It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!"   Hamilton Wright Mabie

Holiday season is officially upon us. It becomes official on Thanksgiving, I believe, even if the stores and radio stations feel it starts at Halloween. In order to be prepared, I spent the last couple of months designing some new Zentangle inspired holiday cards to add to my Etsy shop. So I thought I would share my new designs with you here.

Adding these to my designs from last year, I now have more than a dozen different cards, some Christmas, some Chanukah, and some winter themed, available with or without something written on the inside.

Have you started (or maybe finished) your holiday shopping yet?

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

"The first step to believing something is true is wanting to believe it is true."  Terry Goodkind

I decided to write a quick post because I have a cute little anecdote to share. A few days ago I got an email that someone had started an Etsy conversation with me. I sell greeting cards in my Etsy shop, including holiday cards. A woman saw my cards there and sent me this message: 

"My 8-year-old son is a huge zentangle fan after learning about it in art class. His ONLY wish from Santa this year is a "handmade zentangle card of Santa" made by the big man himself. Of course, I want it to be perfect and keep the Santa magic alive but I don't have the talent to do it myself! Is this something you would be interested in doing?"

How could I resist that? So, after discussing it with her a little further, this is what I made.

I finished it this afternoon and listed it on Etsy so she could see it and make her purchase. Thankfully, she loves it. And hopefully her son will too. Hope it keeps the magic alive for him! 

It's the Hap-Happiest Season of All

"Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale they say. He was made of snow, but the children know how he came to life one day."    Walter "Jack" Rollins and Steve Nelson

Since I decided to design a line of note cards (see my last blog post), I've been working non-stop to get as many designs completed as possible before the crafts fair I'm participating in on November 9th. I've had no time to tangle anything besides my cards, so I thought I would share a couple more of them here.

Although it's not even Halloween yet, the Christmas decorations are already out in all the stores, and everyone is starting to think ahead towards the winter holidays. Including me, as I design my holiday cards. After taking a survey of my friends as to whether they would prefer their holiday cards to be small (5½ x 4¼ inches), or large (5 x 7 inches), I decided to go large. As was pointed out, some people like to insert 4 x 6 photos in with the cards, so I took  that into consideration in making my decision. This snowman is the image on one of the cards, and is definitely my favorite one so far. I love snowmen and used to have a large collection of snowmen of all kinds. Since moving to a place where there is no snow, I gave up my collection (which means giving up some of the clutter too!), so this little guy makes me happy.

Then I decided to add a pop of color. Although I had used markers to add color to some of my other designs, I decided to use colored pencil for this one so I would have a better chance of neatly getting color into the point of his nose with the sharp tip of the pencil.

I love him either way, with or without color.

Tangling is the easy part of making these cards. The hard part is printing them so the blacks look really black, and the colors are as bright as they are in my original pieces. I think we've figured out the black part, but we're still working on the colors. The following ornament design is driving me crazy - the colors don't have enough pizazz when printed, but I think changing to glossy paper for the colored designs will help with that problem. Keeping my fingers crossed while I wait for the glossy cards to be delivered. In the meantime, I added some glitter to the ornaments on the couple of cards I printed, using a clear Wink of Stella brush which definitely helped (but is not pictured here).

The ornament on the upper right had me nearly pulling out my hair. That was the last one I worked on, and after spending a lot of time on the rest of it, I was not happy at all with this ornament. I made the band across the middle with the teal color to match the other ornament, and then added a brighter blue. Was not happy with that at all. It took a while, but I finally figured out how to remedy this (after all, there are no mistakes in Zentangle, right?). I pulled out a gold Sharpie paint pen and it easily covered the bright blue (mistake), leaving no trace of the blue. Hooray! Once I saw the gold on it, that's when I decided to add silver to the rest of it. Now I'm okay with this card......if only I can get it to print the colors the way I see them here!

I know it's a little early, but happy holidays to all!