Inktober in my Calendar and my new Journal!

Inktober! Mr Jake Parker started this and participants are around the world.  Stephanie Jennifer has made prompts for tanglers and I did participate last year too. Now I decided to make the prompts in my calendar and this suits me very well! But started I couldn´t stop myself trying it on a tile with the first three patterns together: Mooka, Yah (Emily Classon) and Ginilli (Randi Wynne Parry).

Doing so it was much fun and the next thing I had to try was in my new Cappucino-journal.

For once I didn´t use any black micron, just gellypen, white charcoal and graphite. Oh I loved to do this. So I just went on yesterday too:

The color looks different in these pics, because the first one is taken with my iphone and the second is a scanned one. Maybe the iphone pic is more correct! But anyway it is much easier to scan this book than to take photos, so I try to live with this result. I have no intention to make my journal an inktober one, but it was very fun and relaxing. I will not plan, just let it go with the flow!

Blue on zendala

A few days ago I saw an interesting post by Sandy Kelly-Jones. She tried an idea from Dominique Frottier. Dominique had made a string with words, written on a quarter of a zendala-sized paper and then traced it on the zendala x4. I wanted to try this too and used my oldest granddaughter´s name Juno. I worked in blue which I don´t do often but it was nice to do. The patterns I used are: Stikz (Laurel Spoonseller), Lollywimple (Sandy Hunter), Fragment L25 and Fanclub. Below you can see the traced string. 

This technique was very fun, I like the idea of hiding words under my tangles!

Zenbuttons and My Tile 2

Zenbutton is a quite new word in Zentangle World. Marguerite Sammama brought it up. Here is the background and how to do it!

I practiced on Bijou some time ago, during the Valentangle-period, but didn´t get hooked. I have seen a lots of beautiful buttons around which made me want to give it a go one more time. This time I didn´t think button at all, but reticula and fragments. Which happened to be the clue. Yes I have read Marguerites guide before and I knew where she got the idea from. But it just didn´t speak to me. This time I made it on a tan tile 8,9x8,9 cm, which I had got from my friend Marie Penzing. I have run out of rennaisance tiles...
 Don´t exactly know what was the difference this time, but I didn´t think much of the result but focused on one stroke at a time. Oh there was an Oops! I appreciated this Oops, it led me into another direction, making my Chop as a fragment on the button! I think I will use it some other time, it was fun! The fragments I used on this Button are: G23, D16, C4, V5 and Lisbon Fragment (Henrike Bratz). So happy with this button I had to do one more the next day:

Well I have ran out of rennaisance tiles and I am looking for substitutes, since the originals are not easy to get in Sweden. I took a cardstock from the back of a watercolorpad which is accid-free. It is heavyweight though and with a hard surface. My cutting-machine didn´t like it at all. I forced it to cut though and now it has got a terribly squeezing sound when I touch it! It maybe kills my cutter but I loved this surface a lot and the pens didn´t have any problem with it.
This time I used the fragments: T5, K3, H16 and Chrissie Frampton´s fragment from her pattern Jackstripes. Instead of using a fragment in the center I made a little gem, which I don´t draw often. 

Today´s meditation. I wanted to do one more for My-tile-project. I wanted to try it on a black tile, which was really fun! My firs tile you find here.

Tangles of my choice except for the month:
And (Sandra Harsveld) : Anita 
Wacho (Livia Chua): Westin
Cubine (Zt) : August
Tipple (Zt) : Favouritetangle

I am thinking of using this concept further on but not referring to myself. It is such a good concept, I love it. Thank´s to Nancy Domnauer who came up with the idea!

Celebrating Lunar Eclipse - Blood-Moon with IAST253

Did you see the Moon-Eclipse last night? Here in Sweden we call it Blood-Moon. I watched the part of it I could see from here where I am and doing this I realized I should have taken my car and gone to some place else where we could see the whole thing better. But I have watched a lot of great photos people have taken! Today I went for IAST 253. 

With Nipa, Crescent Moon and Printemps we were supposed to celebrate the Moonevent in a M-string. These patterns were all perfect doing this and I enjoyed it much more than I thought of. The moon itself was in my mind constantly while tangling this tile. I was thinking of using color but then I decided enough is enough and I am satisfied with it the way it is. Thank´s Adele for one more pleasant and relaxing challenge! 

My result on PP03 !

PP03 was quite a challenge. It has taken some time to finish it but now I am there! This is worth celebrating I belive! I did take pics during the process this time too, which I am happy I didn´t forget! So lets start with the first step:

This was what I started with, the ribbonstring as demonstrated by Molly Hollibaugh.

Filling the ribbons with black pen was fun!...

This is the pic before shading/adding color. I did like this one very much!

I used my watercolorpencils; Madder Crimson and Prussian Blue. And here is my final, finished mosaic! Highligted with white charcoalpencil and shaded with graphite.

Here came the real challenge for me, the background done in graphite! I am happy I went through all these steps, since I learned a lot from doing this. I could have left it without the graphite-background, but I really wanted to try this technique. The patterns I choose for the background: Echoism and Assunta. First I thought I would only use Echoism,but then I decided to let Assunta be a part of it.

IAST 248 and 20th-24th of June

IAST 248 was challenging for me! A monotangle with Drupe. No it is not the monotangling. But to get it into the string! Not very long ago Imade friends with Drupe. This tangle has its own life and it can be very beautiful! But it is also one of those that doesn´t want to go with any string. So here it is as it went.  It was fun to do it! Thank´s Adele for this challenge!

As we have celebrated midsummer here in Dalarna Sweden, there hasn´t been much time for tangling. Midsummer is very special here where I live so it is just to go with the flow!

But here comes my calendarpages:

19th-21st I played with Lynn Shelton Mead´s Zentwining. It was fun and relaxing! An other way of  using the string and ribbons!

22nd-24th I started with the Drupe to get in the mood to make the IAST challenge! Beadlines followed, Arukas, Jonqual and then Nik (Bunny Wright) and Purdy, Margaret Bremner´s new tangle. I was happy with this page, it just draw itself!

More LZ´s

Wanted to try LZ´s on a tan surface. I have seen people use only white charcoal/gellypen and pencil, no black and it looks interesting. Here is my first try doing this:

The surprise is the depth you can get with such simple tools!I think LZ´s works fine with layers too. One Antidot (Anita Roby Lavery), Tipple and a sort of Beadline.

I am the Diva´s challenge for Amanda Day - Earth Day

This challenge is all about recycling which I do as soon as I get the possibility to do! Watch Laura´s video here. Here is my work on a recycled wine-box:

I cut the tile simply with my siccors as Laura did.

Here is the result! The "sun" is Caracole (lily Moon Luna) filled with fragments and Tagh. The "sunbeams" are filled with Dorsal (mine). 

13th-15th of April and a black tile

Oof is an official tanglepattern and I have been using it now and then. I like to play with it and it always looks different! Now I found Cris Letourneau´s tangleation Oofs-A-Daisy which is a great one too! I had to try it on a black tile:

It went this way with a lot of Tipple. Very relaxing moment with this tile!

I am the Diva´s weekly challenge 358

 March was going fast! Now it is already a new UMT (use-my-tangle)challenge at the Diva´s place. This month it came to Tomàs Padrós "Pick Pocket" This is a highfocus-tangle. I had to think a lot about what I was doing. First I made a little Bijou:

Then I tried it on tan surface. I found this heavyweight-paper in a book-shop and it is Acid-free. I liked the color, it is very close to original rennaissance-tiles. But with one big difference: The shading is much harder to do, which disturbs me.

Still I don´t draw Pick Pocket fluently but this is the result. Before I started I watched Laura drawing it here on YouTube!Dewd just poured out of Pic Pocket, which was fun! The string is based on my spilling of coffee. I did that on purpose.

I also used Staub Korn´s tangleation of Pick Pocket, which she named Picker Pocker!With Staubs permission here are the steps!

Oh by the way things happened yesterday which made me register for CZT32-seminar in october. It is hard to belive, but I am GOING! Never thought this would be possible! 

1st-3rd of April and Elatorium challenges

I am not often talking about weather. But during Eastern we have had days with bright warming sunshine and cold nights. The snow is now melting daytime and freezing by night. A promise about spring is in the air though we can walk on the hard surface of the snow covering the fields around here. I can see how this has affected my latest page in the calendar! I used Paradox as a string as well as a pattern, inspired by Margaret Bremner´s illustration for this month. Peace Petals (Sandy Kelley Jones) is the promise of spring coming. Then Crusade (Wayne Harlow) and Trisade-fragment (Tangleation of Crusade by Staub Korn) are breaking Ice and Shattuck is also coming with the springthing.

When I see my patterns used in challenges and/or by other tanglers I get so excited. I appreciate it very much, it is like connections with others get visible. I just love it. 2 challenges recently has been with my patterns Ezpei and Lenche. These are found in ELATORIUM at Fb. The first one was Ezpei together with Ruutz (Eni Oken) and Garlic Cloves (Jacquelien Bredenoord). You find it here. My entrance is made on a recycled watercolorpainting.

So satisfying to make something on old watercolor I don´t want to see any more!

Next challenge with Lenche, Wall Break (Tina Kirchhübel) and Olspin (YuRu Chen) you find here.

And here is mine:

Wall Break I first tried when Tina published the steps on Flickr and I did like it a lot so I was so happy Ela choose this pattern together with Lenche! Olspin was new to me but I like the playfulness of this one and I will get back to it for sure. Thank´s Ela for doing this! You also find the challenges at Elatorium were you also find the wonderful resourse Musterquelle!

22nd-27th of March and something colorful!

Revisiting tangles!
22nd: 2n5 by Anita Roby Lavery. Like this playful pattern a lot! So simple and yet so cool to play with!
23rd-27th: Can´T by Chris Titus. First time I met Can´T was in a challenge, I think it was Adele Bruno´s It is a string thing! I was thrilled by the way this pattern seems so different depending on the shading. I didn´t try rounded corners then, but now I did an it was totally something else I saw coming out of the pen! So much fun! I belive Can´T is now going to stay with me!

I have been away a couple of days enjoying to sing Pergolesi´s Stabat Mater in the church of Rasbo. Ofcourse I brought my tangle-kit with me. I used one tile I cut out of a large marbeled sheet of heavy-weight paper that I have kept for years.

Since I have bee busy rehersing Pergolesi I haven´t had the time to try two resent published techniques published by Maria and Rick in the zentangle-app. The first one was to tangle Molygon in a string which looks like a creepy thing going around the tile! I love the little dangerous look of this shape! Then I went for the Cadent-tangleation whick I do appreciate a lot! Some Tipple and Fescu also came along. This is my Happy Eastern tile for all of you!

19th-21st of March, Zen-Buttons and Diva´s challenge.

Revisiting patterns made me get back quite long ago. I found Niuroda (Tina Akua Hunziker). This is a wonderful tangle that thrilled me at the first sight and it still does! Niuroda took place on the entire page!

Things are happening very fast in Zen-world. Patterns pop up all the time, new ones and old ones you haven´t met before. Different and new techniques are also coming along. Right now  Zen-buttons are all over the place. Marguerite Samama is the one behind it. She made it up inspired by a Reticula found in Zentangle Primer 1. I have tried this easy and fun technique too. Here are som of my Buttons, all done on tiny little Bijou:

Mine are no perfect circles, I draw them on free hand and I like the imperfection. Well I guess the Zen-Buttons are the reason I found Niuroda again and hope she will stay with me a little longer this time!

I am the Diva´s challenge 356 is a little bit different this week. Laura asked us to use our names as string. This time I didn´t watch the Diva´s video before doing it... I used cardboard from a box I cut in pieces. Recycling! I love to do that! Here is my piece for the challenge:

I guess my name is hard to find here, but I DID use it as a string, I promise! I had some fun and there are a lot of patterns; Wholly Hollibaugh, Striping, Printemps, Diva Dance, Flux, Tipple, Cubine and lovely Verve (JJ Le Barbera).  

16th-18th of March

It is very satisfying to revisite tangles I haven´t used for a long time. I think I will stay with this for a while. Here comes Undu (Daniel Lamothe), Kuna (Csibulle) and Undling (Susie Achter). Two are basically "aura"-patterns and Kuna is only straight, short lines, repeated. Very relaxing to do and the result is so cool. Then comes two daily tiles:

Tufton (Jodi Christiansen) and Tofube (Damy). And a kind of beadline following my simple string.

I haven´t worked on black tiles lately so after having watched Molly´s tangleation on Zenith I grabbed my tools and took my time following her steps. 

I do love the black tiles. It is another view on tangles. Some kind of magic.

Daily tangles and I am the Diva´s challenge 353.

There are many techniques to learn in Zentangle-world. Recently Rick and Maria posted a video in the Zentangle-app, demonstrating something they call Wholly Hollibaugh. It is fun to do and easy to learn. I practiced it a few times on little Bijou and here I made it on regular tile 8,9x8,9 cm:

It is like cutting wholes in a pattern to be able to watch what is going on underneath! I used Hollibaugh and Pixioze (Margaret Bremner) for this one, after watching Melinda Barlow´s video. I like to tangle in a round!

Rick and Maria explores this technique aplying it on a couple of tangles so I wanted to give Elven (Elena Hadzijaneva) a try. I also used And (Sandra Harsveld) and Printemps. I am happy the way it turned out and I did enjoy the process.

Next one is a Heart-Zendala for the Diva´s weekly challenge. I hesitated doing this. I think I have had enough of hearts by now. But I searched for a template and found one on pinterest. Since I don´t have any prestrung zendalas this was my option if I didn´t want to create a heartstring myself. It works pretty good to do it like this! Here is my zendala for the Diva:

The patterns: Tipple, Paradox, Hibered and 5C (Ina Sonnenmoser). I am glad I did this challenge after all. It was relaxing and I am satisfied with the outcome. Using a template is very much the same as using a prestrung zendala and there are a lot of them to be found on the internet!

I am the Diva´s challenge no. 352

Last week I didn´t go for the Diva´s challenge. The reason was I wanted to practice SKYE. Another reason is I wasn´t that interested in the Olympic theme, it didn´t speak to me.  This week´s challenge, no 352, is about hearts and I thought I was done with hearts this month! But then I visited Michele Wynne´s blog  and couldn´t resist to give the heart one more round! I opened up my treasure-box filled with eco-dyed papers and there it was!

Can you see the heart glowing in there? I did and here is my nested heart:

The tangles: Chainging, Tipple, `NZeppel and Dro´t/Wire (Ferenc Nagy). The size is different from what I use to work on, 9x17,7cm.I used some brown colorpens, bronze and white gellypen. It was a nice surface to tangle on and I love the eco-dyed colors a lot. 

Duo-colored surface and rescued tile.

 Ever since I did the 12 Days of Zentangle, Day 9 I have been thinking of trying the technique on a 8,9x8,9 tile. I saw Sandy Kelley Jones do it, using a tile she hade left just started and I thought I could use it to rescue a tile that went "wrong" from the start. Although I know there are no misstakes in Zentangle I have a small pile of tiles I abandoned since they didn´t go my way from the start. These tiles are a resource belive me! I never know where they will go as I start them over again! My first try on Eye-Wa, a Zentangle original pattern, didn´t go the way I wanted so I laid it in that abandoned pile. As I grabbed it this time, I also picked a tan tile and my scissors. 

And now here it comes transformed to something completely different:

But I wasn´t to happy about it, the tan part needed something more to get more contrast, so I went on like this:

I redrew  the Pookeroot in black, and that small difference made it I think! Except Eye-Wa and Pookeroot there is a bit of Florz too. Now I am finished and happy with my Rescued Tile!

16th-18th of January and Diva challenge continued!

I like the idea of using the calendar as a resource. I continued using Lori Byerly´s patterns for the last three days: 3 To Go, Bublz, Abakus, Flip Flop, Paki and Off Key. I find these pattern so interesting, because they are all individuals, all very special, easy to learn and very relaxing to do. I love them.

I couldn´t keep my hands off going further with the Diva´s challenge. So here is my process for the next one:

My pencil-sharpener, the lid of my Bijou-box, and my scissors. Here is the finished tile on tan surface:

Patterns: Chain Gain (Aleesha Sattva), Organic (Sayantika Ray), Irradial (Tomàs Padrós), Shiraz (Linda Farmer), Tipple and Striping. Hm. Couldn´t help smiling as I saw the face!

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!