String Challenge #170 and a Travelling Tangles Album

String Challenge #170

"Oke" and "Jellylegs"

Thankfully Adele tasked us with a relatively simple challenge this week, using a very simple string and two simpatico patterns. I love playing with "Oke" and don't use it often enough. I was drawn to "Jellylegs" as soon as it popped up last week. I still have a few of the orange and black tiles I made for the October challenges and it felt like a good fit here. I'm slowly emerging from my funk and I feel like I may be getting some semblance of a  Zentangle groove back.

As I mentioned in my last post, I finally got caught up with my Travelling Tangles backlog. For anyone not familiar with The Travelling Tangles Project, check this out. It's a wonderful group of collaborative artsy ZenPals that make trips to the mailbox a treat.

My next wave is beginning to trickle in and though I didn't complete any new pieces this week, I spent some very therapeutic quality time on my Travelling Tangles album. My spirits were lifted and I feel truly grateful.

I bought two of these scrapbooks years ago because they were on sale somewhere. I'm not and never have been a scrapbooker but thankfully they survived many Feng Shui purges, just waiting for the perfect purpose. I also had a postcard book of antique maps.

I've been so impressed and inspired by the creativity involved in the whole package: the envelope art,  handmade notecards, and the personal notes are all cherished.

Happy Mail!

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Diva Challenge #292, Made by Joey #138 and More Travelling Tangles...

Diva Challenge #292

Use My Tangle: "Eaxy"

The first Monday of the month is a Use My Tangle challenge, where The Diva chooses a pattern submitted by one of her many fans and followers. This is Nadine Roller's pattern "Eaxy", an easy pattern using X's. Easy in theory, but in practice?...well, I can't remember when a pattern vexed me so. I suspect most of you reading this feel my pain.

It's been an unsettling week and I've been trying really hard to get my Zen. I've found windows here and there but mostly my focus has been scattered. I practiced "Eaxy". A lot. I got frustrated. Took breaks. Practiced some more. Started an ATC. Got frustrated. Tossed it. Noodled around on Pinterest. A lot. Checked out other submissions. I was not alone.

Then two things happened within minutes of each other. I came across a gorgeous (is there any other kind?) Lily Moon tile and read Jennifer Sparrow's blog post. Jennifer posted of picture of a garden path and I immediately thought of cobblestones which always makes me think of 'Nzeppel. 

'Nzepple Eaxy! That was the solution to my frustration of the shabby cross-overs that I couldn't clean up. So, many thanks Lily and Jennifer!

Joey Challenge #138

Finish my Tile: Twile

Joey started us off this week with a ring filled with Twile in the center of a tile. I had some left over ATC's from the current Travelling Tangles swap...

... and in keeping with my personal challenge of adapting the Joey challenges to ATC's, I took a little artistic license with this.

Earlier in the week, I finished the last of my Travelling Tangles backlog to make way for new round starting to trickle in.
Here are two recent finishes to a tile and ATC sent by Sue Olsen.

I love these! They're so cool just on their own.

Sue is the inspiration behind my latest coloring technique obsession-tissue paper. Check out Sue's tutorial here. Sue recently posted some additional tissue paper play here where she overlays the white tissue for a really interesting effect. This is next on my To Do list. Thanks Sue!

A while back, I sent Margaret Bremner one of the first ATC's from my tissue paper trial run.

This is so freakin' awesome!

Margaret applied torn paper (orange) to the ATC and continued to work her magic. 

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club"-Jack London

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String Challenge#169 and a few Travelling Tangles

String Challenge #169

"Eleven"

patterns: Narwal, Onion Drops and Viaduct

In my last post I shared some Halloween inspired tiles I created with black and orange tissue paper for the Diva and Joey Challenges. This is one from that batch. The coloring seemed a good fit for Adele's string, formed by the cursive letters: ele, the first 3 letters in eleven (November being the eleventh month), also as I just now noticed, the last 3 letters of my name;-)
I started this last night, only knowing where I wanted to place Narwal. The rest just sort of...happened;-) I left the center alone because I liked that it looked like horns. When I was attempting to take a picture of this at the cafe this morning, I noticed the black mask in the corner of the counter area where I was sitting and thought it a fitting prop to go with the horns. It made me think of a Mardi Gras costume.

I've been trying to get caught up with my backlog of Travelling Tangles this weekend since a new swap has commenced and I really need to get my butt in gear with Christmas gift art.

My finish...

...to this lovely start by Marguerite Samama,

 travelling all the way from the Netherlands

My finish...

...to another of Marguerite's beautiful starts.

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Diva Challenge #291, Made by Joey Challenge#137 and a few Travelling Tangles

Diva Challenge #291

Made by Joey Challenge #137

A set of Halloween inspired tiles colored with art tissue

When presented with this weeks challenges on Monday, I have to admit I was not all that enthused. The Diva's options were either to create a Halloween inspired tile or use a black tile. Joey presented us with a "Finish my Tile" challenge using a "Wud" filled pumpkin as a starter.

Halloween is just not my thing. I don't have kids and even during the 10 years I lived in New York City, studying and then working as a theatrical costume designer, I only ever dressed up once.

Anyhoo, I had to really work to wrap my pen around these challenges, besides Halloween was long over by the time I got around to these. I decided to create a set of tiles using the, as yet unused, black tissue from my art tissue packet. The first tile was really more of an experimental piece. I'm not crazy about it but I try to embrace my less-than-stellar attempts as "adventurous".

Catching up on some Travelling Tangles:

My finish...

...to this start by Dorte Seupel Kor, travelling all the way from Germany 

My finish...

...to another of Dorte's starts. This was an Autumn themed swap.

These were my starts to October's theme: Breast Cancer Awareness Pink. I  used Daniel Lamothe's pattern Dreamcatcher on tiles colored with art tissue.

This was beautifully finished by Anita Westin in Sweden

This was Anja Shaffeld's (Germany) fantastic finish.

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String Challenge #168 and Travelling Tangles on the Other Hand

String Challenge #168

String: overlapping Candy Corn

Patterns: Fang, Florz and Tira

It's a String Thing#168 presented us with a Halloween theme.  I felt quite challenged by this one as I wanted to detour from spiders and webs.  I couldn't make these patterns play well together. I had the same problem last week and let that one go because I was in a time crunch and in vacation mode. I didn't want to drop the ball again. I'm glad I pushed through.  These string challenges, more often than not, push me out of my comfort zone more than any other challenge and more often than not, result in greater reward. I really enjoyed playing with Tira, a new-to-me pattern by Ragged Ray. It seems to want to be a random pattern, but once I tamed it into a ribbon, the whole thing came together. Yaayy!

I love rain days! I decided to try to get caught up on some Travelling Tangles. Each month we're given a choice of two themes for our group swap. This month it was to either send out tiles with starter art using our non-dominant hand or Breast Cancer Awareness Pink. 

I really liked the idea of the non-dominant hand. The purpose was to diminish being intimidated by perceived perfection. After several frustrating attempts at warming-up in my sketchbook, I gave up. I could barely hold the pen and felt like I was causing serious damage to my pen tips. There was no Zen happening.

In the meantime, the Diva challenge which required us to use Daniel Lamothe's pattern Dreamcatcher, had me completely absorbed so I got out the pink tissue, colored a sheet of watercolor paper, made a bunch of tiles and went all Dreamcatcher on them.  I do have to say they came out brilliantly. I'll share some of the results of those next week.

As non-dominant hand tiles began arriving in the mail, I used my vacation as an excuse to ignore them for a bit. Yesterday, I decided to bust-a-move.

My finish...

...to Anja Schaffeld's amazing start, travelling all the way from Germany. 

I was and still am seriously impressed with her precision. Once I drew the first circle of "Cuke", I realized it was so much easier working on the tiles as opposed to my sketchbook because I could easily rotate the tile and as long as I kept my patterns small, I could practically hold my hand still and move the tile.

My finish...

...to Anita Westin's start, travelling from Sweden.

my finish...

 

to Sabrina Kirjavainen's start, travelling from Finland

As soon as I ventured into larger patterns, that's when I got in trouble. Anyhoo, this was a great challenge. I went really, really slow and focused, focused, focused and you know what? It was totally Zen;-)

oh... and here's another pic from the wedding weekend:

Me, my nephew (the groom) and my sis

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Diva Challenge #290 and Made by Joey #136

a travelling two-fer

Diva Challenge #290: a Duo-tangle using Flux and 'Nzeppel

&

Made by Joey #136: Finish my Tangle Series-Fracas

On Monday morning, reading the challenges, I was in a hotel lobby with my sketchbook  waiting for my sister to get up. We were wrapping up a wonderful week of wedding events in Seattle, celebrating the marriage of my nephew.
I wasn't able to complete any travelling tangles this week and didn't get much drawing done at all. With my few essential tools and a 4 hour flight delay, I got down to business. I worked back and forth between the two.
This was the wedding present:

Me and my handsome nephew J.R. on the big day.

The adorable couple:

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Diva Challenge #289 and Made by Joey#135

Diva Challenge #289

Leafy Goodness

This is gonna be a quicky. I 'm travelling for a family wedding and there's not much time to draw.

I started this before I left. The tile was colored a while back. I painted watercolor on a dried leaf and pressed it onto the tile.

Made by Joey Challenge #135

Overlapping circles String

Patterns: Drogon, Dicso and Msst

I managed to squeak in a little tangling time this morning while the fam sleeps in after a wild night of post -reception karaoke.

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