A New Project

A couple of years ago a friend of mine passed away. She was an avid stitcher and three ladies in her Embroiderers' Guild spent several months organizing her stitching stash and brought it to a meeting for a stash sale. I picked up this finished piece to remember my friend by and plan to make it into an ornament for my Christmas tree.

I've always loved cable cars!

I also found a project she had worked on that was obviously meant to be a mixed media piece. I picked this up as one of the few in the group that relishes working in mixed media. When I got it home I found that there was no documentation with it but there was a receipt for a tote bag purchased at The Greenbriar in West Virginia. That lead me to the discovery that she had taken a workshop through NAN (National Academy of Needlearts) in 1999 and that what I had brought home from the stash sale was what she had worked on at the workshop.

The workshop seems to have been about painting on paper using transfer paints, transferring the image onto fabric with an iron, and then embellishing the result with thread and fabric snippets. There were two paintings and three fabric images (two are duplicates from the same painting) and one of the fabric pieces has been started. I am planning on working on these and posting my progress from time to time.

Painted swatches and color mixing

Threads and fabric snippets

Two ironed images from one painted piece

A second painted piece with the work in process

I like the way the two "duplicate" images on the left look as though they could be photos of a landscape taken on different days, one cloudy and one sunny. I am going to begin with the piece on the right that is already in process and see where it takes me.

Back to paper art, when I was little I remember one of my teachers showing us how to make scratch paper by coloring a piece of paper with crayons and then covering the crayon with black tempera paint. We then got to scratch our artwork into it and reveal the color in new and surprising combinations. Recently I saw some scratch paper books on clearance and bought several. I gave away all but one as gifts but when I saw this week's Diva Challenge to work with the colors of the rainbow I knew it was time try out my purchase. Eight of the pages are holographic silver and eight are rainbow colored but it didn't say which half of the book was which (part of the magic!) So I wound up doing two since the first one wasn't the rainbow paper.

 Does anyone else see a stylized bunny in this one?

String #161
Tangles Used: Bateek, Box Spirals,
Crescent Moon, and Organza

I gave myself an extra challenge using tangles starting with L, G, B, and T to create a rainbow tile for Pride Week which is coming up next week.

Tangles Used: Lazy Eights, Glace, Beadlines, and Ticking

So much fun! I both can't wait to do more and will be sad to have used them "all up."

Color My World

Despite the title of this post I am starting it of with something in black and white. This is my tile for the Muster Mixer challenge this month. The challenge is to combine Cat-kin and Jax into a mash-up tangleation. This one flowed for me and I'm happy with the result.

And then the color started to happen. As I mentioned last week a friend and I had signed up to go to a Copic Marker workshop. We took two classes on Friday and one on Saturday. First up was a class focused on faces  and hair so as you can see, I haven't yet colored in anything else.

The second class of the day (and it was a very long day) covered mono tones and sepia. The focus was a really in depth look at shading.

The second day was focused on clothing and accessories. It built on the shading we had done the day before.


I learned quite a bit about color and shading that I hope to apply to my pieces in the future. It was fabulous to be in a class with dozens and dozens of colors to use but I'm not sure I'm ready to invest in a huge set of markers yet. But the lessons should apply to watercolor and colored pencils which I do have so I think it was time well spent on top of being a total blast.

The Diva Challenge this week also had a color theme.  She and her friend Tara organized a Fun Run for Beads of Courage for the third year in a row. The beads are used by children and their families who have chronic or life threatening illnesses to represent their journey in a tangible way. A bead is given for each needle stick, X-Ray, test, or procedure and they help children coping with a serious illness. The challenge was to take your inspiration from the Beads of Courage program for your tile.

I've used markers (although not Copic) to color the smaller beads and ironically have done no shading at all. But that is what the tile said it wanted and I bowed to it's greater knowledge!

Boxed In

A friend of mine convinced me that we should go to a Copic markers workshop that is being held nearby this weekend. (It didn't actually take much convincing!) Since I have very little actual experience using markers I thought it might be a good idea to practice a bit before the event. I found a nice little tutorial on the subject here and though I don't have any Copic markers (yet) I used a combination of Prismacolor Premier and Sharpies and did the following two practice pieces. In the first I used three shades of green and in the second I used one blue and two oranges. I'm fairly satisfied with how they turned out and am really looking forward to the workshop.

Monochromatic Shading

Complementary Color Shading

For the Diva Challenge this week, since it is a first Monday, it is a Use My Tangle challenge. This month's tangle is All Boxed Up by Alice Hendon. I will admit I had some trouble with the step out which was odd since I usually don't. But I seem to be having a string of such as I had trouble with a different pattern last night and a third this afternoon. Oh well, no mistakes. I'll just do it my own way and sooner or later the step-outs will be glaringly obvious and I'll wonder what the malfunction (all my own I sure) ever was.

Tangles Used: Quare and two versions of All Boxed Up

This week I stuck to the basic Zentangle materials but, be prepared. Next week's entry will probably be very colorful!

...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