Splash

I have drawn a very quick and simple tile this week for The Diva's Challenge. I almost didn't do the challenge but then I remembered Anya Lowthorpe's Splash which just fits the reason why not.

We have been challenged to tangle a tile whilst in motion. Now my problem is I am very, very motion sick. There is no way I could look downwards in a car and tangle as The Diva did whilst on holiday. I have been like this since a child, and the first time I managed to go in a car without being sick was when I learnt to drive. Strange isn't it that I can drive without being sick. I have improved with age a little, I can now sit in the front passenger seat providing I look up and forwards but I am still hopeless in a bus. Strangely enough I never get sea sick, but I thought catching a ferry just to do The Diva's Challenge was taking things too far!

I was taking some photo's of our garden in the glorious sun this morning when I caught sight of our new garden seat which is a glider (a sort of rocking chair) and I thought that would do for motion.

I have drawn W2 using shaky lines to represent the motion (otherwise known as covering up the wonky line mistakes ;-). I also used Splash to represent what would happen if I travelled on a vehicle and really followed the challenge through properly.

B'Twined

This week the string in Joey's Weekly Challenge cuts our circle into quarters and the tangle to use is B'twined. 

I decided there was no way I was going to able to fit B'twined neatly into a quarter, even if I used other tangles in the other quarters, so I used B'twined across the whole circle and defined the quarters with two colours. I then went mad and used the top part of B'Dylan around the perimeter. B'Dylan is a tangle I have seen used quite a lot just lately and it has given my drawing a sort of hairy monster look lol.

Give Peace a Chance

I don't normally post two challenge responses in one, however today is different. After the shootings this week both Joey, and The Diva (via Suzanne Flurr) are concerned about all the troubles in the world and have made it a theme for their challenges.

I have to say this is something I am concerned about as well. To slightly alter a well known phrase - 'All lives matter', but that doesn't mean you can hurt others to achieve your own aim. In most religions, and in a lot of communities, love is highly prized, but you would never know it from the wars conducted in the name of religion or the spitefulness amongst congregations so I am done with religion, you can keep it!

I wish all lives could be ruled by Zentangle® . No mistakes, no condemnation for things not done, just praise for what is done. I have never virtually 'met' such a nice kind group of people as my Zentangle virtual friends.

Anyway enough of me, the theme is Peace and Joey has given us the peace sign as a string along with Suzanne who has asked us to make a ZIA representing Peace. I decided to do the two challenges in one as I have a backlog at the moment and thought I would make my own life more peaceful this way:-)

Somehow I have missed out one of the legs in the peace sign (what an idiot) but no mistakes, so here is the result. I have put an Ellish P for Peace in the top left hand section and used Heartswell for love in the top right hand section. Patina is in the bottom section as I love that tangle, and Organic has been used as borders which is part of Joey's challenge.

I hope you all have a very peaceful day.

National Colour

This week's challenge from The Diva is going to be very interesting. I am looking forward to seeing what everyone does for their response. The challenge is to represent the national colours of our country.

Now I bet you are all thinking I am going to do green for Ireland, but you would be wrong :-) A lot of people don't realise that in fact blue is the national colour of Ireland - St Patrick's blue. This is why the printed edition of the Constitution of Ireland has a blue cover, why the President's Chair is blue with a Celtic harp on it and why the carpets in the Dail and Seanad (Irish Parliament) are a deep blue.

No-one really knows why people started to think green was the Irish Colour. Of course the national flag of the Republic does have green on one third of it, that was to represent the older Gaelic tradition while the orange represents the supporters of William of Orange. The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between the 'orange' and the 'green'.

This is a picture of St. Patrick's Hall where the Irish Presidents are inaugurated, not a hint of green anywhere lol.   :-

For my tile this week I drew a string of the Celtic Harp and used the new tangle pattern Interlude around it. I surrounded the harp with Oh Well in blue. The only pen the right colour was three thicknesses thicker than I usually use and it felt very clumsy when drawing with it.

Here is my St Patrick's Blue tile done today for The Diva:-

A couple of weeks ago I did a travelling tangle with Saffy from Great Britain. As it happens I sent her a tile with the corner done in the colours of the Irish National Flag and Sh'rock tangled on it. Saffy tangled the rest with the British colours of red white and blue. What a coincidence it coming up as a challenge from the Diva now!

Gnarly

Summer has arrived in this neck of the woods, although with all the rain you wouldn't know it. Everything has got busier and somehow I don't seem to be doing the same amount of blogging. Anyway I have had time to tangle and this is the Zendala I did for Joey's challenge. I thought I would make Gnarly splash up out of the string, and surrounded it with Printemps, Pokeleaf and Measles.

Joey's challenge 118 - Maryhill

I loved Joey's blog this week, it made me laugh :-D She is really cranking up the challenge. A circle within a circle string and Maryhill tangle pattern, of course we were all going to put it in the centre weren't we!  Joey however has forbidden it, now that is plain mean lol. Nevertheless I really enjoyed drawing this tile. I have drawn Maryhill and several variations all around a Showgirl centre.

Socc

Gosh, I thought I had posted this, good thing I noticed in time. I loved the circle string this week in Joey's Challenge and Socc was new to me. I liked this Tangle Pattern, although sometimes I struggled to have enough room to fill in all the auras. I really liked the higgledy-piggeldy look of the separating lines.

I outlined the inner circle with Dragonair and in addition to Socc I used a Indy-fella filled Ahh, Tri-Bee, Fescu and good old Mooka.

1st Zeniversary

YT enters the room, dragging a crate behind her, slips *hic* over the corner of the rug, falls on her bottom *hic* and at the same time raising a glass whilst singing:-

"Happy Anniversary to me" *hic*, "Happy Anniversary to me" *hic*

"Oh there you are, have a glass, grab a bottle of fizz from the crate and join in :-) "

Yes, it is one whole year since I first discovered Zentangle® and started this blog! Well technically I discovered the Zentangle® Method a fortnight earlier in May, but for some reason it didn't immediately grab me!!! Can you imagine that!!! It was actually another two weeks before I returned to it and became a Zentangle Zealot. It is easy to remember because I created the blog to post a tile I had drawn for The Divas's Challenge and the challenge one year ago was - guess what - The Beads of Courage :-)

During my working life I was a Peadiatric Nurse, training and working at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, London, as long ago as the 1980/90's. I wish we had heard or thought of the Beads of Courage then, they sound brilliant, both as a reward and as a story of the children's journey.

My first Beads of Courage Tile.

For The Diva's Challenge this year I thought at first that I must try hard to do something really fantastic to show how much I my tangling had developed since last year. Perhaps those marvellous gems or something, but in fact I ended up doing something much simpler than last year. A Monotangle of Nipa had immediately come to my mind. If I coloured the orbs to turn them into Beads of Courage it should be just right, and also added a couple of square beads. 

After the week's break last week I am looking forward to visiting all your blogs and seeing your beads.

Flux

I have just spent a week away from my pens and paper, which was unfortunate as I missed the last of Joey's Roman Numerals. I will get back to it and add it when I do. So now Joey is challenging us with a new series of circular strings.

Joey stipulated Flux, but there are two styles of Flux and I chose to use Rick's Flux. I added Gourdgeous and ended up with this rather lopsided Zendala. I drew the circle freehand hence the odd shape :-)

Ellish

I hope all our Canadian friends had a great weekend and enjoyed Canada Day yesterday. I had marked it on the calendar so I knew we wouldn't see the challenge until today.

I keep trying to get some of my friends interested in the Zentangle® Method. This week I had some friends round and I talked them into trying it out. I had previously explained about the Zentangle® Method and shown them how we usually draw borders etc. However on this occasion I drew a string on some tiles and showed them how to fill them with Knightsbridge, Florz and Tidings. When everyone was finished we fitted them all together in an ensemble and then I surprised them by adding a Dragons head which I did before they came. I think they were quite impressed that they had made a Dragon out of such simple tiles, but sadly I don't think any of them were interested enough to do any more in the future:-( It is a shame because I would love to have a real live Zentangle friend. Oh well, at least I have all my world wide friends to talk to here.

The Diva's Challenge this week is to use the new official tangle pattern Ellish. As The Diva mentioned some people have been using it on the Mosaic App for a few days now. Maria herself started it by posting a beautiful Ellish she had drawn. Then she started to 'alphabellish' as she called it. She posted an A-ish, then a Bee-ish. Now most people know me as YT so at this point I couldn't resist  jumping on the bandwagon and drew this YT-ish lol. 

Anyway Maria has posted many more beautiful letters of the alphabet which she has drawn in an Ellish manner and I am sure she must have finished the whole alphabet at home by now. She invited everyone to join in by using the hashtag #alphabellish.

This is the Ellish I have drawn for the Diva's Challenge today:-

Roman Numeal XIV

So here we are at XIV ! Joey did say at the start that she was going to end at XIV, but I don't know if she still means that or if she is going to go further. There is a nice mixture of tangle patterns to choose  from and I decided to stick with just four of them. I did large Bunzos on one side and small Bunzos on the other, along with three variations of Cadent and a triangular rolling Barberpole in the X.

I have more or less run out of tiles and have decided to use my sketch book for the challenges in future. I can draw in the tile, as many others do, and the sketch books are a lot cheaper than the tiles. I will get more tiles, but keep them for special projects.

Here is my Zentangle® for Joey's Challenge this week.

Roman Numeral XIII

A low 13 string lol ! This is for Joey's Roman Numeral Challenge. I have been a good girl and not used an eraser, however tiles no. 1 & 2 did go in the rubbish bin !! I don't find Verigogh easy. I see other people make lovely branches from it and also beautiful feathers using it but mine remain basic no matter how much I practise, so in one tile I just make the X from two of the pine needles and a berry and for the other tile I just dangled the tip of it in from the top.

I have been meaning to try Ipso for a while now so this was a good opportunity. Sadly I couldn't really work out from the step out exactly where you are meant to thicken the line so I don't really think it is drawn as it should be. For the ruffles I decided to draw half cruffles in both of the tiles.

Here are the two tiles which didn't go into the rubbish bin and I am calling a halt :-) I am now looking forward to seeing what artistic things everyone else has done with these tangles.

Calling all Trekkies and Whovians

I must have had a rush of blood to the head this week because my tangling has been a bit zany. I have mentioned before that I am a Sci Fi addict. I am talking real Science based Sci Fi here, not that fantasy stuff they now lump into the genre these days.

Do you remember my holiday where I photographed the Star Wars set in Ireland that you needed a magnifying glass to see anything? Well the Irish newspapers have now been busy with their cameras trying to get pictures, but due to the guards around there they are having about as much luck as I did. In fact mine is more artistic because of the pottery Greek urns in the foreground. Honestly sea, cliffs, Greek urns and Star Wars, it could only happen in Ireland lol ! The actors have started to arrive and next week they are even closing down the air space around there while they film, talk about paranoid!!

Anyway when I sat down to tangle the other day, and was trying to think of a string, I suddenly thought a Star Trek logo/communicator outline would make a good string. How could I have not thought of it before?

I used one of the new official tangles - Patena - in the background and then I realised it looked just like the communicator was caught in the Q Continium ( you need to be a ST Next Generation fan to understand that bit !)

That all set off a train of thought. I remembered Maggiebee saying she was a Dr Who fan and I thought I should do a tile for her and any other Whovians out there. After all Dr Who began my interest in Sci Fi as a 9 year old child, stereotypically hiding behind the sofa for the frightening bits. Then I started reading books like John Wyndam's Day of the Triffids etc. and when Star Trek began three years later it, along with my Arthur C Clarke books, moved my Sci Fi interest on out into Space.

So here is my Dr Who tile, for

Maggiebee the Whovian Zentangle Zealot :-)

(And that DW Tardis/logo shape is not easy to replicate!)

On to the next zany tile. Our Ol' Queenie turned 90 yesterday which set off yet more great celebrations. She really is amazing, how she still stands there at functions shaking a million hands I don't know, I have trouble standing for ten minutes without getting backache and wanting to sit down - and I am only 60, what I will be like in 30 years time I dread to think. Anyway whilst I was watching the celebrations on the TV (all horses and boring as heck, but I suppose she enjoyed it) I drew this ZIA with her in mind. I used the tangle pattern Eez for Elizabeth to outline the 90, then set off Fireworks around it and drew Crowns in the bijou sections below. (I had intended to draw three different tangles in the bijou areas but got a mental block when trying to think of other patterns with Queenly connections so stuck with the three crowns.)

Now here we are at the Diva's Challenge where she has suggested we introduce some black. I have just started practising black pearl tipple on a black background and decided to do a tile introducing black that way. I have used the back of a Zentangle® tile because they are too hard to obtain in Ireland to waste the space by just signing your name on the back ;-) 

 

Roman Numeral XII

I really enjoyed doing this Knightsbridge Monotangle for Joey's Roman Numeral Challenge. At first sight the Knightsbridge tangle pattern seems a bit basic but there are so many different ways to draw it. One of my favourites is not featured on the Enthusiastic Artists's study ( how does she produce so many varieties!) I like to draw it with highlights and shading so that it looks like rods or barrels, so I have done that twice here, once with straight lines and once with wavy lines. I wanted to try out Knightspeek, but ran out of room. I will have to practise it elsewhere.

Pokeroot and Drupe

I am just back from a wonderful day out. It was forecast to be a hot sunny day and so it turned out. We wanted to explore a new area, about an hour away, to try and find some good parking spots from which we can set off on walks. If we could explore the area today we would be all set for walks during the coming summer.

The area is called the Slieve Gullion Forest and is just over the border in Northern Ireland. It was weird being back in the United Kingdom again. We stopped first in the main Forest car park where there is a little shop, as I wanted to buy some crisps to add to our lunch ( I love crisps squished into a sandwich, do you?) When I came to pay I suddenly realized I needed Stirling and I had left my English purse in the car! It is so weird needing two purses, after all we were only an hour away from home - and yet home is in another country!

Anyway we sorted it out and moved on to find somewhere as a base for walking. We followed a single track road through the forest and up the mountain and finally came across - a fire engine!!!

Well we had not expected to find that up a little single track forest road!! Goodness knows why it was there as I have never seen one in a forest or on the moors in 50 years of walking. It made me think of those terrible fires over in Canada that the Diva mentioned. We do see the odd fire at certain times of the year, but those are controlled burnings by land owners or rangers, not bush fires gone wild.

There were wonderful views 

and then as we walked into the forest we came across this little waterfall.

I got all excited when I saw this:-.

I thought I had found Shamrock growing in the wild, but it turned out to just be wood sorrel :-( Apparently Shamrock is similar but has much smaller flowers. Oh well, better luck next time.

Fortunately The Diva and her family are safe, and hopefully far enough away from the fires, so she was able to set us another Challenge for this week. For my duotangle of Pokeroot and Drupe I decided to draw a huge Pokeroot and put Drupe into it with both black and white Pokeroot drooping out of the Drupe. (Did you see what I said there :-) I had intended to use a third black drupe band around the edge to make the large Pokeroot, but when I did this the huge Pokeroot disappeared so I left it with just the outline.

By the way, there has been an update to Zentangle's Mosaic App and it now has a Tangle Step-Out section - Hurrah :-) These are official Zentangle tangle pattern step-outs, so far only 20 of them, but I am assuming more will be added in future updates. Beside each title is the name of the person who deconstructed it and also the person who named it, which is quite interesting.

Also this week I suddenly remembered my dice and Zentangle legend from the starter box and this is what I did in my sketch book. You would be amazed to know that #11 - Hollibaugh - came up 9 times! I only used it in three sections and rolled again for the rest. Maybe it was trying to tell me I should do a monotangle lol.

Roman Numeral Xl

I had a bit of a problem finding the step-outs for this week's Roman Numeral Challenge. Two of them were on Pinterest and I don't have an account. I managed to find the step out for Vachel on Genieve Crabbe's blog but was unable to find Shons anywhere else. As I didn't want to create an account just for this I just used Susa, Zippa and Vachel. They were all rather large tangles so I just took the diamond fragment from Zippa for the side of the tile. I even left off the top and bottom of the string to make more room as I was struggling to fit things in.

Crux

At long last the weather is good enough to get out into the garden. We had our back garden done so that it is low maintenance but nevertheless we still need to tidy it up. At least there is no lawn to mow anymore. We love the sea and anything to do with the beach, so that was the theme we went with. We even had the shed at the bottom made to look like a beach hut and we are in the process of doing the inside up with all the gear a beach hut would have.

I finally exhausted myself and came in to do the Diva's Challenge. At first I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, I tried it out using Maria's 'Graphite Is The New Black' method :-

Then I did a Zendala using Crux with a little Zinger on a tan tile and I enjoyed this one much more. In fact it almost looks like flowers on a garden trellis so the garden must have inspired me :-)

Roman Numeral X

I'm all behind after my little holiday. There is washing everywhere, hospital appointments to attend and I can't seem to get a whole day to myself. I finished my Joey's Roman Numeral String Challenge tiles on Monday, but haven't had time until now to post them. Do we all get extra brownie points for using all five of the tangles Joey suggested in the four sections?

I used all the tangles in my first tile. I wasn't sure that Showgirl really turned out as it was supposed to, but nevertheless here we are:-

The links of Snookums were crying out to be done in gold so I added a top and bottom line to the X and chose to use just Diva Dance and Ticking in the sections of this tile.

Stripes

We have been away for a few days, staying with friends in Kerry, which is a county in the south-west of Ireland. It has been fabulous, the weather glorious and there was time to both relax and do some touring. We thought we lived in a rather picturesque fishing village on the east coast, but the views from their house are amazing! There is an almost 360 degree view around with about 180 degrees of it framed with mountains. Unfortunately photos of panaramas never come out well, but this is the view from one of their kitchen windows which will give you some idea:-

We drove all around the Dingle Peninsula, the Ring of Kerry and Killarney, which is the Lake District of Ireland and saw everything from the ancient Gallerus Oratory (6th century)

To the more modern Ross Castle (15th century) :-)

We also saw where they are making part of the new Star Wars movie, I was very excited even if it was in the distance. We tried to get closer but they were stopping everyone and not allowing photos. I did manage to get this from further away. They are midway between the Grecian urns, up on the very top of the hill. You can just about make out the metal road they have had to lay down the hillside if you click on the photo to enlarge it. Yes that is how mad I am about Sci-Fi, sad isn't it :-D

So here i am back at home, enjoying the east coast again and starting on this week's tangling challenges. The Diva has gone all stripey this week. I was a bit stuck about how I wanted to draw my tile and decided to try a small vertically striped square in the centre of diagonal stripes. I used Shattuck, Zander, Natti and Meer. This was the result:-

It wasn't quite what I had in mind so in order to jazz the subject up a bit I decided to draw one of those tangle folk wearing a stripey outfit, which made me feel a bit happier. lol.

Roman Numeral lX

There are seven sections in Joey's Roman Numeral String and she has chosen seven tangle patterns to use too!!! :-) Two of them are very similar - Betweed and Ragz. In fact a lot of people draw Betweed in a similar way to Ragz.

In my first tile I have used all the tangle patterns Joey chose. I am not sure I entirely got the hang of the Mei tangle, especially as it seemed to need a lot more room but at least it is in there. I shall be interested to see how you all fitted it in to your tiles.

In my second tile I just used the tangle patterns I really enjoy. I used one of the Ragz variations that I liked which makes it look less like Betweed. I love the way it makes it look like wooden planks nailed down. This is my favourite of the three tiles

The third tile is my gold tile. I used the original Ragz tangle pattern for the gold numeral and just used Mooka and Zinger to keep the other sections lighter.

X Marks the Spot

Just a short post this week, I think I exhausted myself last week and I can't really think of any news today :-) 

The Diva's Challenge this week is to make a globe and then tangle it. I must be ahead of my time because if you remember I did a globe of Fassett last week!

I used a tan Zendala tile (or as near to tan as I can obtain) and Renaissance colours. For the X I used my own pattern Measles, and the two black patterns are Kinetic and Slice. I have to say I didn't enjoy this as much as an ordinary Zendala. I don't like the grids going into strange small shapes at the edges.

Roman Numeral VIII

I had a feeling the string this week was going to be tricky - a V and three l's was going to be a lot to fit on a little Zentangle tile! Not only that but Joey has challenged us to use four tangle patterns in it too lol.

I made matters worse in my first tile by making a broad border! Not only that but I did three types of N'Zeppel, a regular version, an irregular positive version and an irregular negative version. I hadn't drawn Marnie before but it was much easier than it looked at first glance. This is my favourite tile of the trio, even if it is a bit busy.

Determined to give myself more room I drew a Zendala for the next one in the trio. I wove Fandangle in and out of the Vlll which gave more room for the other tangles and used a graphite Nzeppel background behind some of it.

For my gold tile there was only room to outline the string in gold, so I added a touch of gold to the centre of Marnie for a touch of extra glamour. I seemed to have much more room on this tile and was able to draw more of the tangles.