Recycling at it's prettiest...

I have a fun new project I have been working on lately.  I have to clean out much of our stuff to make an apartment for our daughter who wants to return home from Maryland.  I will then have all four of my children withing walking distance from our house!!

So...on to the cleaning out.  I saw this idea on Pinterest and paid attention to the details of how it worked and thought 'I have tons of plates and glassware and I bet I can do these'  Got the waterproof glue and set to work.  Got a drill to go through glass but that was difficult for me to handle, so I went with the idea of filling a base piece with dirt and rocks before I glued a plate on.  This made for a heavy bottom to keep wind from being a problem.

Then I dug through shelves and boxes, etc and lined up the pieces in order for color and sizing.
I decided that each piece needed at least 3 upright pieces to create enough height.  And the in-between made a layered look in style and color.

I know how to Zentangle, so I used my ink that I used on my Zentangle Plates to add color and design to pick up other piece's color.

I have glass stones, and I have plastic beads, and will probably think of other things to glue on as I go along.

And of course, I know my way to the Goodwill store for anything I might be missing...lol

Judy's Doodle Challenge 20

Posted this plate over on my facebook page and forgot it was one of Judy's challenges.  The thought crossed my mind briefly when I was tracing onto the plate, but by the time I finished it totally slipped away...lol  This is done with a larger tip pen than I like.  I made a mistake when I ordered them, not noticing the size differences.  I did this plate anyway, with simple patterns, as I had started it and didn't want to wait for a new order of pens.

After working with that thick pen, I shifted over to the color pens that had the finer point.  Did a couple fish in the deep blue sea...

A closer view...I will stick with the color til my new black pens arrive----the FINE point ones!!!

Catching up....

I feel like I have deserted my blog lately, as I haven't had time for challenges, and have been in other groups and started my own swap!!  I have some plates to share and a few zentangles... here goes!

This is a medium size plate with my favorite snail, and I learned how to manipulate the ink to cause shading on it.

 Got more involved with the shading on this large plate.  A little trickier to shade larger areas.  This plate also had a raised design in the center and rings raised on the outside edge, so I had to work the design from there.

My little chipmunk kind of goes with the snail plate, but the green is a bit more intense in this work, so when they are next to each other, I'm not sure I like it.


And some tangles....   These are 'Kickstarters' from tanglebucket, who gives us 4 specific tangles to use to kick start our imaginations... Fun!

And a few ATC's that got me going off on a swap of my own.  I am  hoping to get it started by March 1, and have as many as 25 swaps in the group.   So I will be busy...

Postcard Swap

I've been so busy in so many directions, I failed to post my three postcards in the Artist in Blogland Swap.
I left my blog address on the back, but no cards for them to relate to, sorry.  Here they are.....

This one is done with a purple micron 5

With this I threw in some colored pencils and a bit of metallic gel pen

This is blue batik fabric with a gold sun batik, and a cut out gull apliqued on. Machine stitching done in sky and tight double zig-zag on the outside edges and the sun.

As you can see, I chose to make the third one a fabric card.  The swap was mixed media, so I figured I would 'MIX"...   Hope everyone got their cards successfully.  I have just received my second one today. Looking forward to number three.

Dive challenge 103

so okay...not every tangle is one I'm gonna like.  I don't care for how this came out, but don't know if I have time to do another and will go with the crowd that says POST it anyway....

It is an important challenge to do right for Laura and her son, so I will try to improve.  And I may go look at what everyone else is doing to be inspired.  I don't usually like to do that.  I want to use my own imagination and the patterns I have already collected to put mine together before I see what all of the ladies and gentlemen in our company do.

Zendala challenge 41...a pretty flower

Immediately upon seeing the shape of this one, I knew I would be leaning towards flowery designs.  I actually did the leaves first, with a new design from just a couple days ago,  Of course you may not recognize it because I did only one line of it right down the middle of the leaf.

 I had fun coloring this one using every pen and pencil type I owned.  Micros, gel pens, prismacolor pencils, even Staedtler pen for the tiny yellow dots on the outside edge.  I don't have every color in any type of pen, so I poked through all of them to get the colors I wanted.

I actually stayed within the lines all the way through and only added a tiny extra on the edge.  For me this is unusual.  But the shape was a good one right from the get-go.

Zendala 40 challenge

Wasn't sure where to go with this til I saw Helen's (little lime)heart tangle pattern.  Looked like fun to try that first, not realizing there were SEVEN points to this zendala.   Figured I do every other point and then put another heart-type in the other points.  Well that doesn't work with an odd number so I had to hang in there and put the hearts ALL the way around.  They took some time, but I did like the end results.  And the ribbon-style edging was inspired by Margaret Beauchamp's latest gallery art we got to see this morning.

So thank you fellow tanglers for you inspiration.

I also wanted to share my newest zentangles on a product other than paper...

The round circles are the little feet on these cutting boards/ hot plates.  They won't take the paint, and I was not sure I could put them back on securely if I took them off...lol  So they slightly interrupt the design. The design shows because after I do the ink, I spray the back with white.  Because this ink is waterproof, it seems to handle the paint product without bleeding.  

Here is a photo, rather than a scan, to show the size.  They were a bargain at the 'dollar' store and perfect for little cutting jobs.  And for showing off a Zentangle!!!

Diva 102 second challenge try...

I tried again, and this time stuck to just the two tangles, but I couldn't resist messing with them again.  They looked too small in the 5 x 7 space so I extended the auraknot with extra aura...lol

Diva challenge 102

Okay, I did this without reading thoroughly  the instructions given by the Diva.  I saw Helen's adorable flower and the other great ones she did. And I thought okay I will try putting these two together.  But when I tried the auraknot, I went slightly crazy trying to get all the petals to work under and over.  So I started another one and only put six points instead of twelve.   And then I had to add a few little tendrils.
THEN I read Diva directions and realized I shouldn't be adding extra stuff.....

Can you look at it and maybe ignore the tendrils???  I did try something different in striping the auraknot and lining the bunzo for a new look.

I will try to get time to do another and do it correctly.

Supertrooper challenge...

My son is a fantastic artist and loves the gory graphics that are in many games.  He and his daughter admired a recent piece of art that was in that genre, and I kidded him that I could take a storm trooper from the Star Wars series and Zentangle him into a similar look.  So here is the image I got from Google and the results when I did a job on him.

 

I would like to think I did okay, but I am waiting to see what he has to say.....It was fun and QUITE a different way to draw for me.  Don't want to stop my flowers and fantasy for this!!! But a challenge is a challenge and I gave it a go!

Diva 101...sounds like a beginners class...lol

...and I am beginning with my first monotangle.   Almost mono anyway, as I put a 'net' behind the tangle to hold it all together.  LOVE this new tangle and decided a good way to cement it into my head was do it over and over.  I also had just received my first set of metalic gel pens and gave them a little try on the extra stripes I added to the shells.  I don't see the shine in the scan, but in real life it has a nice metalic glow when it hits the light right.  Gonna have to use them more in the near future.

Hope I did B-rad's new and fun pattern justice...  So nice to have the diva back and throwing new ideas at us.  Been working on a larger pic, 11 x 14" so I am behind on the challenges again.  

I'm off to get my new permanent glasses for after the cataract surgery.  It seems like this whole deal has taken forever and I am glad to be getting the right glasses finally.  I am getting tired of switching glasses for computer to glasses for drawing, back to computer ones for reading and getting instructions on food items when I make supper (I'm a microwave diva...lol)  

Dive #2 and more...

I hadn't really expected to have another item with the diva dance pattern in it, but then it seemed to be just the right start for this plate.  Rock and roll made a perfect flower type tangle in the middle and then I just used part of fox trot in four of the points, so there we have it---a second try.

And that wasn't the end of working on plates, either.  I did these two as a 'pair'  and I loved how they turned out on the pearlescent white of the plate with that 'carnival' coloring on the outer edge.

And the last one I finished just today.  A pottery-looking feel to it, so I did a rugged chunky type of tangle on it.  It came out rather golden in the pic, but is more of a terra-cotta color for real.