steffi, and some lines.

Then I picked another "tile" with circular shapes, figuring I'd stick to a theme. I particularly love the colors in this one.

Again I tangled in the circular shapes, but did not turn this one into flowers.

Patterns used: Z-trik, Crescent Moon, Sand Swirl, Printemps, and some lines.

I loved the colors, loved the flow of my Microperm pen on the Yupo paper, and am pretty happy with the results. This is not the last you will see of my alcohol ink creations, because I still have even more inky "tiles" all ready for tangling whenever I feel the urge.