...And done!

For the past several years we have rented a house with friends over either Memorial Day weekend or the Fourth of July Weekend. We have rented on the beach, in the mountains, and on the delta and this year we decided to go back to the coast. We found a place on the tip of the Tomales Bay and haven fallen in love with it. It was a working dairy ranch until fairly recently and the house has an upscale 50s ranch feel to it. Much of the ranch has been sold to the National Park Service and they are restoring the wetlands. It is a short walk from town, there are walking trails just a few steps from the front door, and beautiful views all around. And then there is the Point Reyes National Seashore area....


Here are a couple of views I took over the weekend. The barn is on the Wetlands Restoration Area and is being restored as a history center and the tree to the left shows how trees are often shaped by the nearly constant wind here. It was quite cool this weekend but we did get some sun on Sunday afternoon.

I was very pleased that I had time to finish the final piece from the One Zentangle a Day book. The project was to do a line drawing and use tangles to fill in. I chose to use color so there are only a few tangles to add detail. This was really a lot of fun to do. And I am done with all the projects now! It has been so fun and I have learned so much. A really excellent book.

Tangles Used: Printemps, Beadlines, Flux, Tagh, and Athitzi

And the Diva Challenge this week was to use ONLY straight lines. This was  great challenge. Lately I seem to gravitate towards the organic. So this gave me a push to trot out some of the geometrics that I have sadly neglected ;) My husband says it reminds him of a video game we used to play!

Tangles Used: Jambalee, Screen (well, kinda!), Bandola, Honeycomb

So now we are back home, refreshed, and ready to take on the world!

Almost There....

This week I worked on the penultimate (second to last) project that I have left from the book One Zentangle at a Time. The project is to tangle on a sheet of mica.

<Geek alert> Sheet mica is also known as isinglass and is referred to in the lyrics of The Surrey with the Fringe on Top from the musical Okalahoma! - "With isinglass curtains you can roll right down, in case there's a change in the weather." </Geek alert>

I have been working up to this for a while. First I had to buy some mica (thank you Amazon), then I had to play with pens to see what worked and what didn't. The list of the latter is much longer than the list of the former. I also googled an Instructable for making mica earrings and stopped at my favorite craft store to buy some Diamond Glaze as suggested in the Instructable. Before I actually got to making the earrings I got an idea to use one of the monoprints I made last week and tangle a sheet of mica to layer over it.

Monoprint

Mica

Mica layered over monoprint

The finished tile is shinier in person.

These are the pieces I tangled to make a pair of earrings. I was planning on layering the smaller piece over the larger one but am not sure I like the result so I may be making two pairs instead!

And then there is the Diva's Weekly Challenge. This week the challenge is to tangle white on black. My friend's daughter asked me the other day if tangling on black was harder than on white. I said, "yes" at the same time my friend said, "no." So obviously there is a range of opinion on the topic! I took the Diva's suggestion to draw slowly with the gel pen and was much happier with the process. Thank you Diva! I also used the same string that I did two weeks ago so that makes a nice comparison of white on black and black on white.

Tangles Used: Nipa, Kuzek, Soo Flowers, Beadlines,
Maisie, Seedings, and Nzeppel

So the question for next week is: Will I do the last project in the book in time for posting?

Mother's Day, Flowers, and More

I had a lovely Mother's Day. My son wired me flowers and my daughter took me out for afternoon tea. Gone are the days of runny eggs and weak tea served on a tray in bed but the love is the same <sniff>.

Here is another step along the way as I progress along my path (obsession) with finishing the projects in One Zentangle a Day. This project was to make a monoprint of a tangle using watercolor crayons and then further develop it by adding detail in ink after the print dried. The first tile is the initial print and the second is a ghost print. It was fun but I must remember not to use micron pens on top of crayon! I have had a difficult time getting the pen unclogged again.

The Diva Challenge this week was to use Dex and Bunzo in a duotangle (these two tangles and no others). Bunzo was new to me so first I had to practice that and then I came up with a design that took a couple of evenings of TV to complete. But here it is in all of it's wriggly glory....

And I should mention that after last week's Brella challenge we did get some rain. Less than 0.1 inch but at least something!

Stormy Weather

The May Muster Mixer (say that three times fast!) is a challenge to combine the tangles Xplode and Fife into a new tangle. I had a lot of fun with this and did a sort of sampler of ideas. A lot of these patterns feel like I was drawing stitch diagrams...just can't get away from it!

Since Monday was the first Monday of the month, this is a Use My Tangle week at the Weekly Diva Challenge. The Tangle chosen is 'Brella by Bunny Wright. I also got interested in the Zentangle: Stacked and Tangled Facebook group and decided to stack this week's tangles. The Brella tangle sparked an idea of making a weather related tile. It's kind of wishful thinking on my part. It barely rained all winter and we are unlikely to get any more until October!

Tangles Used: Brella, Mssst, Cloudfall,
 Lightning Bolt, Hurakan, Pop Cloud, DL Sunray