Weekly Challenge #164: "Amanda (Earth) Day"

I spent Earth day at my allergist's office (seven hours of it, anyway) taking part in RUSH immunotherapy. One shot of my own personal allergen cocktail every 30 minutes, for the purpose of reaching a maintenance level dose faster. Fall is my suckiest time of year, so I've got some time to build up my resistance to ragweed and mountain cedar. I'm also ok with rounding it all up and burning it down to the ground. I'll even bring the marshmallows.

Anyway, my mom kept me company the whole time. I beat her in one round of hand and foot out of nine (almost two), and that's kind of a big deal in sandyland. My mom's a total card fiend... she's not completely unbeatable, but there is some high-level strategy going on upstairs... whereas I'm usually pondering whether she's got all the ingredients in her pantry to make chocolate chip cookies as we play. :o)

mom's:

mine:

• ❃ • ❋ • ❁ • ✿ • ✽ • ❀ •

Thanks for stopping by! 

Feel free to join me here, 

where I frequently share artsy things that inspire me, 

invite tanglers to share art,

crack silly jokes, 

and offer up the 

occasional 

tangle 

prompt. 

:oD

❀

SNORR

Once upon a time (yesterday) there was a girl (me) who had a morning appointment at the dentist.

Like every teenager in the waiting room (what better way to spend spring break, eh?) I updated my status on facebook: 'Waiting room at the dentist. Ho hum.' One of my fellow CZTs, Sharon Payne, suggested that I tangle to pass the time until my appointment. I joked that I was too sleepy to tangle, and she told me I should create a new tangle pattern and call it 'snore'. Woohoo, challenge accepted!

So I began dreaming up ways to construct a pattern entirely out of Zs... got out my pen and my little tin of Zentangle tiles. Naturally, that was the moment the dental hygienist opened the door and called my name. Rude.

The bare-bones version:

The how-to:

Start with a plus sign. Each 'branch' of the plus sign will be the TOP of a Z when you turn your tile:

Notice 1) the gap between each plus sign and 2) the gap on the bottom where 3) each Z is slightly rounded and 4) does not touch the one beside it... those are the tiny little details that will keep your pattern from looking like this: 

Not that it's not lovely too... but if you want to end up with that one, there are much easier/less messy ways to draw it.

It's faster (and involves less tile-turning) to draw a row of plus signs and draw several at once. I have yet to do it that way without messing up, but I do have a head cold, so I'm gonna go ahead and blame it on that.

A few variations:

I like this one the most, because darkening every other one makes the 'nested' effect within the pattern more obvious.

with circles instead of gaps...

with two lines instead of one in the plus sign:

with some scrolly stuff thrown in:

...and with a ribbony effect.

Here's a happy little ZIA (Zentangle-inspired art) with snorr, cat-kin, sanibelle, antidots, cruffle, pokeroot, and tipple...

Thanks for visiting... if you're on facebook, you can click here to join the tanglebucket studio page for tangle prompts and other tangle-related things that are less involved than my normal blog posts. 

Have a _____ week!

I'll let you fill in the blank... I'm not feeling that bossy today.

• ❃ • ❋ • ❁ • ✿ • ✽ • ❀ •

The collision of past and present at 350°F

Ever since I took my very first Zentangle class back in February, I've wanted to try combining my new favorite concept with the subject of my former life: cookies. Linda (my former boss/fellow CZT) did the baking and made the frosting (God love her, she knows I hate to be in the kitchen unless I'm there to stick my nose in the fridge).

Last week, we sat down at her kitchen table to try tangling sugar cookies. The frosting was a little runnier than we had hoped, so we had to simplify some of the patterns... but other than that, the project was a success. It was really cool to pick up the same familiar decorating bag I used for years and be able to do something completely new with it.

w2

antidots (enhanced with dots... oh, the irony.)

betweed

corner box

indy-rella

veezley

a true tangle: footlites, cadent, and sanibelle (which I use on everything).

two beauties by Linda, whose names I can't recall.

Purk, also decorated by Linda. 

 ...and here we have a visual recap of the last twenty seconds of your life. ;o)

Happy weekend, everybody!