Diva challenge 100...

whew...I'm finally catching up!  The Diva has her own tangle named after her, and she deserved to get it after putting 100 challenges out there for all of us.  I love seeing what she comes up with, and this one is super.  I didn't quite know what to do with this new tangle....so here it is.

I tried to get all three styles, but the 'foxtrot' one is spread into the four corners. And I threw in mini ones scattered because no other tangle seemed to fit for filling in those spaces.  This time I didn't want quite so much white, so there they are!

 I like the take on the circular piece with the extra pointy pieces thrown in.  Maria did it in one of her samples, and I stole the idea for my rock and roll part.

Celtic knot 17...late again

...but at least I did it!  It's kinda odd in these colors.  I used various pens depending on how dark I needed and used a color pencil even...  Again, I used a piece of scrapbook paper in a fine print teal-blue shade.trimmed to 8x10"  It fits Judy's idea, but I'm not sure if I like making my own knots.  She spoils me with all her great ready-made ideas...lol

Celtic Knot 18...catching up some more

I'm going backwards somewhat.  Put patterns together for the celtic knots 16,17,18.   Then decided if I got 18 done, it might be on time!!!  So I went looking for a shape that would 'knot' together and came up with a cookie-cutter heart.  Used some pink print scrapbooking paper I had on hand to practice, and it came out well enough to go ahead and do the tangle.  Some folks will think 'Valentines day early', but I never pay attention to holidays, just do what seems right at the moment.  And showing love is always right!!

It was a bit of erasing and trying again to get them to overlap the right way.  Judy you will have to let me know if I got it right...lol

Catching up...

Been busy, but still got in some drawing.  Haven't done the challenges lately as I kept being pulled to try something else.

Like water coloring...
Did this as a template for a ZIA and thought it might be worth scanning and keeping for a different take at a later time.  I'm using an inexpensive set of colors in a plastic box, til I see whether I want to pursue this further.  Here is the fist  attempt with this as the background...

I'm always second-guessing myself and this one made me unsure as to whether I should have put the clouds and 'birds' in the pic.  But the space looked so empty before I did.  Let me know in comments what you think, please??

Also did a zentangle classic.  Black and white and just patterns, no particular theme.  Was in the mood.

Then I got that second snowflake dish done...A matching blue, but I liked the patterns better...

Now that I have a bit more time, I am going to try to catch up on challenges...

Zendala 36,on time

This one has lots of simple repetitive lines, as I was recovering from 3 teeth being removed.  Novacaine does funny stuff, and my mind is not all here(even less than usual) so  the tangles I chose to use were as simple as possible and it kept my mind off my odd -feeling jaw.  This morning I feel much better and jazzed it up a bit more.  I used the beetljoos in a balanced pattern instead of creeping all over!  Then added a tiny string of beads all around the edge to connect it all together as I am inclined to do.

Zendala 35 too late but fun!

I've gotten behind on the dares and can't seem to catch up!!!  Here is the snowflake idea that Bright Owl gave us last week...

I cut out two of them and decided to put them on two blue plates that match.  But I found there was a lot of BIG spaces if I didn't add some lines.  So here is the result ...

They are tricky to work on, but give some fun results.  And these would be actually usable for serving cookies or such.  The ink doesn't touch the food because it is on the bottom of the plate!

Now....off to see what the zendala 36 requires, and maybe even a celtic knot challenge if I can squeeze it in.

Roses

Had a 'rose' type tangle that I wanted to use for the first time.  It has been in my sketch pad for a while and I don't remember where I got it, it was that long ago.

I scratch any interesting patterns in here and it is my source for everything I do.  There are a few I remember, but most I have to remind myself of by scrolling through these pages.  I wish I had the stamina to put together those beautiful organized albums I have seen on other blogs.  But ...it ain't gonna happen!

So I dug out my red Micron 5 and went to work with some cool leaves in the center and worked my roses from there.

I loved everything but those outside edge 'triangle' roses.  They didn't come out as dainty as I had wanted.  But once I had put ONE on the paper, I had to add enough all around to balance.  A mistake that couldn't be erased had to become part of the pattern.  It's a 5x7 piece.  I may try this again on a plate, and I will skip those icky roses. Loved what the shading did to really pull the pic together.  So glad I figured out how to use the prismacolor pencils to shade.

Diva challenge #2

It's very late, but it fits more properly the challenge rules of this week.

I started this with those floppy flower-things on the right, and put in what I expected to be a soft pink with my Artist Loft pink pen.  Well it came out very HOT pink, and now I see it on the monitor, it looks almost lavender.  I actually like it more in real life with the hot pink. 

First time I have seen such a difference in color on the monitor.  Does anyone see the hot color???

Bookmarks...

Close-up

Sometimes it is fun to work on little projects to expand your pattern use on something that is disposable.  Just in case you don't like the results of a hard pattern...  I managed to finish all of these but one.  Couldn't get the pattern right, and couldn't salvage it by making another pattern out of it.

I forgot, when they scan, the background is white so they look different than when I take a photo.

I also had time at the beginning of the week to do some ZIA's from the animal kingdom.  I googled a few real animals to use a guide for shape.  Then proceeded to tangle them into fantasy worlds.

These are fun to do, and I think I'll try one on a plate...

Hearts and Flowers

Feelin' alll the love.....so I went with red and lots of hearts.  And some flowers thrown in.  There is also a heart with some of the challenge 97 tangle in it. And I think it might fit the challenge 98...kinda.  The heart shapes loop over each other.

In this close up hopefully you can see the "kneeses"

And a couple more close-ups

I tried to find every 'heart' shape tangle that I could to work into this ZIA and I also found out accidentally how to make a flow of color on a plate.  I can color in solid, but I hadn't thought I could make a soft muted background type of color til I tried to 'erase' a tangle I had put in the middle in the biggest heart.  I used alcohol to see if I could erase the ink and found there was so much color from the pattern that it made a big pinkish mess.  So I thought of smoothing it out in the section, and then patted it all over with the Q-tip I was using.  Waited til it dried and put fresh red lines on the outside edge and there it was.... a background on a plate.

I'm so excited to see what I can do next with this idea.

Meanwhile, I also worked on a couple 'critters' ZIA's .

I found a good image of a REAL snail, as I couldn't seem to draw one I liked.  Then put in a fantasy world of tangles.

Same with the bunny rabbit.  Used as many 'soft' looking tangles as I could find and then added a fantasy garden around him.  These are both 8" x 10" to fit in a standard frame.  The sepia browns I felt would go nice with a wood like maple.

Zendala 34 on a plate...

Doin that 'killin' two birds with one stone' thing.  Wanted to do the challenge, but really wanted to do another plate.  Naturally, why not do both???  Here is my challenge on a very pale green Ikea plate.  Love the black on this muted color, rather than stark white.

Sorry I couldn't get a clearer close-up.  I am a bit tired and don't have the energy to do it all over again. The major change I did was that straight line from the points.  I arched them to get something out to the edges of the plate.  And I liked the softer look of round to go with the rest of the pattern.

Hope it fits the bill...

50th Anniversary Surprise

Took time out from Zentangling to go to what I THOUGHT was dinner with our four kids to celebrate our anniversary.  Well, we were brought to a hall that we had been to about a month ago and told to go in, and there were a whole bunch of familiar faces saying SURPRISE!!!

The kids and grandkids had pulled off a surprise party in great style.  My children are hard workers, but they don't make a lot of money, so this was wonderful in so many ways.  They worked together and did the hard work of doing everything themselves.  No catering here, no fancy restaurant, or big fancy presents,  just lots of love and family and friends.  JUST my kind of party.

I'm getting bits and pieces of the work involved as they all tell me what was happening behind the scenes.  My grandson was in charge of the cooking, as he had training from his tech school.  All the girls were decorating and making deserts.  The guys setting up tables and chairs, etc, and chopping and peeling in the kitchen.  They were doing the shopping for the party under the guise of taking their sister who came up from Maryland out to "see the sights and go for lunch, drinks, shopping, dinner," etc.  It wasn't quite as much a surprise for my husband, as they had to get names and addresses from him for the folks that were invited.

 Here we are just coming into the hall

 Here we have just gotten a lovely cake made by our granddaughter

Here we are laughing over our trying to feed each other 'cakeballs' that are delicious and a favorite of ours.  See further back in my blog if you are interested in  our fun attempts at making these fun deserts.

But I think he was still surprised at all the people and all the work that went into it.  There were lots more pics of all the folks, but these give you the idea.

I finally got that second eye surgery for cataracts, so I will be back to tangling very soon.  Gotta send nice thankyous to all  involved in the bestest time we had!!!

Diva 97 challenge

Sooooo... do something without a string!   But I do most of mine without a string...easy peasy.   I had slowly found myself not using strings as I increased my stash of patterns to tangle.  I'm inclined to pick a focus tangle and then work around it.  And I also do a lot of the mandala patterns, which in a way is a string.   The round of a plate lends itself to the roundness of a mandala.

Therefore here is my stringless tangle for the diva...

I started with that bundle of string in the middle.  Then added the scallops, and chicken wire fence pattern.  Got brave and tried a bit of the kknit pattern (only a LITTLE bit) as that one drives me crazy but I love to knit and it is a great idea for a pattern.   So I had one angle of the paper covered.  Decided to put  the 'lumber' at another angle and then drip the beaded diamonds off of that.  Put some leafy vines on the wire and floated some shells in the air at the bottom with a few spirals to fill in.

I'm sorry to say I remember very little of the names of the tangles.  My memory has been terrible for years and the older I get the worse it is still getting.  I remember what I see fairly well, so slowly my brain is storing the tangles, but the names seem to float away.

Just to emphasize my non-use of strings, the tangle the diva asked for a while back with bunzo (I remember that one!!!) was started with the bunzo tangle in the center and the rest piled on accordingly.  And later I decided I really wanted to add more....  so it kinda qualifies as a second tangle for this challenge.

 This the first way I did it...

Then I added some more to fill in the empty spaces...so does this qualify as number 2???

Zendala 32 and Diva challenge

Been concentrating on plates for the last few days.  I made a fun trip to Goodwill, a store that takes donations and puts folks to work selling the products to help those who need help.  I love shopping there because of the variety, and because I'm re-cycling, and because it helps others at the same time. Win, Win, Win. 
Got a bunch of clothes and a whole bunch of pretty dishes to draw on.  Here are the first few I worked on. 

This last one fits the
Diva's challenge as there are a few zingers I added to the cluster of black lace tied up.  I thought they looked enough like tassels that they fit, and they filled in that space with a light look

 I also did the Zendala challenge with the Zingers included.  I thought it looked a bit flat so I went further and added color and shading to the brown ink pattern.  

This is what it looked like without the added color.  I especially was bothered by the white ovals.  I knew I didn't want to put anything in there, but it was too stark.   The soft shading of the brown pencil did the trick.  The pen was a brown micron 5, and the pencils were prismacolor in all the golds and browns. 

Zendala 31 and other goodies

Behind on the challenges because of these extra works. 

 Did this plate in green, 'cause I started in purple and realized I used the wrong type of pen.  I went over the rest of the lines with green but left that little bit in the center and on one outside aura. 

 Stuck with red for this one and used the right pen!!!

 This is my first try on watercolor paper.  Did the painting first and then used my charge card for the 'string'  and lots and lots of patterns to tangle it up. The very edges are missing cause I put it thru the scanner and it is 9"x12"

This also has the same problem with the edges as it is another big one.  My granddaughter asked for a sun and moon and gave me a simple graphic to start with.  I put the large circles around the two faces and then went to work.  As I didn't think she would turn it in any other direction I used gravity to direct things DOWN dripping off the sides.   She loved it and said it was waaaaay more than she expected, so I did good...

THEN I finally got to the challenge.  This time tried that blue pen I used on a plate, only this was on paper.  Whew, I think I'm caught up on challenges. 

Zendala 30...VERY late

I should be working on 31 and I just finished 30.  I'm not sure I like it.  I used red just to be different and had to add some black because it looked too 'lite' somehow...Tried some patterns I hadn't used before with the 'P' 'I' 'E'  deal.  Didn't use them before because I couldn't 'get' them, ya know what I mean???  So I struggled to continue the patterns I started and at least I'm done!!!

Working on a special project

This one is for my granddaughter who wanted a 'sun' and 'moon' subject to be zentangled.  I started with a simple pic she had given me.

I traced out the sun and moon and then added a large circle around each to give me a 'string' to work with, as the sun and moon were rather small to do a lot of patterns in, and needed some kind of expansion.  Because I had left the faces in, I felt she would probably hang it in one direction only, so I let gravity work for me.  Let things 'drip' off and down.  She liked it without color so I shaded it and called it finished. 

Because I scanned it, some of the edges are missing, but the detail is better with scan, over camera.