Where Did September Go?

Wow! It's hard to believe that September is over already! The weather has been all over the place. Two weeks ago it was over 100-deg F and today there were drops of  water falling out of the sky. I understand that in some parts of the world this is called rain? It's been so long I don't remember!

So, before the month is over here is my September Muster Mixer. The challenge was to combine Fandango and Dragonair into a tangleation. I did my usual sampler because it is hard to pick just one of the results of my doodling.

The Diva Challenge this week was set by guest blogger Charlotte Carpentier. Her proposal was to create your string using a stencil and spraying on a natural dye such as tea or wine. It just so happens that I had an idea simmering about using soy sauce instead of tea to "tea dye" some paper so this was the perfect opportunity to act on it. The idea probably came to me after dripping soy sauce on my shirt at one of our many fine Asian restaurants here in town.

 I swatch tested on a couple of inchies. The paper on the left is what I normally use for my tiles. The one on the right is watercolor paper.You may be able to tell that I used the handles of a pair of scissors as a stencil for this test run.

Having decided that I liked the depth of color on the watercolor paper and not having any stencils, I used some leaf shaped stamps to mask off portions of my tile and spritzed away. Here it is before tangling.

And here it is after tangling.

Tangles Used: Nzeppel, C-Buns, Cayla, and Pendrills

This was a really fun challenge and a nice change of pace from the drawing exercises in the art class I'm taking. That said, if you have ever wanted to learn more about drawing and shading, get a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. After only 4 weeks of class I'm doing things I thought would take years to learn.