Day 116 - Shell

      Every Inchie Monday's word this week is shell.  I used to have some teeny tiny seashells some child gave me and now they are no where to be seen!  I wanted to use those.  Oh well, back to the scrapbooking supplies.

        I hope you are having a great Sunday afternoon!  Thank you for stopping by.  Please take a moment to look at my Penstrokes store.   Also I would love it if you would share this with your friends. 

Days 113 - 115

     For my Day 113 creativity challenge, I worked on Adele Bruno's string challenge.  I liked it "okay" at first til I saw some others on-line.  Oh my.  they were gorgeous.  But it is too late to go back and so I push forward.  I only used jeewels and knightsbridge.  To make the jeewels sparkle, I added some silver gel pen. 

     I enjoyed doing the abc challenge last week so I thought I would give it a go again this week.  Perhaps this summer I can go back and do the one I missed.  This wee we had to use the letters, GHI.  My tangles are girlande, hako and ish.  This is for Day 114.

     Day 115 - I looked at Square One's challenge to use the tangle Diva Dance.  I looked several times. I wanted to keep up with the challenge, but really didn't want to give diva dance a go.  I had used it before and never felt very comfortable with it.  So I went to Ellen Wolter's video site and watched her do this tangle.  Finally I decided to go with it.  Turned out of the three it is my favorite.  I like the organic look. 

      Thank you for dropping by and saying hello.  I hope you have a blessed day.  Please take a look over at my Penstrokes store.  It has a few things and I hope to add even more soon.

Day 112 - Diva Challenge, Earth Day

     I think I am hung up on stacking thanks to a Facebook group I belong to.  For this tile I decided to go round!  I drew my circle and then lightly watercolored the background, sort of placing land and water where they needed to be.  Over top, I tangled rows using tangles that began with the letters EARTH DAY.

     I used Emingle, Arabel, Rain, Triral,  Hibred, Dex, Aa's and Yewdee.  This was lots of fun.  This design will soon be up on T-shirts and a mug in my Zazzle store, www.zazzle.com/penstrokes.  Please go over and check it out.  Also I would love for you to share this with your friends.  Thanks for dropping by and I hope you have a wonderful day!! 

Day 111 - New to Me Challenge!

       One of my absolute favorite challenges I am involved with (and there are a LOT of them) is the challenge at New to Me.   Suzy Mosh challenges us each week to find new tangles that begin with a certain letter.  This week I looked through my notebook for ones beginning with an R.  Some weeks I have a lot of new tangles, other weeks not so many.  This was a not so many week.  Since I am also loving the stacks challenge over on Facebook, I used the idea of a stack for my string.
      I drew a partial circle and filled it with the following tangles - just a few lines to get it moving, rain and shine, riki-tiki, rysa, reflections, and retro.

      We tested science today and things seemed to go well.  Tomorrow is our last day of state testing and I will be sooooooo glad!!  Back to normal.  No wait - nothing is normal with only 20 days of school left!!  Thanks for dropping by and I hope you have a blessed day.

Day 110 - Every Inchie Monday!

     We watched "Penguins of Madagascar" last week.  I loved the movie.  Okay, I love lots of children's movies.  But this one had so many cute puns and hidden humor in it.  The octopus's name was Dave.  He was the bad guy and even though he was the "nasty", I loved his goofy humor.  ("Nicolas - cage those penguins", "William - hurt them!" "Halle - bury them quick!")  So I was delighted that the word for Every Inchie Monday was octopus!  So here is Dave in all his glory!

    Isn't he too cute to be bad?  Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Day 109 - Jetties

    Uh oh, it's school work Sunday.  So I don't have the time I wish I could take.  This tile (done in my Tangle a Day calendar) is for the Facebook group, Square One.  The tangle featured is "jetties".  Threw in a bit of mooka for interest.

   Have a great day!

Days 106 - 108

     When I first saw the string for Tickled to Tangle, I wasn't too sure I could make this one work.  But then it sort of fell into place and I had a lot of fun with it.  It was nice to sit down Thursday evening and relax with this project.  Thursday was a kicker of a testing day - math.  On top of that, the threat of severe storms and having to move to the hallway during testing.  Two children crying during the test due to storms.  One child with an "accident" and having to change clothes.  Yep, zen was needed!  So here is my Day 106.

      There is a new challenge out there - well, actually two new challenges.  One is over on Facebook, called Stacked and Tangled.  It sounds like fun.  The other is an alphabet challenge at Diane and Carolien's.  I decided to combine the two of them.  I stacked tangles that begin with the letters, D,E,F.  From the bottom up my tangles are - Dex, Emingle, Fandango, Dutch Hourglass, Esses, F, and Dyzzee.  Lots of fun for Day 107.

       For Day 108 I accomplished two Journal52 pages.  I had the first one ready to cut last week-end, but no time to do it.  The subject was "cards".  I love playing cards.  A lot of my fond memories of home is a group of us (parents and grandparents) sitting around playing Crazy Eights, Rook, or some other great game.  Wonderful family times.  I also love "Alice in Wonderland", so I decided to use characters from this movie to celebrate the cards!

     This past week's page was "Collage".  Okay.  I know I may have said this before, but I don't like collage.  Let me amend that - I don't like doing collages.  Other people's collages are beautiful, generally.  I am a planned and orderly thinker.  (yes, you would not know that from looking at my desk at school or my craft table, but hey)  I can't think in the random order required for a great collage.
     I chose a theme - old things - and cut out a lot of ephemera from a scrapbook book.  then found a great piece of patterned paper that already looked like it was a collage. 

     Those nice orderly rows of tangles are much more appealing to me.  Much.  Have a great day and thank you for dropping by. 

Day 105 - Made by Joey challenge

     Today was the writing part of our state test.  I do not have any Dean Koontz or James Pattersons in my room.  That is pretty obvious.  We tried very hard but it was a difficult test.  I am glad it is over.  Tomorrow we do math.  I feel pretty good about it.  We shall see.
     Made by Joey gave us a challenge of doing a piece with the tangles bluebells, baskit, and flowerbox.  I decided to just play around and see where the pen took me.  I was too tired to have much of a plan.

     Thank you for dropping by and saying hello!  Hope you are having a wonderful day.

Day 104 - Diva Challenge

     Day 104 of the Create Each Day challenge.  And day 700 of state testing.  No wait.  It is only day one.  Oh.  Four more to go.  Oh dear.  It only feels like day 700.   I am tired and somewhat cranky at this moment.  It will pass.
    For today's needed creativity, we had to use a traced string.  I grabbed a pair of scissors and used them to trace.  Not horribly original I guess, but I like it.  It was sort of hard to hold the scissors still, lol!

     I hope you are having a wonderful day and thank you for dropping by. 

Days 102 and 103

     Tomorrow testing begins!  Oh yuck!  I always dread this time of year.  The stress and the boredom of walking around and around the room.  I would rather be  . . .  well, just about anything than this!
     I love Joey's New to Me challenges.  Lots of times I will put the tangles form the internet into my notebook and never look back.  I always mean to.  I just forget them and go to my more familiar ones.  But because of these challenges, I am forced to try some new ones.  That is fun.  Day 102, I worked on the New to Me challenge.  We had to use a new tangle beginning with the letter "x".  I chose three new ones - x2, xenso, and xeni.  All three were fun.

      Day 103 was time for the Every Inchie Monday.  Well to be fair, I didn't have a lot of time with some other things I needed to do.  Besides I knew what I wanted to do; I just had to find the right picture.  Several years ago we had a pet gecko.  He was so precious.  When we got him he was about as long as my thumb.   He quickly grew to close to a foot including his tail.  We loved to watch him climbing over his rocks.  So for the word of the week, "gecko", I just found a picture of Habib and used it.  I know it looks like I really didn't do much, but it was fun rethinking about him even so.

     I hope you are having a wonderful day!  Please keep us in your thoughts tomorrow as we work our way through the Milesones test!    My poor class is going to be exhausted!  (and their poor teacher too!).

Days 96 - 101 (or how did ever get this far behind??)

       Each evening this week I have taken a few minutes to draw.  I needed the zen time.  However, I kept putting off coming over here and blogging.  I just couldn't work up the motivation.  And now look at this!  Six days!  Yikes! Writing the post isn't bad and putting on my art work is a breeze - so why not six days at a time?  Because I have to connect each one to some site or Facebook or somewhere!  Oh well, maybe I will be better organized this week (or not).
      For the Diva Challenge we had to use the tangle "fanz".  I am okay with this one.  I had a thought in mind then it sort of got lost and voila, here is Day 96 and I really don't like it.  Oh well, it is complete.

     The New to Me challenge was to use tangles that begin with the letter Q.  I decided on "quiltz".  I hadn't really played with this one much and so it was run to use it.  I decided on it for the background of my daffodil sketch.   Here is Day 97.

     Day 98 was to use the tangle "cat-kin" for Made by Joey's challenge.  I wasn't sure how to make this one work without doing a nature scene, which for some reason I really didn't want to do.  Finally I decided on this arrangement.  I am not satisfied with the betweed in the middle, but overall it works.

     Tickled to Tangle's challenge was to use the tangles, "loop" and "brella".  I had just seen loop on the internet and so I was anxious to give it a go.  Brella was completely new to me.  I can see both of these becoming a favorite.  There are so many variations to brella, it needs a lot more play time!  I really like Day 99.

      Day 100!!  Wow!  That is pretty exciting!  I haven't missed one day yet.  Okay, I haven't posted on time each day, but I have been creating each day as planned.  This challenge piece is a monotangle of "man-o-man" for Square One. Well, I said monotangle, but it really isn't if you count the way I filled the pieces.  A "sort-a-monotangle".

      I had to play with loop some more.  It was just too much fun to put away and forget.  So this afternoon for Day 101 I just played around with an organic composition featuring loop and phicops.  Lots of fun!

      I really planned on working on my journal page for Journal52, but just can't work up the steam to pull out my circut, which I want to use.  Maybe tomorrow, after I work on school work.  I am sorry this is so long - but thanks for sticking with it.  I love your comments.  Sometimes that little smile you send me just makes my day! I hope your day is filled with blessings and smiles!

Days 94 and 95

    I had lots of fun working on Day 94 of the Create Each Day challenge.  I used this time to make some cards for some people at school (not pictured) and to work on my Journal52 page.  This journal page was "Sweet Treat".  I love birthday cake!  The horrible for you, but oh so yummy store bought kind.  I wrote about my experience with wanting a cake so bad for my birthday - the first one after becoming diabetic.  I just knew that would not happen when we discovered a very small sugar free one in the store!  What a wonderful sight that was for me.  And also a very delicious one, too!

      Today I had to keep it very simple as I must return to the routine of school work!  Oh how I have enjoyed this past week and not having anything I had to do.  The lazy creative days have ended.  Testing prep must happen and all the busy-ness of the end of the year.  So for Day 95 I worked on my inchie.  The inchie prompt was knitting.  So I found a version of the tangle "knytting" by Helen Williams and used it.  Simple, but a challenge for me to draw. 

     I also took a few minutes to finish up a template I have been adding a bit to here and there.  The template is one of Ben Kwok's wonderful designs.  I printed several of them and am going to try adding some color to them.  I am happier with the black and white, but he just seems to be screaming for COLOR!  We will see. 

     Okay I have avoided my planbook long enough.  Have a wonderful and a blessed day!  Thank you for dropping by!

Day 93 Just playing!

     Quite a while back I won a set of mandala stencils from Genvieve Crabe's site.  I haven't had time in a while to pull them out and use them.  So guess what I did today??  These are so easy to use and absolutely fun.  They take the "math element" out altogether in making a mandala.  Which is something a very non-math person needs.  I am not a math whiz.

   
     Thank you for dropping by and visiting.  I hope you are having a wonderful day.  My spring break has been great - such a shame to see it coming to an end.  Such a shame to go back into the testing mayhem!  Oh, I hate the pressure of that time of year.  It is overwhelming.

Day 92

     Wait!  It can't be April already!  Where does time go?!  Someone said the other day that we have little over 30 days of school left.  Seriously?!  This is such a hectic time at school (well, at least when I am back in school).  I am enjoying spring break for the rest of this week. 
     My piece for today's challenge is for Tickled to Tangle (Adele Bruno's site).  I am okay with this piece.  It needs something, but I am not sure what.  However a while back, Kelly - who is doing the create each day challenge - said that things don't have to be perfect.  Well, this qualifies. 

      I am going to take a few minutes and work on a zendala using Genevieve Crab's stencils.  It has been a while since I have played with them. Thanks for dropping by!  Have a blessed day!

Days 89 - 91

      Our spring weather is so nice!  It looks as though I am going to have an entire vacation of lovely weather.   Yahoo!  Lakota is definitely glad for some outdoor time.  He is very well behaved indoors, but when you are 110 pounds you need some run and play time.  I have been enjoying this time to draw and play around on the computer.  I know it will end all too soon and then state testing will begin for my classroom - whew!

 Day 89

     For Suzy Mosh's New to Me tangle, we had to use new tangles that began with the letter L.  I chose to use lanie, luna, and lirik.  Definitely some newbies for me.  I also put a dash of color to help it along.

Day 90

     Diva's challenge was to use "flux".  I sort of feel in flux right now personally.  A bit tossed by the waves, if you will.  I am sure it will all pass and I try hard to remain strong, but sometimes . . .   Anyway, I didn't mean for this tile to be a monotangle, but it just sort of worked out that way.  Funny how sometimes a tile can have a mind of its own and take you places you weren't planning.  Ever have that happen to you?

Day 91

     The challenge at Made By Joey was to use the tangle "dust bunny".  I have to admit I almost decided not to do this one.  I am not fond of that tangle.  I am not sure why, it just doesn't appeal to me.  Well, it didn't.  Now I feel a bit differently.  My dust bunnies became flowers.  I colored the background in black and added some other things.  In the end, I found myself liking it fairly well.  I won't use it a lot, but I am glad I did the challenge.

    I love the challenges I participate in.  I know it is a lot of work for the admins, but they certainly make my day.  It gives me a focus when I need one.  Hope you have a great day and thanks for dropping by!