Tipple - love it or hate it?

    If you are taking score, Diva, put my name on the love it side.  It has to be the most useful tangle out there.  Seriously.  I love the way it fills an area, pouring out like bubbles.  I decided for Diva's challenge #133 to make my tipple a monotangle.  I used a cut out stencil (love that Cricut!) and then let color separate the areas.  This was a super fun challenge. 

Mr. Tipple

  Have a wonderful day and thank you for dropping by!  I am now off to start day 2 of school!  Yahoo!

Every Inchie Monday - song

   Can you tell I am back in school?  Brief today while I grab some lunch.  Then it is back to work getting my room ready for children tomorrow.  I probably won't start with kiddos for a few days, but they will be back in the building tomorrow.  I can't wait!

Diva Challenge #132

      I think Diva does this challenge solely for the amusement of my left handed brother.  He gets such pleasure - wicked pleasure, I might add, watching me grasp the pen and struggle to hang on to it.  Writing with my left hand is NO piece of cake.  My hand has gotten rather uncooperative as of late.  The left hand doesn't want to manipulate items or hold things very well.  I guess that makes writing with my left hand - this week's challenge - rather useful.  It made me use it.  I am not happy with the tile, but hey, challenge is done (and yes, it was fun).

      Thanks for dropping by and leaving me some sunshine!

Three more days . . .

     Summer is truly slipping by.  I start back to school on Wednesday.  Children come back the following week.  I am excited about my new position this year - teaching reading.  There have been a few "speed-bumps" along the way and I am nervous.  I found out this week that I will be working not only with second through fifth grades but also kindergarten and first grade.  That scares me.  I want to do such a good job, and I have never worked with kindergarten, except in art.  I wish I had had all summer to prepare for this new part of my new adventure.  But ready or not, here I come!
     Mindful-Creation's monotangle challenge this week was to use the tangle "cockles and mussels".  I love this tangle and use it frequently.  I took and ATC watercolor card and played with brown and a coral color randomly.  Then I just tangled over it.  Nothing really unusual or different, but I like the way the brown and coral show through.  Makes it look more like shells.

      Bright Owl's template was interesting.  My first thought was peppermint.  But since Erin had already done a very peppermint looking version, I decided to try some other things. 

       Every Inchie Monday's word was "pocket watch"  I knew immediately what I wanted.  I cut an inch out of what my most trouser-looking piece of paper was, used another inch to make a pocket and then used a gel pen to "stitch" around it.  I know the talent of these inchie artist and someone will have stitched a real pocket.  I cannot begin to think of stitching that small.  Who am I kidding?  I couldn't stitch on a circus tent, let alone an inch!  Back to the task, I used a cut out of a pocket watch and put glaze over the face to look like glass.  Then I "mangled" an old necklace for a chain.  Ta-da!  Exactly what I envisioned!

     The last piece of art is for no reason at all.  Not a challenge or dare in sight.  I just had some more of that nice book type paper left over and wanted to try another stencil.  Lots of time when I cut things out with my Cricut (and I have done a lot of that this summer), I will cut extra things out that could be used for stencils.  I have a box of extra pieces!

Victorian Lady

   I hope you are having a great week-end!  Thanks for dropping by.  Now I get to go over and check out all the other wonderful pieces of art.  See you!

"Dex-teria"

    I love the tangle "dex".  It is just a lot of fun and very versatile.  So I did not mind at all the monotangle using dex that Diva asked us to do.  I chose to do do three balls or orbs over a large dex. 

     Thank you for dropping by and I hope your week is going wonderfully.  Mine sure is.  This is my last full week before going back to school, so I am making the most of it - crafting, tangling and playing around with a tablet paint program I just got.  Lots of creative fun.

First Impressions

   I am so bad about making a judgement based on first impressions.  I know I shouldn't.  But I quite often always do.  Fortunately, I find myself willing to change my opinion when I have to.  Take for example the monotangle challenge from Mindful-Creations.  We had to use the tangle "cracked".  Uh.  My first reaction was . . .  well, I didn't want to.  It didn't appeal to me.  But I forced myself and voila!  I like the tile.  It still may not be a tangle I often use, but I really like the tile.  I used a stencil to draw the butterfly and then a gray pen for the outside of the stencil.

     Then came the dare from Bright Owl.  Another "first impression".  The moment I opened the site and saw the tangle I said I really loved it and I couldn't wait to tangle it.  Then I tried to get started.  I struggled on all three zendalas I did.  I seriously ended up not liking the template.  How strange, the first impressions were so different in the end.

    The zendalas turned out okay in the end.  I really love the pink one.  But I just couldn't get into the template. 
    The Every Inchie Monday word this week was gray.  With the rain we have had as of late, perhaps I should have gone outside and taken a picture of the sky.  Instead I pulled out some shading markers I purchased a while back and went to work.  I tangled an area on a piece of white paper with one of my favorite tangles, verve.  Then I colored the tangle using the marker.  Last I grabbed my trusty one inch paper punch and found an area I liked.  There you go!  Gray in an inch!

     Hope your week is off to a grand start.  Thank you for dropping by and leaving me a comment!  One more week before school starts for me.  Then it will be back to "stealing" a few artful moments.  See you!

Challenge #130

     This week's challenge was to use the tangle, "henna drum".  This is a really pretty, flowing tangle.   My first tile uses this tangle and featherfall.  I like playing around with featherfall trying to "get it right".  I am sort of pleased with this one.

      The next one was something I "saw" in my head, but I am not sure what I did matches what I really wanted.  I wanted lots of mechanical gears and such in an overgrown area.  Overgrown with tangles.  I may need to keep working on this idea.  It's so frustrating to "see" something and not be able to bring it out the way I want!  It also got a bit chopped off by the scanner since it was in my sketch book.  Oops.

Overgrown

     After the last one, I had to give henna drum one last try.  The third one is my favorite.  I like the flowing feel to it.

Love, Faith, Hope

     After I finished these, I did an ATC for Judy West's online ATC swap.  I did discover that it is not a really good idea to color the spaces, use the blender and then try drawing over it.  My pen did not want to work really well. 

     Hope you have a great week and thank you for dropping by!  Now let's go see how some others handled this challenge!

Opposites Attract!

     I LOVE the Bright Owl's challenge this week.  It is awesome!  In fact, after I go and look at all the other entries I may be inspired to do some more.  I decided to not even peek at the others until I had done my own.  Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't.  Erin asked us to take the template and divide it into two parts - one for Dr. Jekyll and the other for Mr. Hyde.  In other words, opposites.  The ideas started rolling in and what fun it was!

Thick and Thin

For the first one, I grabbed two different sized pens - a Micron 005 and a Micron 05.  I generally don't use any pen to draw with other than an 01 and a larger pen to fill areas.  The same tangles are on both sides, just the pen size is different. 

Red and Green

    Try number two uses the opposites on a color wheel - red and green.  I also used a black pen.

Straight and Curvy

     My favorite was this one.  It was my favorite to do and I also just like the way it looks.  Only straight tangles on one side and only curvy one on the other side.  This was inspired by Erin's tile she posted with organic and nonorganic tangles (which was gorgeous by the way).  I had one teeny tiny "bobble" on this tile, but I could not think about destroying it or starting over.  Just think of it as the yin in the yang!

Warm and Cool

The last one I did is not my favorite.  I actually don't even like it.  I put warm and cool water colors on my paper.  Let it dry and then tangled on top.  Maybe it is my choice of tangles, or the color, or who knows what.  It just doesn't work for me.

     I took a break from tangling and worked on my inchie for this coming Monday.  The word for this week was "evil".  My tree has hearts (to show love) and dollar signs (to show money).  I went with the saying "The root of all evil is money".  

     Thanks for dropping by and leaving me a comment.  I am now going to look at all the other Jekyll/Hyde posts over at the Bright Owl.    I love getting inspiration from other talented artists.  Have a great week!