Pin the Tangle on the Board

"For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned."   Benjamin Franklin

It was that time again... time to rethink the organization of all the tangle patterns I've gathered. When I first began tangling more than four years ago, I had to find a system to organize all the patterns I liked. My system ended up being a collection of index cards on which I drew out the steps for each pattern (it took forever!) I kept them in a file box.

The box soon became too heavy to take wherever I went, and slow-going when flipping through all the cards to find something that inspired me at that moment.

So my next idea... I photocopied all the cards, four to a page, and put them in sheet protectors in a binder. 

That was better for a while, easier to carry around than a file box, but as my collection grew it got heavier and heavier, so... time for another idea. The next idea you can read about here on my blog post from two years ago. The little ring of cards grew to two rings, but was still very portable and manageable. It's worked well for two years...

But now I've decided that it's kind of time consuming (again!) flipping through the cards. And since choosing the patterns is the hardest part of tangling for me, I find myself spending an awful lot of time flipping! 

So... what next? I thought of my Pinterest boards, pitiful as they were, compared to the rest of the world's, I'm sure. I'm not very tech savvy, so although I had started a few boards a while ago, there was not much on them, and I never really used them for anything. It was time for me to catch up with the rest of the pinning world and see how I could really make Pinterest something of value to me.

As I started thinking it through, I began to get excited about all the possibilities. If I pinned all the patterns to a board, it would be much quicker to scroll through them than it was to flip through all my little cards. So, for about the last week I've been spending many hours finding patterns and pinning them to my board called "zentangle patterns." I thought that was a pretty clever name, don't you agree? 

This was also my opportunity to weed out of my collection any patterns that I've since decided I don't really like... and of course an opportunity to add lots more. And I didn't even need to draw out the patterns and/or the steps, because all of you out there in the Zentangle universe have done it for me... thanks!

I also decided it would be helpful to have more specialized boards in addition to the catch-all board. So I pinned all patterns I wanted onto the main board, and then pinned them a second time onto boards for grids, organic, woven,  lines, borders, high contrast, and round patterns. If I have no idea what type of pattern I want to use, I scroll through my main board, but if I have a category in mind it's more efficient to go to that specific board. Quicker and easier to find on the smaller boards.

     

My boards have grown exponentially in the last week. If any of you happen to have been following them, you probably wondered what's been going on. I also decided to keep a master list of which patterns have been pinned, so when I find something I like I can check first to make sure it's not already there. One of my pet peeves is scrolling through someone's board and finding the same pattern over and over again. It drives me crazy, and honestly, is a waste of my time (sorry if you're in that group of repeat pinners!)

I've put so much time into organizing the boards that I haven't spent much time actually using them yet, but what I have done shows me that my system should work well for me. At least for now... who knows what the future will bring?

If you'd like to take a more in depth look at my boards, you can see them here. Feel free to re-pin, like them, follow them, or whatever. 

Happy pinning and happy tangling!

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. 

Images and Leaks

"I just want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares."
Unknown

It's time for some more tangled stock images from GraphicStock. If you missed my first post about them, you can read it here. Some bright colored pencils before I got my hands on them...

And here they are after...

I love bright colors, which is what attracted me to this image in the first place. And I love the contrast against the black tangling. The next one I worked on is a bit different. 

First I tangled inside the bird. I don't know how well you can see it in the picture below, but I added some Printemp swirls above the bird. I thought I was using a white gelly roll pen, but it turns out it was a souffle pen. That means that it puffs out from the page a little, but the color is very subtle. 

I thought it needed something else... something to ground it, if that makes any sense. So I decided to make a border. Unfortunately, based on how the paper had been cut, it either needed to be a really skinny border, or one that went off the page. Since I often like when part of an image is drawn so it's partly off the page, I decided to go with that. 

I wanted it to stand out a little more, so I picked up a Micron 02 to work with instead of my usual 01. I had not gotten too far on the border when I realized that the pen was leaking all over my hand. Luckily, amazingly, it stayed on my hand and didn't get on the paper. More about the pen in a minute.  I guess the border going off the page looks okay. After some shading and white highlights I was finished.

Now, back to that leaky pen. Did you know that the microns can leak if they are shaken up? It sometimes happens during shipping, from the package being thrown around (the mail/UPS people are probably about as gentle as the luggage handlers at an airport!) But they can also start to leak if YOU shake them. If you're the kind of person who talks with your hands, you should make sure you're not holding a Micron when you talk. Here's what my pen looked like.

But did you also know they can be cleaned and almost always be perfectly fine to use again? Wash off all the ink on the pen, then rinse out the inside of the cap. Use a q-tip to wipe around inside the cap, rinse again, and keep doing that until the q-tip comes out clean. If you don't clean out the cap and just put it back on the pen, it will get all inky again. I've saved a few pens by following these steps. 

Here's hoping that you don't have to clean a leaky pen too often!

Narwal

"An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching."                     Mahatma Gandhi

When the tangle pattern Narwal came out several months ago I thought it was interesting. I added it to my list of patterns to try out, but that list can sometimes get pretty long before I actually sit down and play with them. I've been noticing a lot of people posting their work using Narwal, and it has spurred me on to tackle it. As recommended by many, I found the YouTube video by Helen Williams (A Little Lime) to be quite useful in figuring it out.

Here is my first attempt in a journal of mine (after some practice on scrap paper). I probably would like it better if I had left off the little Narwal on the right side. And if it didn't have that stray pen mark on it!

Next it was on to trying to make it look a little better while integrating it with other tangles. Here I used gray-toned Strathmore paper, and added some Henna Drum and Bunzo. I shaded with graphite and added highlights with my trusty white pastel pencil. 

I like that one SO much more than my first, but in an attempt to show how important practice is, I included them both. Don't ever underestimate the importance of repetition for those patterns that may give you more trouble than others!

More Lines

"A drawing is simply a line going for a walk."   Paul Klee

I promised you I'd be back with some more of my line drawing (like it or not), so here I am. I absolutely LOVE this first piece I'm showing you here. Drawn on Strathmore tan-toned paper, I used a black micron pen, graphite for shading, and white pastel pencil for highlights. This did not start out to be a flower. It was just random lines, but as it progressed it started looking more like a flower, so the stem was added. My daughter, who was visiting from Scotland, loved this, and believe me, she's very honest and tells me when she doesn't. 

For the next one I used a stencil of a heart on black Artagain paper and filled it with a Signo Uniball white gel pen. I don't love it as much as my flower, but it's not bad.

I did some shading with my white pastel pencil. This may be one of those very rare occasions when I like it better unshaded than shaded. What do you think?

Now that I've had some good practice with this type of drawing, I'll try incorporating it along with other tangle patterns. Stay tuned for more!