Arukas day 26-30

I have been celebrating christmas with my sons, daughter in law and my wonderful grandchildren so I have not been able to post the last days of Arukas, but here they all comes:

I made this one as a congratulation to Today´s
tangles - Keeping it classic that reached 1000
members recently!

I felt a little sad to say goodbye to these 30 days of Arukas, but also I was happy to have done them. Arukas can go any way, and there are so many more possibilities! I guess I could go on for another 30 days!!! But I won´t. But I will use Arukas on tiles and not fear a string that looks like it won´t fit! Because now I know Arukas also can go with any string!

Duo-colored surface and rescue tile part 2

One more round to gowith the duo-colored surface, since there was one more tile left out of the first one! Here it is:

I realize I should have taken a before-pic before I cut the tile in parts with the tan tile. I didn´t. If the first one was fun to do, this one was even more! I used Fragment Y4 (from Zentangle Primer; very useful fragment), Eye-Wa (Zt), Florz(Zt) and Knightsbridge (Zt). It is so satisfying to rescue tiles and give them a new life! I also put the two tiles together to see if something happened here:

And yes they can match eachother. Not a perfect match maybe, but good enough! This is a wonderful technique, learned from the Project Pac 2, which was a part of #12DaysofZentangle! I´ll find out a way to use this working with my other collages.

The Diva´s challenge 346 and one more take on Christmas

The first challenge for 2018 from the Diva is a Duotangle with two wonderful patterns: Phicops (BRad) and Huggins (Zt). Who can resist this? I made my tile on a tan surface, not original rennaisance but almost the same color.

Maybe there is too much space to the right of the tile, but I kind of like the way it turned out.

I had to do  more on Bijou duo-colored (Twelve-days-of-zentangle, day nine) to get something to play with: 

The one to the left: Shnek (Hanny Nura) and the one to the right: Ginili (Randi Wynne-Parry).

And together:

The fun is to move them around and get new shapes and pics! I loved this technique! 

2018; First page in the calendar and Twelve Days of Zentangle!

New Year and a new Calendar. The new one is also designed by Carole Ohl and she has invited a guest artist: Margaret Bremner. I like this calendar even more than the one from last year Mainly because the paper is another quality. It is White and not glossy and in my opinion it is easier to shade and the pen doesn´t slip away because of the surface!

I didn´t really know what to start with at first but then I decided to give Rumpus a round, since I didn´t try it too much before Christmas and I didn´t find it very easy to make it personal. I am glad I gave it a chance, since I found it both fun and relaxing to do! On the 1st of January I tried to follow Maria´s way of doing it on the video adding Toodles and auras too. I also let Dewd surround the whole page.

I haven´t done all of Twelve Days of Zentangle yet. But I intend to do some more.  On the ninth day we should use one black and one tan Bijou. I didn´t have tan ones and only a few black left. And I didn´t want to use one tan 8,9cm tan tile, since I´ve just a couple of these left too and I want to keep them for some other special occasions. But I had another tan heavy-weight paper and fourtunally I had a black one in the same quality so I just cut them into Bijou-size. I think it worked well!

The patterns I used are My Swing (Simone Menzel), Arukas and Nipa. I liked this technique very much and I think I´ll try it again!

22nd - 27th of December

Christmas time is a special time if we like it or not. Things are not going on as usual. At it´s best, we are together with people we love and are deeply connected to. At it´s best we are in a peaceful mind. This year I have not spent much time tangling. But my calendar has been with me anyway.

I almost never use other pens than Microns. But on 27th I was sitting tangling with my granddaughter and we had a bunch of Sharpies around and I wanted to try this in my calendar. Not so clever, the Sharpie bleeded through the paper and came out on the 22nd! But now it is there like it is and I won´t correct it.
22nd-24th: X-mas Red (Liu Chiu), Drawings, Auraknot and Fescu.

25th-27th: Mooka, Ipso (Jennifer Hohensteiner), Toodles, Crescent Moon and Noom Repus. By the way I like that name Noom Repus which is Super Moon backwards!

I also finished a tile for the 12 Days of Zentangle!

This is Day Ten. Striping like Marasu in a Paradox Reticula. Very relaxing and very easy to do. Perfect in the middle of the night before going to bed!

Adventure with Toodles and 12 days of Zentangle

I have revisited my old working place at school the last three weeks. I am retired but sometimes I luckily get the question if I can do some more working, meeting my old students. I appreciate every occasion I am able to do this. During this period Toodles was released from Zentangle. Couldn´t resist presenting Toodles for the students. They watched the video from Rick and Maria and then we went to work on it. We had so much fun and I want to show you some of the artwork they did. With their permission ofcourse!

They all look very different and unique. And we had a joyful time together!

Late the same evening I couldn´t stop myself I had to do one more for Twelve Days of Zentangle Day Six. Here it is:

Now they all have their Christmas holiday and I am preparing my own christmas here at home. What could be better than take a break, watching one more video an tangle? Lucky for me I had got one prestrung zendala from Ela Rieger, a couple of month ago! And it was a tan zendala. Exactly what I needed for Day Seven video!

Mostly when I do a zendala it takes a lot of time to finish it. But doing it this way with auras it didn´t take long at all! So relaxing and very simple to do! Loved it!

Apprentice tile

12 Days of Zentangle goes on and a lot of inspiration follows! I think I have not mentioned Apprentice tile?! It is a little bit larger: 11,4 x 11,4 cm. The common tile is 8,9 x 8,9cm. On Day Four Rick use the Aprentice tile and since I cut my white tiles myself from a sheet of Fabriano Tiepolo paper (same as in regular tiles), I easily cut me a couple of Apprentice tiles, just to experience the difference. Original Apprentice tiles are cut from a Bristol-paper though.

I used Pigma Micron 0,3 to get closer to the same pen Rick used in the video. It was fun to do this and I had no trouble at all using a larger space. Doing the Diva Dance with Sproings as it was demonstrated was fun and very relaxing. I had to tell myself to STOP, it just went on and on and on! 

I also realized that Apprentice tiles are prefect for not only young beginners but also for adults and not only for beginners! It offers a larger space (sometimes that is very refreshing), which might be easier to handle if your eyes don´t function as they should do or if you have trouble with fine motor abilities! The effect of the 0,3 pen on this size is comparable to the 0,1 on 8,9 x 8,9 cm !  

10th-15th of December and 12 Day´s for Christmas.

One of those things, I don´t have much time for in December is posting in this blog, or being present in social media. That´s the way it is. I try to make my christmas-cards, and allow myself to prepare things I like to do for christmas. But my calendar is on the priority-list as well as be sure I have a moment for meditation every day. 

10-11th, I went for Flux. Flux is a flowing tangle and can go on forever! This was inspired by Molly Hollibaugh´s day two in the 12 Day´s of Christmas.

13th of December is important here in Sweden. We celebrate Lucia from Siracuse. This time of year we need some enlightning in the darkness, the sun doesn´t shine too long during the daytime so Lucia coming whit candles in her hair is popular in more than one way. I felt for star-shaped tangles and started with Afterglo (Carole Ohl, Auraknot (Zt) and X (Lila Popcheff). The stars are accompanied by Striping, Pokeroot, Pokeleaf and Echoism, all (Zt). A little glimpse of blue...

12 Days of Christmas from Zentangle consists of one video a day, starting on 12th of December and is very inspiring. I intend to try them all but in my own pace and own order. Don´t know if I succeed..

Here is my tile for Day One, using Crescent moon, Hollibaugh, Printemps, Bales and Sprinkle. Sometimes it is so good visiting some basics as the Z-string and early learned tangles just trying to do something new with them!

Then I jumped to Day three:

Maria demonstrated her new tangle Rumpus. I followed her instructions to experience this tangle from the start. It was a meditative moment today, doing it like this on a white Zendala and Rumpus will stay in my library of tangles for sure! I love the repetitive strokes, and the possibilities I can imagine for this tangle!