Tangle Fun

     I seriously don't know what I will do when I have to give up my "crafting days" as my brother and I call them.  But summer is dwindling and that will have to happen.  It doesn't mean I won't craft - that is necessary to my mental well-being.  It just means I won't be able to devote entire days to card making, tangling and such.  (insert weeping sounds)
    In the meantime, there is lots of time for challenges and dares!    I print all three sizes of templates for Bright Owl's dares.  The first one I did does not appeal to me at all.  It got way too busy looking and I am not sure how I could have fixed it.  Number two needed some color and purple is my favorite color so I played around with the color pens.  My favorite is the third one.  For some reason it reminds me of a wrought iron trivet my grandma used to have.  I am not sure why, but that is the first thing that came to mind when I looked at the finished piece.

chard, facets and bandola

amaze, a-sku, zanzee

flourish, verve, tipple, pokeleaf

      Diva's challenge sent us to tangle patterns to check out string 004.  If you haven't discovered this mega tangle site, please go over.  This is where I first started my journey into tangling and I love it!  The information is awesome and there is always something new.

    After doing one with string 004, I decided to try something else.  For the second one, I wanted it to be less grid driven and more free style.  Hard to believe they both use the same string, isn't it?

     Every Inchie Monday's word of the week was "wild".  I grabbed some scrapbook paper and went to work.  I thought the cheetah might show up better if raised on some pop dots. 

Wild

      I love looking at these three sites and seeing the amazing (and inspiring) talent of the artists.  One of the things I love about my leisure time is I now get to go over and comment on the other work.   Fun!  Have a great week and thanks for dropping by and leaving me some sunshine.

Long Post . . . Sorry!

     Seriously.  I am sorry this is going to be such a long post, but most of the length is artwork, so maybe it won't be too bad.   I meant to break this into a few posts, however that little thing called time.  I have been trying very hard to get my tangle notebook fixed before school starts and that has taken a lot of my time.  Fortunately, it is fun and I don't mind it.  I will tell you more about that and share some pics when the post isn't so long already.

     Dare #66

     Bright Owl's template comes from one made with Genevieve Crabe's stencils.  I have been playing with those some this summer (will share those in another post).  They are amazingly fun and if you haven't bought them - rush out and do so.  I won my set last summer and was so afraid I wouldn't be able to use them.  Not so.  They are really easy and produce a cool zendala.  Anyway, this template was beautiful.  I love the large open areas and the flow.

Dare #66

     I had been looking for a place to play with a new tangle I came up with and this template provided the space.  I have the steps to the tangle later on in the post.   The last one has tangles that are more "alphabet related", hence the name.

Dare #66 - Zanzee

Alphabet Soup

Every Inchie Monday

     I had great plans.  My first thought was to draw a hobbit home.  I had just finished watching the movie and that was fresh on my mind.  The drawing didn't work.  Then there was the idea of a unicorn.  Uh, no.  Finally I used a sticker and enhanced it with my gel pens.  The song "When You Wish Upon A Star" keeps going through my head.  Sort of fantasy, I suppose.

fantasy

Challenge #128 - Two Pencil String

      I love these.  They are lots of fun.  This gave me another chance to try my new tangle and see how it works with being a border.  I also decided on some parchment looking scrapbook paper and brown pens.  I just love brown tones.  You need to head over to Diva's site to check out the other artist's work.  But you need to go to see her photos of her adorable little boys.  They are so precious and her photos this week are priceless.

Breeze

"Zanzee"

   While roaming around on Pinterest (I will NOT confess to how many hours I can waste spend doing that) I found an interesting pattern on a piece of architecture from Zanzibar.  I am not sure whether I can post the picture without infringing on copyrights.  Anyway this simple but striking pattern intrigued me and I have been playing with it on lots of things.  I hope this isn't a tangle that someone else has done and if it is I apologize.  I am calling it zanzee.  I would love to know what you think!

      Okay.  I'm through.  I hope you are having a wonderful week.  I am so enjoying all this free time to tangle, make cards and just relax.  I think summer spoils me.  Thanks for dropping by and have a great week!

Challenge #127

       Diva's challenge this past Monday was to use only two tangles - cirquital and opus.  Both are tangles I rarely use.  However, upon looking them up, I had an immediate idea.  Instead of working on a tile, I did decide to go a lot larger in my sketch pad.

 

      Thank you for dropping by and leaving me some sunshine! 

Every Inchie Monday - "friend"

      I knew instantly what this inchie would be!  Ah, it is so sweet not to have to debate and struggle with an idea.  It does need somewhat of an explanation.  A little over four years ago, we lost our wonderful little dog named Highway (can you guess where we found him?).  We had had him for 19 years and my brother and I were heartbroken.  It was equally hard on both of us, but since my brother works at home he felt the loss and loneliness even stronger.  I could at least escape for a while at school.  It was the stillness of the house that led us to the pound to "just look".  Yeah, right.  A little tiny baby grabbed both of our attentions.  He was absolutely adorable.  Six pounds of fluff! 
    We left the pound with him that day.  Then we had to come up with a name.  Oh that is such a struggle for us.  It had to be "right".  I had just finished reading a book about the Sawtooth wolf rescue and one of the wolves was named Lakota.  Even though this tiny thing was about as far from a wolf as could possibly be, Lakota he became.
    It was an enormous adjustment.  Having a puppy always is.  Having an energetic one after the mellowness of a 19 year old dog really is.  What a challenge!  There were days . . .  well, we doubted our sanity!
  I was sharing the tales of my new puppy with a close friend at school who knew how hard emotionally this had all been.  She later came down to my room and shared she had googled his name.  She was tickled to find Lakota was a Native American word that meant "my friend".  His name was simply meant to be.  Now four years later, my baby weighs in at 110 pounds and is a total member of this house.  Very different from Highway, but that is the way it should be.
    I print thumbnails before I scrapbook to help me layout pages.  For the inchie I used one of these thumbnails.  I tried to make it look like a tiny scrapbook page.  Thank you for dropping by and visiting.  Hope your day is awesome!

Knightsbridge and Dare #65

    The art work is not hard.  The blog writing is not difficult.  It's that stupid title!  I struggle with what to call each post.  Now isn't that ridiculous?  I mean seriously, who really cares?  And how often do people read and ponder the wisdom (or lack of) my title!?  But nevertheless, I do.  I have the post written in my head, the art work is waiting, and I sit and stare at the title space.  Oh good grief! 
    Roy at Mindful-Creations asked us to use knightsbridge as our monotangle.  I really think of this tangle as one of those "blah" tangles.   It is not that I don't like it, I just don't care about it one way or the other.  It was fun to take a look at other ways to put it to use, but honestly, I probably won't begin to start using it a lot.

     Erin"s Bright Owl dare was a really great template this week.  I loved it.  I have discovered I tend to lean toward loving templates that have odd numbered sections.  Isn't that weird?

     

     I found this picture of some architecture on pinterest.  A door frame or something in Zanzibar.  I am trying to work out the steps to make it a tangle.  That is my first attempt at it around the border.  Maybe when I have it finalized in my brain I will post the steps. 
     I looked at the other entries tonight from this dare.  It was amusing to see how many people saw butterflies in the template.  I totally missed that until I saw their lovely work.  I could not see anything but flowers.  I put flowers in the first try, then again in the second.

       For the last try, I had to get rid of the flowers.  I wanted to do something different.  My brother says this is his favorite.  I am not sure it appeals to me.  But I did it and here it is either way!

     The little things in the center remind me of pizza slices.  Which is why I didn't even think about coloring it.  I would have had to make those rosey tangles pepperoni!  Oh my!

     I hope you have had a wonderful week.  I got several more cards made - yahoo! We also were treated to a few hours of sunshine for a day or two.  Thanks for dropping by and leaving me some sunshine.  Now I am off to finish enjoying the other wonderful art work on these sites and leave a comment or two myself.

Rainy Days and Mondays

     The sun peeked through today and we were able to cautiously walk around the back yard, avoiding puddles.  I promised Lakota that if it continued we probably would be able to throw "something" tomorrow.  I woke up from nap to a deluge!  It was pouring! again! I had so hoped for some sunshiny days. 
     It is a good thing Mondays bring me some extra fun to keep down the cabin fever.  I get to work on my inchie and see what Diva is cooking up for us to do.  Both were extreme fun today.

Diva Challenge #126

     Diva asked us to use a stencil in our zentangle inspired art today.  When I saw the pictures of her gorgeous stencils, I was envious - not to mention her beautiful tiles.  You should head over to the Diva Challenge (sidebar) and see all the wonderful art work.  I love scrapbooking ad card making so I had some selections of stencils.  I used a wavy border stencil ruler for one and then pulled out a Cricut die-cut for the other. 

Secondary

Time for Tea

Every Inchie Monday

     The word to challenge us this Monday was "story".  I had an idea almost from  the second I read the word.  Really, I have been planning it for weeks.  My challenge was not what to do, but how to do it.  I took a one inch strip of paper and folded it accordian style.  I then glued together a little book.  Pulling out my scrapbook papers, I found old timed pictures of people and used some of the paper I had out for the Diva challenge (the tea paper).  I assembled a little book.  Now what to call it?  I decided on the title of a Rod Stewart song, "Every Picture Tells A Story".  The first photo shows my little book, but is very blurry.  Sorry.  The rest are the scanned cover and inside pages.

My little "story" book

There you have it!  My little inchie book!  I inked the outside edges to make it look older.  I am definitely satisfied with this idea. 

      Glad you stopped by and hope you will leave me some sunshine!  Have a wonderful week!

It's Raining, It's Pouring . . .

      Oh when will it be pretty weather?!  I am tired of rain.  I am not really an outdoor type person, however I would love to get outside and wander a bit with my very bored lab.  He goes to the door, looks out and then looks at us like we are doing this on purpose.  Poor baby.
     Roy (Mindful-Creations) scored another super hit this past Thursday - use the tangle "cadent" in a monotangle.  I totally love cadent.  I love the swirly, flowing feel it has.  My first attempt was to turn cadent into a rose.  I was happy with it until I added the rosebud - that I didn't like.  Ah well.

Cadent Roses

     Number two was inspired by the fourth of July and really somewhat simple.  Pretty, but simple.

Fourth of July

     Apparently Bright Owl and I feel the same way about heat.  I would love to live somewhere it was about 75 all the year.  Okay.  Maybe a week of really hot summer weather and another week of tons of snow - then back to perfect.  Anybody know of a place?  For her dare this week we had to use tangles that either started with the letters in the word HOT or HEAT.  I did one of both.  I had a lot of fun with these. 

HEAT - Hekzee, Echoism, Amaze, Tri-Po

 

HOT, HOT - Huggins, Onamatto, Twile, Hi-Cs, Ogel, Tipple

     Hope you are having a wonderful (drier than mine) week.  Thanks for dropping by and leaving me some sunshine!  I really need the sunshine today! 

Challenge #125 - Birdie Feet

      This tangle - birdie feet - presented some challenges for me.  I loved how Diva used auras around her tangle.  That was so attractive.  So for the first attempt - an ATC - I decided to "borrow" her idea of using an aura.  I also decided to tuck the little birdie who left all the tracks behind some foliage.

     I mentioned awhile back I was working through the tangle book by Beckah Krahula, One Zentangle a Day.  On one of her lessons she presented the tangle "rain".  I had only seen that tangle as a border and wasn't really impressed with it.  She showed it on straight lines like stems.  That was pretty striking, so in honor of all our rainy weather this week, I used it in my second tangle.  I also tried to make "birdie feet" become less obvious as to what it was.  I just drew a random string and worked without much of a plan.  At first I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but in the end, I actually find it rather appealing. 

Rain Dance

     Challenges all done for the week - at least until Thursday.  So now I think I will head over to my other blog and write for awhile, Chalkdust to Smartboards.  I'd love you to drop over and pay me a visit there.  Also please note that due to Google Reader shutting down, I now have a Bloglovin' button on my page.  That was an adventure to change things over, but (yahoo!) I am proud to say I did it all by myself. 
     In the midst of all my school reading, I did make it to the library today and have an armload of new James Patterson books among some others.  Mindless fun!  Hope your week is going well and if you celebrate the 4th - hope your day is awesome!  Thanks for dropping by.

Every Inchie Monday - "hour"

    This one was hard to be unique.  My outside of the box thinking seemed to have shut down.  Ah well . . . Next time, maybe I will be wildly creative, or not.  It is hard to see in the photo, but I used some glaze over the face of the watch to make it more like glass.  Trust me, it is there.

    Caught this beautiful moth on my back window.  It is so pretty.  Wish I had had a picture of it for last week's word, wing.

  Hope you are having a wonderful start to your week and if you are state-side, Happy 4th of July!

Crescent Moon and Dare #63

     Roy at Mindful Creations asked us to use the tangle crescent moon.  I like this one very much, but don't really ever think about how to vary it.  So I took this opportunity to play with some variations.  I tried single moons.  I tried zig-zag lines.  I tried boxy lines.  This got to be so much fun when I finished the tile for the challenge, I pulled out my Tangle-A-Day calendar and kept playing.  I may never see crescent moon as plain again!

    The moment I opened up Bright Owl's template, I said "I love it!"  I don't know why it so instantly appealed to me, but it did.  So I set out to see how to make this template work.   These long, lazy summer days are spoiling me.  When school starts and I can barely get one done . . . . I better enjoy it now!

    I pulled out the cricut and cuttlebug to make some birthday cards this past week.  That is an all day event because I make an enormous mess with all my crafting supplies.  The mess was worth it though.  I love the cards and hope the people I give them to will also.  For years, I have made birthday cards for each teacher or worker in my school.  I love doing something special for their day.

Cards using Life is a Beach cartridge from Cricut

     I hope you had a wonderful week and if you celebrate the 4th of July, it is a great day for you and your family.  Thanks for dropping by and leaving me some sunshine!