Made by Joey challenge #136

I enjoy doing Joey's challenges. My favourite type of challenge is her complete my tile ones, where she starts a tile off and we get to finish it.

This week Joey's tile started with Fracas in the corner.

My first tile adds poke root, shattuck, pixiote and meer, with little tastes of printemps peaking out of the pixiote and poke root. This tile is actually my second because my first didn't get finished. I'd completed most of the outlines and was going back to fill in the web within Fracas when I realised that I'd got the curves of the bands around the wrong way. The background colour is a Kaiser Mist in blue.

My second tile uses the Fracas bands within another tangle. In this case I've used it within Fengle. I then drew lines of my new favourite tangled called Ponio. This tangle has lots of variations. Here's a link to the step out  - link. I finished the tile off with Zinger.

Have a good week and thanks for dropping by.

Miss L

Diva #290 - 'NZeppel and Flux

THANKS!!!

A big thank you and lots of virtual hugs to those lovely people who posted supportive comments on my blog recently. Your words of encouragement made a difference. I also followed your advice in how I tackled my art - in attitude and in how to pick tangles.

I'm forever grateful to this amazing online community that has developed around Zentangle.

Diva #290

Flux is my most used tangle so I was very pleased to see it featured this week in the Diva challenge. I also use 'NZeppel quite a bit too.

This week I decided to use spirals for my string. I think someone submitted a tile like this shortly after the Diva posted the challenge. Anyway, I got the spirals from Shelly Beauch's blog. Here are my two tiles. Same string, same tangles, same day, different results.

Other drawing

After hitting a blank wall of no inspiration and loads of self doubt, I took advice from those lovely people who commented and came up with this ZIA.  I used circles as strings, Ponio as a partial border, 'Dillo, Squill, and Cyme in the balls, with Purk crossed with Hollibaugh and sprigs of Poke Root for the overlap, then Tattle as filler. Tattle I found on Tanglepatterns.com by using the type selector on the side of the page. Could not resist adding a touch of Kaiser Mist on the edges.

Potter's Society open day

On Sunday I took BoyBoy to the Potter's Society Open Day. BoyBoy is 17 and in his second last of year of school.  He's discovered a love of ceramics and sculpture this year and now hopes to study it at  university.

I thought it would be good for him to join the Potter's Society. This would help him expand his skills, develop his portfolio (which is needed for entrance to the course he wants to do at uni) and might get him out of bed and off his computer during the coming summer holidays. So, we found ourselves at the open day.

We got to try a few things, including the potters wheel and Raku firing of some pots. With the Raku firing, we paid a token amount for a pot then got to apply glaze to it. An hour later our pots came out. It was a surprisingly fun couple of hours (and surprising amount of time we spent there!).

BoyBoy will join the society some time soon(ish) and will do some evening courses there next year.

Here are some photos.

Me at the wheel. So much harder than it looks. The mess was fun.

I thought I'd show you a bigger shot of the mosaic in the background of the pot shot. This mosaic is about 90 x 60cm in size. I made it and it's partner about 5 years ago when I was in my mosaics phase. Zentangle is so much neater than mosaics!

Have a great week and thanks for dropping by. 

Miss L

Tangle Challenges

The Diva's challenge for this week was to use a leaf as a string. I chose to use a tulip from my front garden.

Here's the reference image and my tile. And a photo of my dog Milo with his best friend Elsa. They were at the Dogs' Day Out at Floriade, which is a big flower festival we have here each year.

I did a tile for Made by Joey as well. The string was a series of circles and the tangles were Dicso, Drogon and Msst.

Finally, I did a tile for It's a String Thing. I found this challenge really hard as both tangles - Ponio and Winflo - seemed suited to borders. I like both tangles but not what I've done with them.

Other drawing

Not much drawing is happening at the moment. I seem to have lost my mojo with regard to Zentangle. Inspiration and the desire to draw have left me. I think once work pressure eases things will get better. 

At work we are in the final term of the year, so marking and reporting deadlines are looming. The kids are getting ratty and teachers are getting tired. And I'm changing schools at the end of the year so motivation for anything school-related is a bit low.

Any tips for getting back into drawing or how to silence that awful critic who sits on your shoulder and says everything you draw is rubbish?

Have a great week.

Miss L

Made by Joey #134

This week's Made by Joey challenge is to use torn paper as the string.

Here's my tile. Tangles are Squill, with a variation of Florz and some random squiggles darkened with some Kaiser Mist. 

I made a similar tile to this about 2 years ago, when I was just getting into Zentangle.

The tile is stuck to my pin board which faces my drawing desk. The desk is meant to be a shared desk between my husband and myself and for uses in addition to drawing. However, Zentangle has completely taken over the space, although I can tidy my desk quickly if needed. Somehow though, the need rarely arises.

Have a good week and thanks for dropping by.

Miss L

Diva #288 - Gourdgeous

This week's Diva challenge was to use the tangle Gourdgeous. This is not a tangle I ever use, although I do like what other people do with it. It took me several tiles over a couple of nights to get some work that I was prepared to show on my blog. What is complicating things is that I'm trying to make my drawings more 3D with layers of tangles, as per Eni Oken's 3D tangling book. Maybe I should just use the KISS principle in future ie Keep It Simple, Stupid?

Here's the first tile. The ink for the Flux is a dark grey which didn't come out as grey on the tile unfortunately. 

My second tile plays with Kaiser Mists sprays, and the tangles Squid and Pixiote.

My final tile is one which combines Washi paper, coloured pencils and tangles. The tile ws left over from the ZIA I worked on last weekend. The tangle in colour is Gnarly. I got the idea of using Gnarly from Ilse's page this week. 

Other drawing

Last weekend I played around with an A4 ZIA which combines Japanese Washi paper and my Kaiser Mists (in red, candy and yellow). Washi paper has been used in Japan for centuries and is most commonly seen in origami and in Washi Eggs, which is a Western use of the paper.  I combined all that with some cardboard shapes I found in my old scrapbooking box. 

Tangles include: Tri-Bee, Mooka, Tripoli in the bakground, Shattuck, Purk and Knightsbridge in the white space section, and Shattuch, Tripoli and Buttercup on the tiles.  I hadn't intended to use Mooka but it just arrived all on its own so I went with it.

Walking the dog

I'm very fortunate to live somewhere with easy access to native bushland and the facilities of a city. That's what Canberra is - a capital city in the bush. The photos below were taken in a tract of bushland only 10 minutes walk from my house.

It is Spring here and I'm seeing some of the shyer creatures coming out. Below are some photos of an echidna, which is an animal only found in Australia. This one is about 40cm long. The photo is a bit grainy as I didn't want to get too close to it and scare it.

And here's my dog Milo enjoying the wildflowers. Milo is a Kelpie and is 10 years old. The poor dog has arthritis in his hips now which means daily walks are even more important for him.

Have a good week. And sorry for not visiting many of your blogs at the moment. 

Miss L

Diva #287 - Dreamcatcher

This week's Diva challenge was to use the tangle Dreamcatcher.

In my first tile I used the tangles Dreamcatcher, Shattuck and two from SandySteen Bartholomew - Mumsy and N.A.F. I added colour as a message to our weather gods - it is meant to be Spring so enough with the cold weather and storms!

My second tile has half of B-Tweed, some Purk, a touch of Paradox and a background of Huggins. The tile is not finished as well as I'd like as I was using Zentangle to help calm my nerves. We had a severe storm last evening - intense wind, hail, rain and trees branches falling down. Unrelated to that we also had a light fitting fall down and smash to pieces as we were watching telly. So, I like my idea but not the execution.

Other drawing

I've been playing around with Washi paper (see my previous post for other examples). Here are some tiles using it.

Solo Travel

Last week I spent a couple of days on my own in a cottage in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. I first started solo travelling last year. Now I take off for up to a week on my own each school holidays. I find solo travel refreshes my spirit and gives me a self-confidence boost.

This time I travelled only 4 hours away by car. While I was away I: walked a lot within the town and in the bush, browsed through a couple of shopping streets (Leura, Katoomba and Blackheath), had a 2 hour treatment at a day spa, drew, sat drinking tea by the fire and read.

Here are some photos.

Have a great week and thanks for dropping by.

Miss L

Tangle challenges - 1st October

It's a String Thing

This week's IAST challenge was quite simple - use a basic square border then use W2 plus whatever other tangles we liked.

For my first tile I kept it as a monotangle. 

But one tile was not enough, so I did a second, this time adding Fleavy and Dicso.

Made by Joey

Made by Joey is another finish my tile challenge, using a strip of diva dance flowing through the tile. While I like the way other people use Diva Dance, it doesn't flow for me.

My first tile uses Cadent, Shattuck and Mooka. 

My second uses Flux (my go-to tangle), with Lollywimple (thanks to Ria M for sharing that tangle), CreZendo (careful if you search this for tangle as you may end up at a condom website), and Pufcookie.

Other art

I tried my hand at decoupage this week using Japanese Washi paper. What do you think?

Where I've been creating this week

I have just come back from a few days on my own, staying in the beautiful Blue Mountains. Here's a shot of the Three Sisters, which is a major, major tourist attraction for Sydney, even though the Sisters are 3 hours west of the city centre.

And here's a couple of photos from Govett's Leap, which was only a 15 minute walk from where I stayed in the village of Blackheath. More photos to come.

Ah, the serenity.

Miss L