"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." Claude Monet
I am so happy to announce that my Etsy shop is fully open once again after a long time of intermittent closures. And except for the week of Thanksgiving, it should stay open consistently. I hope. To celebrate the re-opening, I am offering a discount on all purchases for a short time, but you'll have to read, or at least scroll down, to the end of my post to get the coupon code for your discount.
I'm sharing lots of photos here of work that I've completed on my hand-colored tiles, showing them both before and after tangling. I love the colors in this first one and love doing lots of line work.
The next one has lots more line work, on a totally different type of background.
I also have a collection of what I call geometric tiles, and this one is part of that collection.
Another series I call pathway tiles. These are created with alcohol inks, just like all the tiles are, but using a special method that creates what looks like paths to me. I have them in both gray and colored. This one is an example of one of the grays.
Here's an example of one of the colored Zendala tiles.
This one has some of my favorite colors in a little bit of a swirl.
And another Zendala, this one with a rippled effect.
I completed this last tile a while ago, but it's one of my favorites, both in the colors and the tangling, so here it is again. It's an example of one of the colored pathway tiles, similar to the gray one above.
In addition to colored tiles, gray tiles, Zendalas, and geometric tiles, I've created a line of digital papers using alcohol ink backgrounds. They're available with lines for writing or unlined for an unlimited number of different uses. Please take a look at them while you're over in my Etsy shop perusing the various tiles. Here are just a few examples of the papers that you'll find.
And for those of you who stuck with me all the way to the end of this long post, you can get 10% off any order between now and November 15th. Just enter the coupon code FALL17 when you check out.
"Be the most brilliant color in the box." Unknown
A quick post to share my tile for the Diva's challenge this week - to use the tangle pattern Hamadox by Diana Schreur. Hamadox, which I was using for the first time, is a combination of Hamail and Paradox, and fun to draw.
I began with another one of my alcohol inked backgrounds (these tiles are almost ready to be added to my Etsy shop!), but this time a Zendala tile.
I drew my Hamadox, choosing to use 3/4 of the complete pattern that normally goes all the way around in a circular shape. And I added a simple background grid.
Then I shaded using graphite and added a few dots with white gel pen.
And when I finished I realized that I used a tile with the same coloring as my last Diva post. Oh well... I guess I like these colors!
"Boldly dare to be a pop of color in a black and white world." Unknown
I've been spending tons of time making new colored tiles for tangling. I recently introduced some of the new tiles, and while I'm preparing the rest of them to be ready for my Etsy shop, I'm sharing some of the new ones along the way. These are tiles I created with alcohol inks, and then twisted, swirled, waved, and otherwise played with in Photoshop to create some very cool and unique effects.
This one is a blue and green swirl.
I decided to follow the swirl, using just Cubine, and added shading with green pastel pencil. But instead of just blending it with a tortillion, I dipped the tortillion in mineral spirits first, and then blended. I think that this helps set the pastel pencil so that it doesn't rub off at all.
I love the waves in this next tile.
I ignored the waves when tangling, so that they form the random coloring behind the tangles (using Static, Sand Swirl, Jobowtie and some orbs.)
Purple and pink pastel pencils were used to shade.
Here's one more tile that I've already shared on Facebook, but in case you haven't seen it there...
Just lots of pretty colors, tangled with Organic and Pokeleaf. And a touch of graphite shading.
It's so much fun tangling on the very varied backgrounds of the tiles. Stay tuned for more samples, including Zendalas.
And I'll be sure to let you know when I actually launch them on Etsy.
And to let you in on a secret, for you paper crafters out there, I am also making these into digital papers for scrapbooking and other crafts, as well as lined writing papers. I'm so excited about this!
"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.
