DC 297 - Holiday Bash

Laura's Diva Challenge this week was to revisit one of her previous holiday challenges.  Since I did not start this journey at the beginning, I decided to visit all of the links she provided.  What fun to watch the boys grow and to see Laura's vlog in year 2 I think.  Anyway, I decided to go with the Gift theme.

Sometime in the last few weeks I came across someone who had tangled 3 dimensional stars.  Loved the idea (and I'm sorry I can't remember who to credit).  Below is the same star - first flat, then photographed folded against red fleece blanket and finally, folded and photographed against a favorite old sweater.   I haven't yet decided to whom I shall give the star, but a gift it will be!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday!

DC 295 - Reticula & Fragment Part 2

Continued with the theme of Reticula & Fragment this week.  I filled my grid with Joki, which I've recently discovered and really like!

DC 294

The challenge is to use the Zentangle folks' Reticula & Fragment tangling elements.  Unfortunately, I have not seen their book, so I used the Diva's example as a starting place.  Here's mine:

The fun part about this was that at every step I thought it might make a good stopping place.  From here, I could definitely add shading and maybe "stripe" some of the lines.  I want to learn more.

EIM Clouds and Diva Challenge 292

 "Clouds" is the Every Inchie Monday word of the week.  One of the delightful things about clouds is that there are so many different kinds.  Some are white and puffy and share the sky with sunshine.

while others are dark and ominous and stormy.

To me, they are all beautiful!!

The Diva Challenge this week is a UMT (Use My Tangle) with the featured pattern being EAXY.  I found the tangle to be quite challenging and really messed it up (top, right), but remembering that there are no mistakes in Zentangle, I decided to make it work by adding more lines and a little color.  And, just for fun, I punched a little star into one corner.

EIM Coastline and DC 291

Every Inchie Monday's challenge word this week is coastline.  I've seen some very lovely coastlines in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Oregon, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Bermuda, and Saint Croix.  I'm a most fortunate woman to have se

en such lovely sites with my own eyes.  I understand the warning issued to Legolas in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Here is my little coastline ...

The Diva's challenge was to use a Halloween theme if you were so inclined.  I chose to use as a string the boys' jack-o-lanterns.  I like the originals much better.  :)

DC 290 and EIM Pirates

The Diva Challenge this week is a duotangle using Flux and NZeppel.  Flux is one of my favorites and I don't think I've ever attempted NZeppel before.

The word for this week's inchie is Pirates.  I've drawn only one.  :)

DC 289

For me, this autumn has been especially beautiful.  The colors have been amazingly vibrant and opportunities for photos seem endless.  Fittingly, this week the Diva's challenge is to use leaves as the string.  My favorite in the above is the oak leaf filled with the pattern flux.  Have a great week!

EIM Horizon

Growing up in South Dakota gave me ample opportunities to see the distant horizon ... something that is usually pretty difficult in New England unless you are at the ocean.  I do miss the prairie ... the big sky and seemingly endless fields.  This week's word is horizon and here's my interpretation:

EIM: Direction

It's been a while since I've posted any inchies ... because it's been a while since I've made any.  :)  Life has been busy.  My daughter was married October 1st ... my son was married June 25th.  In July we enjoyed a family reunion.  In addition this year we've had two deaths in the family.  2016 has been quite the year ... but it's not over!  This week my husband got some interesting news about an upcoming work assignment.  Life continues to surprise.

And so "direction" is a good word for the week.  We never quite know what direction life will take us.  But, wherever life takes us, with God's help, we can enjoy the journey.

DC 288

The Diva Challenge this week is to use the tangle pattern "Gourdgeous."  It is not my favorite.  After drawing the theme pattern, I decided to mimic the gourdeous pattern by adding some "rounding" to the ribbons.  

After posting, and after looking at the tile for a few days, I decided it definitely could use some shading.  Here's the result.  (The second photograph was very washed out, so I "enhanced" the color with the saturation setting on the iphone.  Interesting.)

DC 287 UMT Dreamcatcher

This was Use My Tangle week, featuring Daniel Lamothe's "Dreamcatcher."  I'd never used this tangle before, and was surprised and delighted by both its simplicity and possibilities.  As you can see, I used the tangle as a string, but saw many beautiful tiles where Dreamcatcher was the star attraction.  I think this pattern will go into my "favorites" file.

DC 286 Straight to It

All straight lines for this challenge.  (Making straight lines straight may be the underlying challenge.)  Either use only patterns that have straight lines or straighten the lines of patterns.  Can't say I love it, but it's done!  

Diva Challenge 285 - Relax, Bro!

These are not exactly relaxing days ... my daughter will be married in seven days, one week from today!  And yet, I've managed to grab a few minutes throughout the week to put pen (and a little color) to paper.  The challenge was relax from the desire to put the "right" patterns together and make a perfect tile (well, that's my interpretation of the challenge).  Anyway, these were my attempts just to let the patterns be.  In the second tile I was curious as to how flux might look with an aura around the "petals."  At any rate, I did my best to relax (does that count??) and enjoy the process.

Diva Challenge 284

This week features Tripoli as a monotangle.  Here's my first attempt:

Then, I decided to "break the rules" and add a second pattern behind the triangles.  I'm not sure it could truly be called tripoli anymore, but I needed to give it a try.

DC 282

This week's Diva Challenge was to use a splotch of color as the string on a tile.  The source of the splotch could be anything you desired.  I decided to go with tea, but after I dropped a bit on the paper, I felt there wasn't enough color, so I added a drop of food coloring to the wet tea.  The coloring bled out into the tea pattern's edges and I love the result.  I felt that tangling "behind" the bright color would allow it to shine.  Will definitely try this again.

I'd tried to use a white gel pen to tangle on top of the food coloring, but even though thoroughly dry, the ink just faded away, so I boosted the color by adding black micron on top of the gel pen.

Diva Challenge 281 and EIM Dolphin

I love this week's featured tangle ING.  It's simple and has lots of possibilities.  It also perfectly illustrates "migraine."  When I looked at one of the examples on Zentangle.com I saw in front of me the pattern that I see when I'm getting a migraine.  I've often tried to explain it, but never quite captured it like this tangle does.  Pretty funny.

And the Inchie word of the week is dolphin.  No explanation needed.

EIM Fjord and Diva Challenge 280

This week's inchie word is Fjord.  I love the challenge of painting on one square inch of paper.  One thing's for sure, you won't run out of paint very quickly!  

The Diva Challenge this week is to be inspired by the Olympics.  It's not very original, but here it is!  The Olympic rings in a Marasu-esk tangle.  If I feel more inspired, I may add to it later in the week.  Until then ...

EIM Whale and Diva Challenge 279

It's been a while since I've completed an inchie ... such a busy summer!  But I'm not sleeping tonight and drawing a whale seems a better idea than watching television.  I love inchies!!

And the Diva's Challenge was a duo tangle using Auraknot and Meer.  I actually love both of these tangles.  I tried to use meer on a bendy pathway and was faced with the decision of keeping all the lines parallel or adjusting them to the bends.  I chose wrong, but it gives me a new idea so the exercise was useful.

Diva Challenge 278

This week's challenge was to use Daniel Lamothe's tangle pattern Knightstar.  I really enjoyed this pattern (though I messed up one part pretty badly!)  Started with Knightstar then decided to use two tangles I'd never used before:  Adante and Cindyer.  Finished it off with a little Arukas.  All in all very Zentangley.  Enjoyed myself so much that I "forgot" to make dinner.  Now I think we'll just have to go out to find something to eat.  Guess that's a win win.  Happy tangling!

DC #277 All Circles

This week the Diva's challenge is to use circles as strings for our tiles.  I used one circle for my string and filled that with other circles, though to be honest, I do not believe there is even one perfect circle among them!

Diva Challenge To Go - #276

Our challenge from Laura this week was to create a tile or ZIA while moving.  It could be while riding in a plane, train, or automobile but my only option on that front (at least until Sunday) was to tangle while driving (which I would not do ... obviously).  Anyway, I rose to the challenge on Sunday morning on the way to church.  It turns out we have some pretty bumpy roads!  :)

I brought with me one of my notebooks of sample tangles.  I had jotted down a quote from the most recent Disney "Cinderella" movie:  "Have Courage. Be kind."  It took a tiny bit of courage to complete a tangle that I knew would be full of imperfections.  And you may need to be kind in your thoughts on this particular tile.  Haha.  

Ah well.  Have a wonderful week.

EIM Spiral

This little inchie is a "spiral" staircase from inside a lighthouse on Cape Cod.

EIM Rain

EIM: computer

My husband and I bought a Macintosh 570 shortly after we were married.  I LOVED that little thing.  It could save my words on a disk and I could do drawings etc.  570K!  Can you even imagine?  Now we are saving to backup disks with terabytes of storage.  Anyway, here's my computer ... the 570 (more or less):

DC 274 My Country 'Tis of Thee!

This week's Diva Challenge is to illustrate "My Country 'Tis of Thee" with our country's colors.  I've chosen the stars and stripes of the U.S.A as my theme, though I don't think you'll recognize our flag.

Diva Challenge 273: Remix!

Our challenge this week was to take an old tile that maybe needed a little Ooomph, remix it (by adding to the tile) and voilla - #273 is complete!

Here's my old tile.  Indeed it is old - from July 2011 - only a month after I first discovered Zentangle. It was my (rather sad) attempt at Mooka.

It sat in the box - definitely unfinished and I really never had a clue of what to do with the poor thing, but this Remix Challenge spurred me on ... to just go for it.  So I added the new tangle "Funsin" by Yu Ru Chen (introduced on 6/27/16 by TanglePatterns.com) as well as a few other bits.  Here's the result.

Happy tangling!

Diva Challenge 273

The challenge this week was to use black and white and red.  I decided to start with some red scribbles and here's where I ended up.  Think it would have gone better if I'd worked a pattern into the scribble, but that idea had to be put on hold.  My son got married yesterday (6/25/16) and I've been a little busy.  (It was a great day ... Perfect except for the heat.)

EIM Ghastly

"Ghastly" was the word of the week for Every Inchie Monday.  What a difficult word to illustrate!  I finally settled on how one might look like if you came upon a ghastly scene.  Here you go:

Have a great week everyone!

DC 270 and EIM Robot

The Diva Challenge was to use the tangle Skye.  NOT EASY.  (Emphasizing, not yelling.)  Still, I love it, and hope to use it again.  Added the tangle Mac.ra.me to increase the tangled feeling.

This week's Inchie challenge was "robot."  This word brings to mind many images and other related thoughts.  Particularly unpleasant are the robots (computers) that begin acting on their own behalf.  They can get downright scary!  One exception might be Rosie the Robot from The Jetsons.   (Remember her?)  She did tend to do things her own way, but usually with good intentions.  I'm afraid this rendition looks a little scary, however.  :)

Diva Challenge 269 and EIM Button

The challenge this week was to use the new tangle Ellish.  I decided to add Molygon to the tile which interestingly enough looked related to Ellish with a few little swirls.  Fun!

I tried to draw buttons that one might sew onto a shirt several times, but was unsatisfied with the result ... so, I switched to the keyboard instead.  It's probably not called an ENTER button, but it's just going to have to do this week.  :)

Diva Challenge 268 and Inchie 3D

Use "a-bit-o-black" was the challenge by Diva Laura this week - which meant to use a little more black than you might usually do.  This challenge coupled with the fact that I'd read about "rounding" for the first time made me think about combining both ideas into my tile this week.  So here it is, Rick's Paradox rounded a bit with definitely more black than I would usually use.  (I'm not altogether certain I did the rounding correctly, but I rather like the result.)

 Next the Every Inchie Monday word of the week is 3D.  Here are my offerings:

Have a wonderful week everyone!

DC 267 and EIM Brain

This week's Diva Challenge was to create a duo-tangle using Pokeroot and Drupe.  Here's my offering.  Not my favorite effort ... thinking it needed more dark, but I'm not sure I wish to invest the ink!  Nevertheless, it is done and it isn't even Friday.  YAY.

While thinking about the Every Inchie Monday theme for this week "brain" I'd planned to draw the gray matter version.  But, when I searched for images to use for inspiration, I decided a brain scan would be more fun - and certainly more colorful!