Zentangle Weekly Challenge #52 - Give

It's New Year's Eve, and I just finished a zentangle to represent the seasons of this spectacular year, in frames. It was the best of years - I retired in January, got married in April, had a fabulous vacation in the Maritimes in September, spent all seasons in my garden and have had many great hours with friends and families. Not to mention discovering Zentangles, starting to sew my owls, and taking a leaded stained glass class. Life is wonderful. I've included this in the weekly challenge, as I will give this zentangle to my husband on our first New Year's as husband and wife!

My Parliament of Owls

I started sewing owls in November.... so far I've made about 45 of them - all named, with various fabrics and a wise message. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them (many have gone as Christmas gifts), but maybe they will be seen at various craft shows around Toronto in the spring.

Zentangle Weeekly Challenge #54 - Purple

In December I found a pretty purple Copic pen at a local art store and wanted to try doing a Zentangle with color. I also discovered that we had a box of watercolor pencils that I've never used and wanted to incorporate those. I chose the basic grid design based on something from the "Time to Tangle with Colors" book by Marie Browning, but chose different tangles to "fill". As my first try with these medium, I'm happy with the end result, but it sure points out that color, shading, perspective... all take skill and practice! This was done quite a bit before this week's challenge to do a tangle in purple, but, it's one I did with purple in mind, and I'm happy with it, so I'm going to add it to the weekly challenge. :)

Zentangle Weekly Challenge #51 - Fife

This weekly challenge was to use the tangle "Fife" and play around with it. I had a lot of fun with this once I let go and quit trying to plan it all out. I especially liked doing the diamond shapes rather than the curved edges, and the effect I got with the double row of diamonds. A very versatile tangle that I'm sure I'll use more as time goes on. This is a great exercise for those of us who are new to Zentangle - I'm going to spend more time trying to find variations for some of my favorite tangles, and the new ones I try!

Zentangle Weekly Challenge #50 - "Biggify"

This week's zentangle challenge was to "biggify" (make some tangles large). I chose one cadent as the frame, and added two tangles I hadn't used before: quiltz and insydout. Insydout looked empty so I added what I think is a form of paradox.

Hands down

I've seen a lot of zentangled hands while browsing, so I decided to do my own hand. I've emphasized the knuckles and joints because sometimes at my age they ache! Note my wedding and engagement rings.

Harmony and Balance

Zentangle Weekly challenge #52 - "Give". I have two very dear friends that I meet for dinner once a month, and have for about 25 years, since we first worked together. This year I copied (with slight variations because they were hand copied) this tangle onto two different light colored 6" x 6" card stock and framed them as gifts for them. Both of these wonderful women show me the importance of friendship, and though we don't see each other often, over the years we have shared laughter, sadness, changes in our work, selves, families, interests.... (I bought some wood cut outs, thinking I would paint them - maybe for gift tags. On a whim I traced the Bonsai tree on colored cardstock and Zentangled it. I was very pleasantly surprised at how the tangles suited the design of the tree - very Zen-like.)

Zentangle Weekly Challenge #49 "Red Thread Promise"

Zentangle challenge #49 is to draw a thread with a red line and fill in with black and white tangles. This comes from the chinese proverb: "An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break." The squares that are sent in will be used as a fundraiser for a great charity "The Red Thread Promise". I chose to draw a thread that crossed, twisted, went up and down, yet doesn't have a beginning or end. Lovely challenge!

New Fife

The new tangle "Fife" came to me in the newsletter from the Zentangle site, so I decided to try it in this picture. I also used several other patterns for the first time: Cirquital, Pepper, Zenplosion Fold, and Struzzle.

Tangled Time 1

This concept came to me as I was trying to sleep one night, after having spent many hours every day since I started, looking up and trying new tangles. It seems to me that time passes ever so quickly while I'm tangling, and I'm always surprised at how long I've been at it. However, I will be doing another "Tangled Time" as I get more experienced - I have some more ideas to incorporate into the next one, and this one didn't quite turn out the way I envisioned.

Zentangle Weekly Challenge #48 "Tri-Shapes"

This challenge was fun and a real learning experience. Although I had practiced a couple of the tangles that I choose, I had to learn a lot of new ones. Not everything turned out (paradox), but I'm happy because I like the balance with small, fine detail and larger bits. I had hoped to put circular tangles in the circle, squares in the square, and triangles in the triangle, and where they overlapped, mix them - ie. find a pattern with circles and squares... etc. I was spending way too much time searching for "the perfect" match, but decided that I needed to relax a bit :)

"Naming" Zentangle

I spent most of my Saturday, sitting in front of the fireplace, working on this project. I started out with spelling my name, and voila!

Lest We Forget - Zentangle Weekly Challenge

I've just started Zentangles, and this is my first attempt at a weekly challenge. I'm also (re)learning how to blog! I almost didn't do this challenge because I couldn't imagine how to create an appropriate tangle.... but I guess that's why it's called a "challenge". I'm happy with my piece, and am looking forward to doing more of the challenges.

Zentangle 2

My second large Zentangle and I've figured out how to rotate the scanned image.... I'm getting there. Having lots of fun (almost obsessed) with learning new tangles.

Zentangle!

This is my first full size Zentangle. (Now I need to figure out how to rotate the picture.)

Zentangle!

New obsession - Zentangle! I took one morning class and .... WHAM.... went out and bought some paper, pens, notebooks...
And since I've shown my husband what it's about, the two of us spend hours creating! Maybe I'll figure out how to post some of my "tangles".