Zendala Dare #89

It's been a few weeks since I've completed a Zendala. Christmas, setting up and starting a few Zentangle classes, making more of my owls, and now a wonderful new kitten to introduce to house and two resident older cats…. I've been doing lots of tiles to practice various favourite tangles though. I've missed doing the Zendala Dare, and the Zentangle Challenge and hopefully will get back into it. I apologize that there won't be time to comment on everyone's tiles in the next few weeks, but I'm looking, learning and being inspired!

Zendala Dare. #59

This was a very quick tile done for this week's Zendala Dare by Erin at www.thebrightowl.blogspot.com. I LOVE this template and have immediately seen at least three things I want to do with it, so there will be at least one more posting from me for this Dare! I kept this tile simple with only two tangles but it is heavily reliant on shading. I saw croon in a recent entry and so wanted to try it, but I changed the fill to dots because I thought more lines would be too much. I can't wait to try my other ideas and follow those impulses, but it will have to wait until tomorrow or even Monday. (Sigh) Because it's Saturday, that means it's a busy social day for me. It's the time when my husband and I get together with family and friends. This weekend we have older relatives visiting from out of town, and we don't often get to spend time with them. Also today is first communion for our friends daughter - and that means a big party later in the day. Added to this, my husband and I are doing our first craft summer craft show on Monday at a local Farmers Market and a second show on Friday... so we have lots to do to prepare for this. I sell my stuffed owl pillows, and Don sells his leaded stained glass windows.

Zentangle Challenge #110 - "get rid of the box"

Well, I can't wait to see what everyone else is doing with this challenge! I didn't really have to think too hard about this one because a while ago I bought a ceramic pear with the intention of tangling it with a sharpie pen because I've heard that you can bake it and make it permanent. I'm sure I stored the article somewhere, but of course can't find it now. At any rate, this challenge (from Laura at www.iamthedivaczt.blogspot.ca) is the perfect motivation to try this project. I don't like the way the pen slips on the shiny surface; it's hard to get a steady line, and my fingers kept smudging stuff I'd already done; and I went through 3 sharpies. But... here it is posted. I'll still look for the instructions about baking it, but I doubt that I'll be doing any more unless I can find some ceramic tiles and make coasters - a flat surface would be much easier. Thanks again Laura for making us step out of our comfort zones!

Zendala Dare #27

Well I'm definitely going to be doing another for this weeks Zendala Dare (www.thebrightowl.blogspot.ca) because this was fun, but I am not happy with the way it turned out. First of all, the intention was that Daggerly was supposed to make the cubine diamonds look like they had been cut away from the squares... didn't work, and I should have made the Daggerly with wider bands so it was more obvious. Wish I hadn't put Footlights in.... but worst of all was that I tried Vortex in the outermost squares but they didn't look anything like a Vortex so I tried to make them into something else.... yuck. I don't mind the Pearlz, but I think they would have been better if there was something else in this zendala to balance their roundness. That's the challenge though. And while I thought about not posting this, I did put quite a bit of time into it, and it's all a learning experience... right?

Zentangle Dare #10

This is my contribution to Erin's Zendala Dare of the week (see www.thebrightowl.blogspot.ca). I enjoyed this one, even though I "rushed" through it because it's a very busy week. As usual when I'm hurrying, I wanted to make it simple, but got caught up in all the fabulous tangles - couldn't decide which to use - so used as many as I could :) I made a few mistakes along the way, but that's ok, it's all part of the process. (Starting outside, clockwise from the top: wisket, nightsbridge, jonqual, chard, jalousie, bitten, stax, gewurtz, and moving day; then inside: facets, zedbra, voxter, footlights, slink, and crescent moon) Thanks again Erin for a fun template!

Zentangle Challenge #66 - Laura's Auras

I'm glad to have another challenge to do as I've been working on a ZIA that I'm not too happy with, so wasn't feeling very motivated. This week's zentangle challenge is to use aura's. Not easy for me as I haven't done much of this, and I do love my "white spaces". But I'm quite happy with this one, it has some auras, and still lots of white space. Good challenge - again taking me out of my comfort zone!

ZIA - ovals, squares, circles - Zentangle challenge #65

The string for this ZIA was created using three things from the kitchen - a coaster, a martini shaker, and an olive dish - I thought about calling it "wasted martini's", but will save that catchy title for another ZIA. I had barely started when Zentangle Weekly Challenge #65 from "I am the Diva" came out asking us to use the tangle "Huggy Bear". I'd never used it before. I did a traditional tile and submitted that, but though it made me try some variations of Huggy Bear, I wasn't too happy with it. So I added it into this ZIA, and I'm much happier with how it turned out. I didn't try to be too original in variations - I'm working on learning and practicing tangles, rather than stretching creativity. Sometimes when I see how creative others are, I think "why didn't I think of that?". Hopefully that will come after I get better at technique. Love to hear any comments....