Snowflakes Keep Falling on my Head

"Being unique is better than being perfect."    Unknown

Last week there was a new prompt for the Zentangle art journaling Facebook group I belong to. It was all about cutting a snowflake from paper using your initials as the pattern. The theme for the week was uniqueness....just like each snowflake is unique, so is each person.

I was a little intimidated by the snowflake directions, but I gave it a go.  My first problem was that when I folded my paper, it didn't work out the way it was supposed to. The directions weren't hard to follow, but something just wasn't lining up properly. So I did the best I could, and continued. Here is the snowflake that I ended up with, using my initials, CEM. See that point at the top? Well, there should have been three of those, but the other two got cut short, I can only assume because the folds hadn't lined up properly. I figured I could tweak that when I traced the snowflake and add the other two back in. But something else kept nagging me...why does my snowflake look like it has three points instead of six? Since the theme is about being unique I decided to just go with it...mine would certainly be unique!

The center part was also not very symmetrical, so I tweaked that some after tracing the snowflake into my journal. This was going to have to be spread over two pages since my journal wasn't big enough, so the line you may notice down the middle in the photos is the center of the journal pages. Once the tracing and tweaking were done, I tangled.

As I was tangling I realized that I should have done the background before tracing the snowflake on the pages, but too late for that now! I'd have to figure out how to liven up the pages in some other way. I chose to add color to the open spaces of the snowflake using my Tombow markers - two shades of green and two of blue. I was pretty happy with the way that came out (i.e. I did not mess up after all the time spent tangling!), so things were beginning to look up.

Next I chose a quote about being unique and lettered that with an 08 Micron. Then I added some color to the letters with two of the Tombows I had used before. Of course I tested the lettering on scrap paper first, as well as the color outlining. I penciled the letters on the pages before adding the ink...no room to mess up now! But I felt like the pages needed something more to finish them off. Using a Dylusions stencil and Ranger distress ink pads, I added blue and green circles/dots around the edges. 

One last finishing touch was adding some sparkle to imitate the frosty look of a snowflake. For this I used my clear Wink of Stella glitter brush over the colored sections.  I took a close up picture so you could see the shimmer better.

All in all, I must say that I'm pleased with the look of my very unique snowflake. What I anticipated being a disaster didn't turn out so bad after all.

Try Something New

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
Walt Disney

A new month, a new season, and some new supplies. Today was a day for trying out new things. For my blog post last week I used Auraknot as a string for my Zentangle. Today I used a tangleation of Auraknot as the centerpiece of my tile.

In addition to using a new tangleation, I created this Zentangle on an apprentice tile rather than a regular Zentangle tile or a page of my journal. It was my first time using the larger 4 1/2 inch tile which is made from Canson XL Bristol paper, rather than the "100% cotton, heavy-weight fine artists' paper with a beautiful vellum surface finish" (words taken from Zentangle.com) that the regular 3 1/2 inch tiles are made from. Also using the Pigma Pen 05 (that comes with the Apprentice kit) for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the pen and tile. The tile is a little brighter white, and the pen moved effortlessly across the tile's surface which is smoother than the regular Zentangle tile. It's sometimes nice to have a little bigger area to tangle on. 

One more new toy I played with today was a gold Wink of Stella brush. You can see a little bit of the glittery shimmer in this picture, but it's much more obvious in person. 

I also have a clear Wink of Stella brush which applies the glittery look on top of any color you paint it on. I love the effect of these brushes, especially the fact that they are so glittery without the mess of glitter, so I just placed my order for several more colors. They should be great for making holiday cards. I'll let you know how that goes.