New Tangles and New Studio

"The coolest things in life are things that you have not done before. That's the key to life: new things always."      Afrojack

 I haven't been tangling a lot the past couple of weeks. I've been busy setting up my new studio space. With the help of my husband, I converted our sunroom into a dedicated art space. I love it! I'll add some photos at the end of this post.

In my last post, I mentioned how I was going to write about creating tiles where I used a "new to me" pattern in each one. But I got sidetracked with Jaysix. Now I'm back to show you some of those tiles I did with new patterns. In this first tile I used Borbz (the one on the diagonal), and added some Phicops and Bunzo. I enjoyed doing Borbz and am happy with the way this turned out.

Next I pulled out a pre-strung Renaissance Zendala tile. I haven't used one of those in forever. It was my first time with Peaks Border, which I used around the outside, and then added Munchin in the whole center area, and some Henna Drum flowers. Of course I shaded and added white highlights which are so important (at least to me) when working on tan tiles or paper. I love the contrast between the tan, brown, black, and white.

The tile below was completed a couple of weeks after the first tile above, and when I looked back afterwards I realized I had used Bunzo in both tiles. Guess that shows how much I like that pattern! But the tangle that was new to me in this one is Biscus, in the center. And I threw in some Zingers for fun.

Time for another one of my Dylusions painted tiles. Here's the before.

And the after, where I used mmmforestry (for the first time) along the sides, and added some Rixty. I decided to leave this one light and airy to let the beautiful colors shine through.

Well, that's it for my tiles. Now for my studio. I now have space not only to tangle (on my new drafting table that tilts up so I don't strain my neck), but I also have space to do the messy stuff like painting and inking, without worrying about ruining our new kitchen table. And without having to worry about setting up and putting away all those supplies every time I feel like doing something messy.

And did I mention that there are walls of windows on 3 sides of the room for some amazing light for working? And the wonderful view I sit and look at (whenever I look up from my paper)?
 

The studio has only been complete for a couple of days, but it's such a great space! Have I said how much I love it?

 

Stripes

"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."    Joshua J. Marine

This week's Diva challenge was to create something using stripes. For my first tile I drew the pattern Rain (maybe because we've been having SO much rain here recently) as the dividing lines between the stripes. I thought I was off to a pretty good start. But then when I had to decided what patterns to use in between, I had a hard time - I think because of the jagged edges. The tile didn't excite me, but once it was shaded I started to like it better (as is so often the case), and I think it has grown on me.

Patterns used: Rain, 'Nzeppel, Meer, and Tipple

For the next tile, because one is never enough, I chose to do stripes both horizontally and vertically, interwoven with each other. The only pattern here that I've used before is Piza. The rest were all new to me, chosen from my recently organized Pinterest boards...stay tuned here for more about that next week.

Patterns used: Piza, Wavz, Tri-4, Peaks Border, and Kloonz

It was nice to get back to doing some basic, black and white tiles after having worked on other types of projects for a while.