Unyun

This was fun!  I will post a step by step once I get a minute to do it.

Afterglo

Here are instructions for my 'garage sale' tangle: Afterglo.

Negotiations

Ahh, garage sales. First there are the negotiations with oneself. (Do I really need to keep this perfectly good breadmaker that I never use?) Then, possibly a negotiation with a spouse. (We can't sell that!) Once those issues are resolved, then comes the negotiation with the buyers. Since I didn't take the time to price anything, the negotiation process is basically intuitive. Trying to get your money out of an garage sale item, or have it be even relative to what you paid for it, will make you nuts, so I just tried to float the best I could.
   In between customers, I sat and tangled this piece. It may or may not be hard to see all the negotiations I had to make while creating it. But there were many. Appropriately so! There is no wrong or right in Zentangle®, just an attentive and intuitive negotiation of line and space.
   It was a very relaxing garage sale!

Garage Sale Surprise

It's been more than a few years since my last garage sale. I don't like doing them, but things stack up and stashes grow old. So many things I once held somewhat dear, now find themselves sadly on a table in a dingy garage, waiting for a new home. As I pulled things out of bags and boxes to place on the tables, I found a few nice surprises (so THAT'S where it went!). And a couple things that I thought I was finished with, came back around to win my heart all over again. (dang it!) About six years ago I fell in love with silk scarf painting. It was such a relaxing thing to do, and I really never knew why at the time. It's obvious now. The spirit of what I now know as Zentangle®, was there as I looked at the scarves; deliberate lines that meandered unplanned to their rightful place, spaces filled with pattern. Even the color was painted in a most gentle and deliberate hand. It was a surprise to remember the feeling of creating them. I guess it's no surprise that I'm keeping them!

As you can see, a little spirit found its way into the garage sale sign!

Mysterious Fun

This pattern starts out easy, but ends up looking very complicated. Still playing but thought it would make a pretty post.

Zentangle 101

One of the best things about Zentangle is sharing them. These are the "first blush" Zentangles of Friday night's Beginner class. After lots of quiet tangling, the room got very bubbly and twittery as we 'congregated' the first Zentangles of the night. Then we all settled back down with a few munchies and got back to tangling, talking, and making new friends.

Julie Walker: A Beader's Zentangle-inspired Messages

Julie Walker started me on my bead path when I walked into her beadstore almost seven years ago. We started doing Zentangles at the start of this year, and it's so much fun to see where she took it. She combines her love of animals and scripture verses and Zentangle. The result is a sweet and quirky combination that makes me smile whenever I look at them. If this art looks familiar to you, you may have seen a couple of her others posted on beezinthebelfry.blogspot.com. Thanks Jules!

Zentangles and Beads

It's no wonder that Zentangles caught my fancy. Even though the process of beading and Zentangle is a bit different, there is a common thread in that beautiful beadwork relies on beautiful patterns. I see it in this piece I designed a couple months ago. Patterns are comforting. I am wondering if that's why so many people are drawn to beading, too.
Bead embroidery is a lot like tangling with beads...you never know where it will take you. Hopefully I can dig up some photos to post. If any of you have some to share, send them!

Talking Tangles

It seems there is a little string of thought about patterns in sound, as well as sight. When Lois Stokes mentioned it in her blog, Jane Peever posted a "singing" mandala, and then my friend Sarah wanted a Zentangle music mural in her piano studio, and then my husband gave me a tip on how to Morse Code an SOS (what?), it all came together in a Zentangle one night....

The pattern on the left is staggered Morse Code (SOS) strands: three dots, three dashes, three dots. Just think of the things you could say!

Flutter Pie Steps

Flutter Pie

I played with these little shapes so long, that I didn't even see that it looked like little pizza slices swirling around in space. It was my husband who immediately determined that to be so. I agreed. Hence, the name Flutter Pie.

More Lemons to Lemonade

As my friend, Peg, says: There are no "oopsies" in Zentangle. With that spirit in my heart, I spent the afternoon "making lemonade."

A couple months ago I had painted a portrait of my husband. Apparently one of the cats thought it would be a good idea to put their claws through his chest. (Perhaps they thought they could 'make some biscuits' on his big fluffy sweater that he was wearing in the painting). What to do with a gashed painting? Inspired by my friend, Loretta, who does mixed media painting and often incorporates strips of fabric, I went to work! I wove a strip of fabric through the gashes, and then used an upholstery needle and embroidery thread to add some texture. Using the fabric and the old portrait for inspiration, I painted and poked until this painting appeared.
    Kitty mayhem, music and mixed media makes for a marvelous Sunday afternoon!

Inapod Tangle

Here is the basic tangle for yesterday's post.

Pea Pod Party

It's Summertime!

Moons

Moons are all over the place in this Zentangle I did last night. There are full moons, crescent moons, and what seem to be little baby moons bouncing off other moons that are inside other moons. A true tangle of moons :)

Lava Juice

This tangle was created as a nod to our friends in Hawaii and to celebrate one of the finest trends of the last century: the lava lamp! Ever since I attended the Zentangle certification seminar, my eyes and brain seem to be more tuned into patterns.
I have finished my exercise of using EVERY one of the 102 original tangles. Now I'm feeling like I want to corral all the miscellaneous tangles into one place. Great. One more thing to collect. Let's see, there's been fabric, beads, paintbrushes, papers, threads, pens, pencils, fonts, now tangles. (I'm sure I've missed something on the list.)

In visiting the Zentangle® blog this morning, I found this beautiful quote by Maria Thomas, who, with Rick Roberts, is the 'parent' of this enchanting art form. Why are people drawn to Zentangle? I think this says a lot....


"The comfort of patterns has been with us since we were children. Saturday morning rituals of waking early, snuggling with my brothers and sisters in our PJ's to watch our favorite cartoons before our parents awoke. Then after breakfast, out to play with our best friends -- two full days to look forward to. Ceremony and patterns, in our life and in our thoughts, are comforting, even though they change gradually to form new ones as we get older or as our surroundings change. So it is with Zentangle, the comfort of familiar patterns, flowing repeatedly from our pens, welcoming the reality of new ones, sneaking in whether by choice or other wonderful phenomena . . . "   Maria Thomas

My friend, Lee Tougas, took a Zentangle® class, and used the "filling spaces" approach to create these beautiful needlework pieces. The one on the left has a different type of stitch in the boxes behind the birds. He is also working on one that is more traditionally Zentangle (black and white), which I will post once it's completed.

Finished mixed media

A little glue, a little paint and now 'he' is done. This is the entire painting that happened in last Friday's Mixed Media Workshop at Gallery 510. So much fun... can't wait for the next one!

"The painting is not the art. The painting is the evidence that art took place."

Mandalas

I'm not quite sure why mandalas are so intriguing. I know from just poking around for info, that they represent unity and harmony. What I know from my own experience is that they are soothing to play with and look at. The mandala on the left is magazine pieces collaged onto a hard canvas surface. It's not quite finished as the process of gluing sort of got on my nerves, which seemed counterproductive to a meditative experience! But I like to look at it now and then and especially when the photo happened, I saw it more flat somehow, and enjoyed looking at it that way. 
      The Zentangle mandala on the right was a very different experience. There is something very hypnotic about the process of using a little black pen to fill the spaces in a mandala.  Once you make a mark, you make it 8 or 16 times around (depending on how many sections you created). In turning the piece to make each mark, it does something to the brain. (Maybe like rides at an amusement park?) It's sometimes like going backwards and forward at the same time. Delightfully dizzying, yet calming at the same time. And even though the mandala looks very orderly and planned, there is no plan, and one stroke leads to another, for some very surprising shapes and dimensions!