It's Birthday Week!

My husband and I were born six days apart so this is birthday week. Mine was on Saturday and a small group of us had a private workshop at The Mosaic Garden. Each of us made a different project but they were all fun. Nancy, the mosaic artist and teacher, has everything you could possibly want to make a beautiful work of art. Poking through the large assortment of tiles, beads, china, and found objects was so much fun! I made a mosaic that will go on a garden stake and live in my garden. Although if it doesn't rain soon my garden isn't going to amount to much this year! I had hoped that the trailing lines of round mirrors would stand out more so it would look a little less wild! But here is my nod to lupines and poppies.

Meanwhile, my husband had gone off to TechShop to work on some things and had apparently forgotten what the date was. When he got home he gave me this baseball etched by a fellow artist and said, "Happy Valentine's Day!" (He did know it wasn't Valentine's Day) I replied, "You really don't know what today is?" After pondering a while and finally looking at a calendar he realized the *importance* <wink, wink> of the date and said, "Happy Birthday!" Lol! He may have forgotten the date but he remembered me and that is really cool.

Madison Bumgarner 2014 SF Giants World Series MVP

The Diva's challenge this week is to try using tools or materials you've never used before for tangling. I knew immediately what I wanted to do. A while back I bought this wooden box at Michaels to put my tiles in after they have been displayed for a while.

I have some furniture touch-up pens from when I owned a picture framing shop (in a previous life!) and have been meaning to use them to tangle the box. Now these pens are well over a decade old and have 1/4" felt chisel tips so no fine detail here. I used  the lightest color pen to put in string number 145 from Tangle Patterns since it was uploaded on my birthday and it is birthday week after all ;)  And then I went to town with two of the darker pens.

Tangles Used: Paizel, Sand Swirl, Bubbles, and Tipple

I plan to do the sides too, but for now the top has been tangled. I see that Sharpie has some touch-up markers out with the usual finer point which would be easier to work with. I will probably finish this project with what I have but maybe next project....

I hope you all have a fabulous and creative week. Now I just have to think of something to forget for my husband's birthday Friday!

Gong Xi Fa Cai

The Diva's challenge this week is to incorporate Chinese New Year into our tile. I was thinking about the dragons that you see dancing in the parade in Chinatown and realized I had a model right in front of me. My father-in-law brought home this stone dragon from Korea in the 1950s. It was left to my son but it is living with us while he is in Taiwan.

Small stone dragon

I made a line drawing on red cardstock so it would be reminiscent of the red envelopes handed out to children at New Year's and added some coins for prosperity in the coming year.

Tangles Used: ChuChu and Yuan

I did this next piece while playing board games with friends on Saturday. One of the children was looking at my piece and saying that he couldn't do anything like it. I pointed out that all I had used in the piece was circles and set him up with a large pad of newsprint and a pencil and let him go. He seemed to have fun. Next time I plan to get out some crayons, etc.

Tangles Used: Onamato, Quipple, Purk, Isochor, and  something that just happened!

  I also finished a Zendala that has been partially done for months. Each project in it's own time!

Tangles Used: Paradox, Bales, Floorz, Onamato, and Meer

Enjoy any New Year's celebrations you may have or make your own party and tangle on!

Flowers and Snowflakes and Valentines, Oh My!

The February Muster-Mixer challenge is to combine the patterns Cadent and Buttercup. I had a lot of fun playing with these in my sketchbook and ultimately did two tiles.

OK. That second one seems like maybe there were a few too many ideas for one small tile. I kind of like the first one though. It's sort of the Georgia O'Keeffe version.

I have been playing with a new design for my SpringBoard line. It is a little snowman lasered out of two colors of paper with a snowflake on is belly. I used the Drawerings site to help with the creation of the initial snowflake and then used Adobe Illustrator to create the pattern which I then transferred to paper and stitched. If you want to see more about my design process you can see it here.

This week's Diva Challenge is a Valentine's challenge. You could use a heart as the string, tangle hearts, or use red, white, or pink. Since the snowflake design has hearts in it I decided to use it to make a Zendala string. I also decided to work on a black tile which severely limited me in my choice of pens. But one of the pink pens I have works well on black so that was the color I went with!

Tangles Used: Minline, Festune, and Printemps

Have a happy Valentine's Day. If you don't have someone to celebrate with then celebrate the beauty that is you!

Athitzi - A Weekly Diva Challenge

This week's Use My Tangle challenge set by the Diva is brought to you by Seven - and it is called Athitzi.

While looking at some of Seven's samples it struck me that it was very similar to a stitching technique called silk shading. Here are some samples from the Royal School of Needlework. I took a workshop in the technique a few years back. It is often used to create pictures of plants and animals and is deceptively simple since you are basically doing only one kind of stitch. But you need to get into the zone so that each color layers into the next and the stitches are done at the correct angle so that the result looks natural. Very much like getting into the zen of Tangling!

Here is a tile I had started on Sunday while my husband bought new shoes for his new job (Yay!!!!). Can you see the footprint that was my beginning string?

Tangles Used: Seedings, Copada, Athitzi, Tipple, and...uhm...let's call it Bounce