New Alcohol Ink Zendala Tiles

"Life is a circle. The end of one journey is the beginning of the next."   
 Joseph M. Marshall

I love the black and white format of traditional Zentangle. The contrast of black and white is what really drew me to the Zentangle method in the first place. But, oh what fun color can be!

A few days ago I shared my new alcohol ink colored tiles made to create interesting backgrounds for your tangling. I'm back today to show you what I've done with some of the Zendala tiles. The first one is a pretty blue and white.

I decided to tangle with a blue Micron pen. I used a stencil made by Genevieve Crabe, which has lots of holes through which you mark dots, using them as a guide to create your own Zendala design. You can see these stencils here. My theme was triangles and I tangled them with lots of Munchin and a little bit of Phroz.

Next, of course, was shading. Now if you follow me regularly, you probably know of my love affair with pastel pencils. So you think you know what's coming, but no.... this was not shaded with pastel pencils. I used Prismacolor pencils and blended them with a tortillion dipped in Gamsol odorless mineral spirits. It was the first time I've used this method, and I'm happy to say that it worked really well! In the past, the few times I've used colored pencils, I blended by layering and layering and layering and going over and over and over it with a colorless blender. Maybe some of you like that way of doing things, but I found it to be very long and very tedious and very tiring on my hand. Using the mineral spirits was so much more up my alley, much quicker and much easier on my hand. It may have been my first time using this method, but it won't be the last, as you'll see in my next tile.

I love the way the white parts of the background make this tile appear to be glowing.

Next up was a pinkish-purplish tile.

I wanted to give this one a more organic look and used Flux (one of my go-to tangles recently) and Betweed.

As I said, I again used Prismacolor pencils and mineral spirits for shading this.

I added some sparkle to it by applying a clear Stardust gelly roll pen over the shading in the Flux, but you can't even see a hint of that in the above picture, so I took a closeup at an angle to show you the sparkle.

The last tile I have to share with you for now has shades of yellow, orange, and green.

I used a stencil from Acadia Laser Creations for this one. Since it is more earth-toned, I tangled with a brown Micron. It took me awhile to decide how many patterns to include and which parts of the stencil should be tangled with which pattern. This is what I ended up with, Knightsbridge and Baton.

 

Then I agonized over what materials to use for color, and after testing several things, I went with Tombow markers to fill in some areas, but no shading on this one.

I am liking this tile more than I expected to as I worked on it. Always a pleasant surprise when that happens.

Remember, if you're thinking about trying out some of these new tiles for you own tangling, you can still get 10% off until the 18th by using the code NEWCOLOR in my Etsy shop.