New Color Tiles

"Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams."   Paul Gauguin

I'm very excited about the new line of tiles I'm introducing. About six months ago I started selling what I call my pre-strung pathway tiles. They are made with alcohol inks which form pathways for tangling, or tangling between, or tangling over, whichever you prefer. They were so well received by all of you, that I started thinking about making more tiles with alcohol inks, but different from the others. And thus were born these tiles that I am introducing now.

The difference is that my new tiles don't have pathways. They just having interesting colors and designs that meander and mix and flow all over the place. You can use the designs that the inks make to define the spaces you want to tangle, or you can just tangle over the whole background however you want. The unpredictable nature of the inks is what gives such an interesting look to the tiles. 

Here is my first example of a tile.  

 I decided to outline some of it first.

And then fill that area with tangles (N'zeppel, Diva Dance, and Btl Joos.) I used some pastel pencils for shading to add extra color. It's kind of a weird and wacky piece.

Here's the next tile I chose. I love the combination of pink, purple, and teal in this one.

I let the colors serve as an overall background this time, and tangled some Garlic Cloves, Pais, and Tipple. I love the way it turned out (all those soothing lines!) and thought that it looked best turned like this.

I used pastel pencils (of course) to add shading and give it a more 3D look. I matched the shading to the color in the background, using pink, purple, and teal. A touch of highlighting was added with white in the centers of the petals.

The next tile has a more textured look to it.

When I saw the tile turned sideways, it reminded my of the ocean (good imagination), so I thought of the pattern Sea Wave.

I added some Henna Drum flowers to it.

And then added shading, again, with pastel pencils.

Love this one too. The great colors and textures on the tiles make it almost impossible to end up with something I really don't like.

I was going to end my post there, but I did another tile that I really like, so I'm adding it here. Untangled tile...

Tangled with Sand Swirl, Meer, Florz, and Maryhill.

The shading didn't show up in this picture as well as I would have liked, but here it is...

I've had so much fun playing with the alcohol inks and coming up with these new tiles. Although they look very different than my pathway tiles, the thing that is the same about them is the process: designed with alcohol inks on yupo, then printed on bristol vellum paper and cut into 4 inch tiles. I love the slightly larger size of the tiles compared to traditional Zentangle tiles, and I love the vellum surface for tangling with Microns and shading with most anything. 

If you'd like to take a look at more of these tiles, or the pre-strung pathway tiles, you can check them out in my Etsy shop here. They are available in both square tiles and Zendalas. As an introductory offer, if you order any of these new tiles between now and January 18th, you can use the code NEWCOLOR to get 10% off. I'll be back soon with a post showing you some of my new tangled Zendalas. 

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look!

Fluxzeppel

"If everyone would look for that uniqueness then we would have a very colorful world."     Michael Schenker

I haven't participated in the Diva's challenge in a long time. But this week the challenge is to create a duotangle - a tile using just two tangles - with Flux and N'zeppel. Two of my favorite patterns. So I just HAD to do it. 

I decided to tangle on a tile that I had created using alcohol inks for a background. Just to show you my process, here is the piece of yupo that I inked...

Then I scanned it, chose the section of that design that I liked the most, cropped it into a 4x4 inch size, and printed it on Bristol vellum paper for tangling. This is what it looked like...

Then I tangled...with just N'zeppel and Flux. I decided to shade the large Flux shapes using graphite, and the small Flux shapes using pastel pencils. I really love the way this one turned out...

I hope to do another duotangle for this week's challenge... I'll see if time permits.

Diva Circles

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

Just stopping by with a quick post. I saw that the Diva's challenge for this week is to make a string out of circles and tangle it. Well, it so happens that last week I did just that, so I decided to post it now. 

I've been doing a lot with alcohol inks lately, and that's where the vibrant colors in this piece come from. Alcohol inks were spread all around on a piece of Yupo to make the background, and then alcohol was dropped in random places to form all the circles. 

Using a Microperm pen, I tangled the circles and added some white highlights. First I used my Uniball Signo white pen to do the highlights, but after a short time they faded  and were not very bright. So I tried my white Souffle pen and went over the same spots. This time they stayed bright and are puffed up a little from the paper, hence the name Souffle.

Patterns used: Munchin tangleation, Kuke, Marasu, and Purk

I had a lot of fun making this one. Hope you like it!

Pre-strung Pathway Tiles

"The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere."     Terence McKenna

I'm very excited to share with you my latest creations. Another passion of mine, in addition to Zentangle and photography (as I mentioned in my last blog post, here), is working with alcohol inks. They come in bright, beautiful colors and flow smoothly across your paper as they blend and form new colors. The process of painting with the inks is nearly as relaxing as the Zentangle process is for me. And you can create great backgrounds for tangling!

Recently I began playing with plastic wrap on the inks. You spread ink on yupo paper (a synthetic paper with a smooth finish), lay plastic wrap on top, scrunch it all up with your hands, and leave it alone until it dries completely. When you peel it off, gorgeous and interesting "pathways" have been created on your paper. Some of you may be familiar with the plastic wrap method on other media, such as watercolors. When I saw these pathways, I knew immediately what had to be done! The inks had created a string on my paper to be tangled within.

Maybe a photo (or two...or many...) will help you to see what I'm talking about. Here is the first one I chose to tangle. You can see the pathways that I'm talking about.

Here's how it looked after I tangled it with Baton.

I absolutely LOVED this, and went on to do more... and more... and more! The next one I did, before and after tangling with Cadent... (I remembered before I got too far that I wanted to take a picture)

 And the next one...

By this time, I started thinking that these would make great tiles printed on paper that I could tangle with my Microns. What I had done so far were approximately 5x7 inches each, and because they were on shiny yupo, they needed to be tangled with different pens. So I tested printing them on various papers and found that I liked the Bristol vellum best, as it is similar to the regular zentangle tiles in weight. 

I cut the tiles into 4 inch squares, to allow for a little more tangling space than the standard 3 1/2 inch tiles. Here is a sample of some that I made...

Next is one of my favorite tiles, before tangling and after adding Baton (obviously one of my favorite tangles!)

Here are some more of my tangled tiles. Sorry, but I don't have the "before" pictures of these. The first one uses the pattern Static.

For the next one I decided to use 2 patterns, Cadent and Huggins. You will notice that on most of them I chose to do a monotangle, meaning I used just one pattern. I also shaded this one with graphite, whereas on most of them I have not shaded, instead allowing the colors on the tile to form the shading.
 

One using Knightsbridge...
 

A white gelly roll pen was used on this one to draw Printemps...
 

Then I wanted to complete some tiles by tangling behind the pathways instead of on the pathways. Personally I don't like them as much as the others, but several people have told me they do like them.The first one is Crescent Moon and the second is Munchin.

I have had such a blast designing and tangling these tiles and am happy to share that I am now selling the untangled tiles in my Etsy shop here for you to add your creative tangling. If you decide to try some, I'd love to see what you do!

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. 

 

I'm Caren and I'm an Alcoholic

"I'm a big fan of the effects of alcohol."    Peter Steele

I'm curious how many of you found your way here to read my blog post because you saw the title of this one. If so, welcome... I'll take readers however I can get them. And yes, I'm an alcoholic. I'm addicted to alcohol... alcohol inks that is! I love working with the inks to make backgrounds for tangling, and I love the way my pen (Sakura Microperm) glides smoothly and effortlessly across the paper. It is so soothing and relaxing!

To start, I will suggest that if you didn't already read my last post about alcohol inks from a few weeks ago, you check it out first. There I explained a bit about my process of working with the inks. Here is a picture of another tile  that I love (I didn't love them all). Again I did some dripping and spreading and blowing to get this look.

Then I added my tangling, using Baton, Bask-It, and Diva Dance. I don't add shading when I tangle over the inks because I let the color form some natural shading. And I also haven't found anything that works well for me to shade on the glossy surface.

Like the one tile on my last post, this one had a very interesting back side created from the inks creeping underneath.

So, like last time, I tangled in the white space. I feel like this one needs some shading, so if any of you know what works to shade on Yupo, please let me know.

Here's another tile in a totally different color scheme.

This is how it looked after tangling. I decided to keep it pretty simple by using only one pattern, Frosty, and tangled in white this time (Signo Uniball UM 153 gel pen). What I have found, but had forgotten since I used white on alcohol ink a year ago, is that the white gel ink soaks up some of the color from the alcohol ink under it. Especially on the orange part where the white ink turned yellowish. It just adds more interest. After drawing Frosty all over I felt like it needed just a little something, so I added auras inside each of the shapes, using my black pen.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some more of my alcohol ink tangling, because I have lots more tiles ready and waiting.  I'll be back!

Drip, Drop

"Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams."   Paul Gauguin

The Diva's challenge this week is to use color. Looking back, I realized that most of my recent blogs  have been about using color in some form. So here is another one.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a blog about using alcohol inks on glossy paper as a background for tangling. You can see that post here. It's interesting to see how much my tangling style has changed and evolved since then. During the last year I have used my alcohol inks to make lots of colored tiles on watercolor paper, but have not used them again on glossy paper. I've been inspired by seeing other people post about using the inks, so I decided it was time to play with them again. Actually, a while ago I bought Yupo paper (you can read about it by clicking on the link), and a new book about creating with alcohol inks, Pigments of Your Imagination. And they've been sitting around waiting for me for some time now. The time finally came last week.

I cut up the Yupo into pieces about 3 1/2 x 5 inches, and following the book and other information I've collected, I squirted, and blew, and splattered, and tilted, and pushed, and pulled. It was so much fun to play, not ever really knowing what to expect. I used both Ranger inks and Spectrum Noir inks, along with 91% alcohol. I used straws, and credit cards, and coffee stirrers, and q-tips. The result was many, many, beautiful, bright, inky little pieces of art. Some of them are so pretty on their own that I almost didn't want to tangle on them.

Here's a picture of one of the first ones I used. This was created by dropping ink on the paper, letting it spread, dropping more ink, dripping alcohol, and repeating those steps until I was happy with the results. Adding alcohol helps the ink spread, and can also lighten the colors. This is the before...

And this is the after (using Sakura Microperm pens)...

I started by tangling the obvious circular shapes, and then filled in behind, leaving a few sections of color untouched. 

The next one is one of my favorite "tiles" that I made. I love the color combination. It was created by laying down lines of ink, then spreading with a straw or coffee stirrer (I don't remember which), and tilting, and spritzing alcohol on it.

I wasn't worried about that green spot that somehow found it's way onto the paper, because I knew that once I tangled it would disappear...

Due to the process of spreading the inks around, it is inevitable that some of the ink seeps to the underside of the paper. Most of the time it just looks like a mess, and I don't really care what the back looks like. But every once in a while the back side turns out to look really nice and artistic, purely by accident. Like on the pink and yellow piece above. Here's what it looked like.

Some of that was from ink seeping under the edges, and the different colors you see were leftover on the craft sheet I was working on. I thought it could look really nice if I tangled on all that white space in between the beautiful inky edges. So that's what I did.

I'm not sure that I really like the combination of tangles that I chose, but did like the effect of tangling down the middle. A big stack of more of these "tiles" awaits my pen, and I'll share some of them another time. If any of you are interested in learning how to use these inks, I would highly recommend the book I linked to above. 

Happy inking and tangling!

Colors of the Wind

"We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains. We need to paint with all the colors of the wind."
"Colors of the Wind" (Pocahontas) by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz

I've mentioned here a couple of times that I was going to a Zentangle retreat for CZTs in Santa Fe this month. Well, I just got back from Santa Fe and it was wonderful! But more about that in my next post. 

I had a vendor table there to sell my hand-colored tiles. In preparation for this I spent a lot of time mass producing the tiles so I'd have enough stock to take with me. Since I wanted to show the various ways to tangle on these tiles, I also spent some time tangling samples to bring. Here is some of what I brought with me.

The first one is a pink water-colored tile tangled with a rose-colored Micron pen and shaded with a matching pink Prismacolor pencil. I added a few subtle white highlights also. 

The next one is a blue/turquoise water-colored tile tangled with black Micron. I added some blue Prismacolor pencil shading and white highlighting in all those antidots in the center.

This one was tangled on a purple double-sided tile colored with alcohol ink. The tiles colored with alcohol ink end up with a very organic kind of look to them, and since they are colored on both sides, you can choose to tangle both, or just have a tile with a very pretty colored back to it. I used purple Micron on this one and purple Prismacolor pencil for shading.

Another alcohol ink tile, this one was colored with subtle blue and gray tones.  I decided to use black pen to tangle it, and then added shading with both a graphite pencil and blue Prismacolor. 

This yellow tile called out to me to use a brown pen, and I love the way it looks on the yellow. Brown colored pencil was used to shade.

This last tile was done with watercolor and turned out a little darker than many of my other tiles. I tangled this one using my white Signo Uniball  pen to show how nice the white works on the darker tiles. This is not my favorite tile, but at least it illustrates my point well.

There are so many options for working on colored tiles and they're a lot of fun to do when you want to take a break from the traditional black on white. If you'd like to try some, please check out my Etsy shop for these tiles. Round Zendala tiles are available also. What's really fun is that no two tiles are exactly alike!