cotton & thread.

My mom is downright dangerous with her sewing machine. I was kicking back with her in her sewing room (a.k.a. her 'happy place'!) yesterday, and wondered aloud whether a Zentangle tile could successfully be stitched by machine since it's 100% cotton paper. Never one to back down from a creative challenge, she did the loopy border on her sewing machine, and then I tangled the rest.

See how the thread casts a shadow from the sun slanting in through the window? Late afternoon is the prettiest time of day in my studio, when the sunlight illuminates the inhabitants of my fish tank and my meticulously curated dust collection. ;o) 

A few other borders... they didn't make the cut, but still looked pretty cool stitched into the tiles. These patterns might look vaguely familiar to my fellow tangle junkies.

Next I'll see if I can successfully sew two tangled roundies back to back with batting in the middle, and make an ornament out of it... I only have eleven months to make it work! ;o)

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feel free to visit me here!

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:

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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

❀

Diva Challenge no. 141: pointillism, hold the comets.

It's been a while since I jumped in on the weekly Diva challenge, and the recent one on the exploration of pointillism (stippling, technically, since I did mine in a single color) really grabbed my interest. Just FYI... if you think it takes a long time to do a tangle, try drawing it with teeny little dots instead of flowing lines! For me, this was an exercise in patience. And it really did force me to slow down, since dots tend to look a little more like comets when rushed. I think it was supposed to be a monotangle- using just one tangle pattern- but I wanted a more solid frame for contrast. So I settled for limiting myself to roundish things.

I'll definitely try this again... thanks to Laura, as always, for prying me out of my comfortable-habit zone.

• ❃ • ❋ • ❁ • ✿ • ✽ • ❀ •

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.

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Weekly Challenge #106: "The Year of the Snake"

I've been missing the weekly challenge lately, but hey, my house is clean and I'm almost caught up on laundry! Laura's Diva challenge this week is to use a serpentine string (or tangles) to mark the arrival of the year of the snake on the Chinese calendar. Couldn't pass that one up! I was born the year of the rabbit. And my husband is a rat. *snicker* (Not really... he's actually very nice.)

This is my first tangle on Strathmore's gray-toned drawing paper. It's not bad... although I wish it was a better shade of gray, my ink didn't bleed and my lines stayed crisp. I still prefer the texture and cushiness of the thicker Fabriano Tiepolo paper (the Zentangle standard), but this was an interesting change. When drawing on white paper, there are only lines and shadows to draw... but with midtone paper, you get to play with the balance between shadows AND highlights. It's a different experience. 

You can click here to find out what your Chinese Zodiac sign is.

(This is just for funsies, folks... entertainment only.)