Stacked Tiles

I am so excited I can hardly sit down to write this post, my Zentangle Primer arrived this morning. I ordered it from TanglePatterns.com because at the time it could only be bought from a CZT, although you can now order it direct from Zentangle.com themselves. I would like to say that the customer service from Linda at TanglePatterns is exceptional, with almost instant response to my inquiries, and I am so pleased that I went through that route.

I have only had time to have a quick scan through the Primer, and saw straight away that there was a lot to absorb so I decided to do The Diva's Challenge first so that I could turn all my attention to the book. No doubt I will be mentioning The Primer in future posts, but just from the brief look at it I can tell already that I am not going to be disappointed with it.

I don't know about you, but I have bought several books about this method of drawing and have mostly been a little disappointed in them. There have been lovely pictures of completed tiles in them, maybe one or two tangle patterns I hadn't come across but mostly nothing new that I haven't already read about on the Internet. Two exceptions would be Chris Letourneau's Made in the Shade and Zen Mandala's by Suzanne McNeill which both had a lot of information in them that I was looking for.

I can tell already the new Zentangle® Primer is definitely not going to be a disappointment. Yes, some of the chapter titles obviously cover the basics, which it might be thought I would already know, but there is a lot to absorb in even these chapters. Then of course there is information about reticula and fragments which I have been consumed with curiosity about. I am delighted to at last find a book that is worth the price paid for it. 

Anyway on to The Diva's Challenge this week - nearly :-D 

There have been great celebrations around Ireland this weekend as it is 100 years since the 1916 Easter Rising, a pivotal event which would lead to the formation of the Irish Republic. Of course the main celebrations were in Dublin outside the General Post Office where a lot of the fighting happened. All the big wigs attended including the President, Micheal Higgins. 

They are making a special point of celebrating the women who fought and supported the cause, although to be fair the women were acknowledged at the time and the beginning of the Proclamation of Indepence included the words "All the men and women of Ireland". 

For The Diva's Challenge this week I have used the colours of the Irish Flag for the stacked cards. In the centre I used Xplode to represent all the flags waved at the celebrations.

Joey's Vl

Joey has given us a string with a narrow top and bottom section this week and is looking forward to seeing what we do with it. I didn't find any problems with what tangles to use in the space, and in fact all my tiles this week have stuck to the string, even the gold one.

In my first tile I used flux, Betweed, Tribee, Measles and D'Rua and I didn't highlight the string in any way.

My second tile was the gold tile. This didn't turn out as well as I hoped and perhaps I will return with another later on. I used Tring with Gra-vee wrapped around it and highlighted the string in gold. The Twing turned out a bit small and looked too similar to the Gra-Vee.

My last tile was drawn with a Graphite Background. Over on the new Zentangle® Mosaic App Maria has a post called Graphite is the New Black which is about using Graphite in the background and she has created a hashtag so that they can all be found together #GraphiteIsTheNewBlack. I used Bumper on the top and bottom, filled the V section with Pokeroot and then filled the background with Graphite Pokeroot.

Shattuck

I am still really enjoying the new official Zentangle®App which I spoke about in my post yesterday. For anyone who can't find it in their App Store there are links posted there. It is so great that it has been officially announced and is available to everyone, not just the CZT's. I have seen several of you over there and look forward to coming across more of you and seeing your work. My mosaic name, in case you are looking for me, is Yorkshiretortoise - just the same as here but no gap in the middle.

One of  my favourite features is the ability to create your own folders (mosaics) to catalogue and store photos of all your art. You can make all photos and folders public or private, your choice. As soon as I have finished posting this I shall be going into the app. to create a folder just for The Diva's Challenge.

The challenge this week is to draw a Monotangle of Shattuck. I have created a 4 tile ensemble, my intention was to have different variations on each tile (8 variations in total), but I discovered that was a bit ambitious and I ran out of ideas, so I made opposing tiles the same instead. There was just one variation I wasn't sure about. I filled the main lines of the curvy Shattuck with small orbs. After I had done it I wondered if in fact this would be counted as Tipple and therefore make it a duo-tangle? Anyway it is done now, so it is a Monotangle with a row of Orbs as embellishment. *nodding*

The string was a simple arc across the centre of the tiles and this has meant the tiles can be rearranged  to look totally different:-

There was one last variation that I wanted to do but I was afraid to spoil what I had already done. I took the two photo's I have just shown you and then did a final tweek. This is what it looks like now, the change is on the upper right hand side. Which do you prefer, the clean lines before or the shiny black after?

Roman Numeral lV

I am so excited, Zentangle.com has produced a Zentangle® Mobile App. which is now available to everyone, not just to CZT's. I read about it in their latest newsletter and naturally I downloaded it straight away. I tried to find a direct link for you on their site, but I couldn't however here is a link to the Zentangle Mosaic App review that was listed in the newsletter and it contains a link to the download sites. 

It is called Zentangle Mosaic and is just what I wanted. It is free to download but if you wish to use all the features then there is a subscription. You can subscribe monthly or yearly. I had a quick look around the free version and decided I wanted to try all the features so I subscribed for just a month, that was yesterday but already I have decided I want the annual subscription. The app will be a great boon to tanglers who don't have a blog of their own so that they can share their creations, but the biggest boon to me is the ability to save photos of all my tiles into different folders (called Mosaics on the app), you can decide which you want to be private and which you want to share with the other users.

I have created a mosaic on my app to keep all Joey's Roman Numeral tiles, it is private so it can't be seen by others on Mosaic yet, but at the end of the Numeral run I shall put them all together and post them here on my blog. Today it is V for the string and Joey made me laugh with her High Five joke turned into a string. It just seemed as though chord was made to outline the string. Pais I like because I do like tangles which go round and round, but I am not good with the composition of it. I never seem to be able to get it to drift and go behind each other like on the step-out examples.

Next came my gold version, I did away with the high five string and just used the five numeral in its standard form.

T U E

I have drawn a ZIA which is a trio of Zendalas for the Tackle It Tuesday Challenge this week. There are not many tangles beginning with U and even less that I like to draw so I ended up just using Up and Across. Ennies, Ecoism and Eez are the E tangles and the rest are Tri-bee, Tizzy, Tagh and a variation of Twing.

Roman Numeral lV

I was looking forward to Roman Numeral lV for Joey's Challenge this week. I thought it would be nice to get away from the all straight lines of l, ll, & lll, so it came as quite a surprise to find lV quite difficult. I am not sure if it is the string or the chosen tangles, but I found this quite a challenge. I have thrown away about half a dozen tiles, drawn on both sides, so that is 12 attempts. I just couldn't get it to look anything other  than busy. Even now I only have a duo today, but I am calling a halt.

My first tile has Mom drawn along the string, outlined in gold. The shapes of the amoeba are not very amoeba like but it was the best I could do.

In my second tile I drew the string in gold with wavy lines and used Mom as a border which I coloured with a touch of green in celebration of Paddy's Day.

Sh'rock

If I had thought about it harder I should have realised what the theme would be for the Diva's Challenge this week. Although I am, and always will be, a Yorkshire Tyke at heart I retired to Ireland where I am currently living, so this challenge is right up my street.

I will let you in on a little known secret, the Irish people captured a real live leprechaun to be their President ! Look at this photo, do you see what I mean lol? Shh, don't tell anyone I told you or they might kick me out of the country.

For the challenge I drew a string shaped like a leprechaun's hat and tangled it with Sh'rock and Ahh. The Sh'rock tangle pattern is an obvious choice, but I added the celebratory Ahh tangle pattern around the outside as this year Ireland is celebrating 100 years since the 1916 Rebellion (Easter Rising) which was one of the pivotal events leading to Irish Independence.

For added good luck I also drew this tile featuring a shamrock.

Something I discovered when I moved here is that you can buy shamrock and sour cream flavoured crisps, delicious!. 

M-O-N

We seem to be going through the days of the week at the moment, using the first three letters to choose tangle patterns from, for the Tackle It Tuesday Challenge. This week it is M O and N, rearranged these are all next to each other in the alphabet. I chose to use Mak-rah-Me, Maryhill, Minline, Nymph, Nipa and Organic.

Joey's lll

It seems that a trio of tiles is going to be my norm for Joey's Roman Numeral Challenge as I have done it again. I like to do a tile using the string exactly as Joey draws it, then I like to do one with the numeral outlined in gold and then a third just seems to appear from my pen:-D

My first tile was going to be exactly as Joey presented the challenge, but I was stricken with a bout of tangle dyslexia. I thought the first tangle pattern was Blooming Butter and it was only when I finished the tile that I read it again and realised it should have been Buttercup!

In the centre I used Quipple instead of Tipple. I am very unsure about the difference between a new tangle pattern and a variation. Quipple and Tipple are both official Zentangle® Tangles and yet, if asked, I would have said Quipple was a variation. Anyway here is my first tile:-

My second tile has the Roman Numerl lll outlined in gold and filled it with Tipple. I did the proper Buttercup tangle around the edges, although now I wish I had drawn it a bit smaller.

Lastly I did a Zendala especially for Joey as she is currently rather excited by Mandalas and has drawn two lovely Mandalas this last week which you can see if you scroll down her blog.

Sun

I've been rather busy lately but I am back with a two tile ZIA for the Tackle It Tuesday Challenge which is taking SUN as the letters to focus on. I have drawn Stoic, Static, Snail, Shattuck, Nipa, and Unme.