Just Cruzing Along

"There are no rules to creativity."      Laura Jaworski

Adele Bruno, CZT, hosts a weekly Zentangle challenge called "It's a String Thing." I've contributed a tile a couple of times, but mostly I just lurk around in the background admiring everyone else's work. As I was lurking about this week, I noticed that her challenge features Cruze, one of my tangle patterns, as one of the three patterns for this week. How could I NOT participate?

This is the string for the tile:

I tangled using two of the three patterns suggested, Cruze and Lukiline. I couldn't figure out how to incorporate the third tangle, Lucky, so I decided to leave it out. I liked my tile better after I turned it upside-down from the way I show it above.

Once I did that tile, it got me in the mood to do something else with Cruze. So pulled out a tile I had colored green and yellow, to keep in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day. Using Cruze, Beelight off the grid, and Flowtus, here is what I drew.

On both tiles I used pastel pencils for coloring/shading, and on the second tile I added some white highlighting with my white pastel pencil.  

Happy St. Paddy's Day everyone!

Colored Tile Tangling and Sale

"Sometimes all you need is a little splash of colour."    Unknown

It was one year ago that I introduced my new line of colored tiles in my Etsy shop. These tiles were handmade using alcohol inks, and then many, but not all, were digitally enhanced to create all kinds of interesting effects. To celebrate the anniversary, I've decided to offer a discount on the purchase of any colored tiles for a limited time. You can get a coupon code at the end of my blog, but first I have lots of photos to share.

Here is some tangling I did on one of my pre-strung colored Zendala tiles. These tiles are not digitally enhanced... they come out looking like this just by using the inks with plastic wrap. First the tile before tangling.

 

These tiles are great for tangling inside the pathways formed by the inks, outside the pathways, or both! Here I added Florz inside the paths.

 

Then I decided to add some Diva Dance in a few of the open areas.

Finally, I did some pencil shading.

Next I took one of my square colored tiles, without pathways. Here is the before.

I chose the pattern Toodles, which I had not used previously. Not bad for my first time. I added some Printemps around the outside of Toodles, and then shaded using pastel pencils. One reason I love my pastel pencils so much is that no matter what color I'm trying to match, I always seem to have the perfect pencil. I couldn't believe how the pencil was almost an exact match to the ink color in the tile.
 

Next I went back to another Zendala, this time without the pathways... or I guess I could say this has pathways of another kind.

On this one I used the patterns Maryhill, Opally, Flux, and Tipple. 
 

Then I used a pastel pencil (an exact match again) to add red shading, as well as a graphite pencil for some additional shading. This was a really fun tile to create with a few of my favorite patterns.
 

I decided to add one more tile, another square one.

Here I used the patterns Knightsbridge, Sunbeam (from my e-book Step Out in Style), Tipple, N'zeppel, and Flukes. No pastel pencil shading here, just graphite.

These tiles give you an idea of the variety of tiles that are in my shop, but here are some other pictures to show you even more.

Square colored tiles:

Colored Zendala tiles:
 

Colored geometric tiles: 

Colored pre-strung (pathway) tiles:
 

Gray square pre-strung (pathway) tiles:

Gray Zendala pre-strung (pathway) tiles:  

I hope you'll check these out in my Etsy shop and help me celebrate my anniversary. If you use the code ANN10 when you check out, you will get 10% off your order, good through March 11th. 

Here's to happy times tangling with color!

Time for 9 and 10

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."     Albert Einstein

Another two Zenduos finished! 

The first one, my #9, combined the two patterns Baldosa and two variations of Bales. Baldosa is one of my own tangles which was introduced in my e-book Step Out in Style, which I published in 2014. If you haven't seen it yet, it contains 40 new tangle patterns not published anywhere else, and you can take a peek here.

I created this one on a tile that I colored using Dylusions paints. I scanned the tile to show it before tangling, but... I didn't save it immediately, and while I went ahead and did the tangling my laptop decided on its own to restart, and in so doing, the scan was lost. Frustrating! But here is the final tile, which includes some tangling and accents with a white gelly roll pen.

For the next one, #10, I used one of the colored tiles that I make using alcohol ink (also available in my Etsy shop). This time I was sure to save it right after scanning it!

Then I tangled using the next two patterns in my collection, Basketweave from Suzanne McNeill, and Baton from Carole Ohl (one of my favorite patterns). I added a little shading with pastel pencils.

Hmmm...looking ahead to what the patterns will be for my next Zenduo... it will be an interesting combination. Hope to see you back here once I've completed that one.

Zenduos # 7 and 8

"If you're not being challenged, you're not getting any better."     Bart Brooks

As promised, I'm back with another segment of my Zenduo adventure. For #7 I grabbed a colored tile that has been sitting in my pile for a LONG time. It was colored using Dylusions paints, some pink and some purple. The next two tangles in my collection were Atorm (by Mate Mavromat... sp?) and Auraknot from Zentangle.com. They are two very different tangles, so I chose to focus on Auraknot and make a border for it with Atorm. I like the off-center Auraknot and was very happy with my tile.

Here it is with some shading on Auraknot. I used my purple pastel pencil to help pull out some more of the purple in the background.

I also completed Zenduo #8. Talk about two very different tangles... here's a grid, B'Twined (by Pegi Schargel), and a very organic pattern, B'Dylan (by Mary Beth Schoonover). It was tough figuring out how to put these two together, but I managed to come up with something...

One thing I am loving about my Zenduo adventure (besides it forcing me to use a lot of my seldom used tangles), is that it makes me come up with creative combinations. Many of the pairings I will be doing are not tangles that I would normally put together. The challenge is good for me!

In case you are new to my blog and have no idea what my Zenduo adventure is all about, you can get informed here. 

Zenduos #3, 4 and 5

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."     
Pablo Picasso

I've been working on a few more of my Zenduo pieces and have three to share with you today. If you missed my post about my challenge to myself, you can read it here to understand what I'm talking about. 

My third Zenduo incorporates the tangle patterns Amalea by Chrissie Frampton and Angel Fish by Marizaan. I chose to do this one on gray-toned paper by Strathmore.

It looked kind of unfinished, but not after adding some graphite shading along with white pastel pencil and gelly roll highlighting. I love the way this glows.

My next two patterns are Ansu from Lori Manoogian and Antidots from Anita Roby-Lavery. They are similar patterns so they were easy to combine. A little blackening and a little graying the background with pencil and voila!

The last one for today was done on one of my colored tiles. Sorry, but I don't have a picture of the tile before the tangling. The two patterns here are Aquafleur from Rick and Maria, and Arc Flower by JJ LaBarbera.

They were all fun pieces to create and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. I'm a little more worried about the next combination I have to do, but you'll have to come back for that another time.  

My Zenduo Adventure... or... It Takes 2 to Tangle

"Miracles sometimes come in pairs."     Unknown

I've decided to undertake a little Zentangle adventure. No, let me restate that... a BIG Zentangle adventure. I'll explain. I use Evernote to catalog all of the pattern step-outs that I like. I find it's a great system where I can search for a particular pattern, I can tag them with descriptive words, I can order them in different ways. Right now I have 343 patterns in my Evernote "notebook."  Most of them I have used and love, or at least like enough to want to use again.  However, there are a fair number that I've added to my list but haven't tried yet for whatever reason. 

So... I've decided to start at the beginning (in alphabetical order) and I'm going to tangle using two at a time. The first pair, then the next, and on and on for all 343 patterns (which is an odd number, but by the time I get through them all I'm sure I will have added some more.) No more than two at a time, but embellishments will be allowed. I enjoy using just two tangles at a time so that it doesn't get too busy looking. The challenge will be somehow making the two work together even when I would never in a million years think of pairing them up. Some will be easy and others not so much. 

The other challenge will be seeing this adventure to the end and making it through all 343+ patterns before giving up. That's more than 170 tiles/ZIAs. I'm not going to pressure myself to do one every day, or even every other day, so this could turn into a very l-o-n-g  adventure. I've decided to call the pieces I create Zenduos and will refer to this as my Zenduo adventure.

So without further ado, I present to you my first two Zenduos. Here is the first tile before I tangled it, a background I made with Dylusion paints.

The first two patterns in my collection are 4 corners (numbers come before letters in alpha order) and Abeko.

Here's the tile after I added a little pencil shading.

For the next one I chose to work on a black tile, which I don't do very often. The next two patterns were African Artist and All Boxed Up. Lots of lines in this one. And some shading with the zenstone. Not too happy with my African Artist here, as I can never seem to get the squinched parts to look right. One thing this project will do for me is help to weed out the patterns that I don't like enough... or can't do well enough... to keep them in my collection. This may be one of them.

So there you have it, my first two Zenduos. Anyone out there want to challenge themselves to go on a similar adventure with me?

Colored Tiles Are Back!

"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.