Butterflies!

While working on my housewarming piece for my friend, I kept looking at the butterflies.  I really like them in that piece.  Plus, butterflies!  So, I decided that I was going to work on a series of them.  I have another friend that has a series of snowflakes at her house that are lovely.  Hers are photographs but are small squares that are framed very simply.  They look great in a grid on her wall.

So far I have done two.  I decided to add a color to the bodies.  So far I have silver and gold but will try some of the gel pens that I have gotten for the following drawings.  I really like the two so far.  They are light and elegant, to me anyway.  I'd love to hear what you think!



Silver Butterfly




Gold Butterfly



Kiss My Grids!

The challenge this week from The Diva is to create our tangle using only grid patterns.  I love the grid patterns.  Grids help me to stay evenly spaced.  I like even patterns.  I think it is because the freehand patterns tend to intimidate me a bit.

Every time I think of the name of this challenge, I can hear the actress on "Alice" saying "Kiss my grits!"  Then I am thinking of grits and want to make some.  I know that grits aren't for everyone but they are certainly for me.  I grew up in Tennessee and a full breakfast is not complete without them.  When we were on vacation I had Grits and Fried Green Tomato Napoleon with fresh Gulf Shrimp.  SO GOOD!  Anyone who doesn't like grits, I think it is because you have not had good ones.  Cheese grits are divine and all grits should be creamy and loaded with butter. :)

So, on to the grids.  I'm getting hungry here.  My first go at the challenge I did on the back of a note card.  A friend recently got married and brought me her old note cards to tangle on.  I have been using them for doodles and practice but thought I'd see how they work on a "real" tangle.  The paper did well.  There may be more this size in the future.  Using the theme of the challenge for inspiration, I used a mouth as a string.  Then the idea of grits are there in the gingham pattern.  I think of gingham as a "southern" pattern.  I used my own Huggybear pattern in the background. I skipped the little white dots this time.

I wanted to do a tangle for this challenge that was different , so I tried again.  This time I used 3.5" square of watercolor paper and gridded the whole thing.  I wasn't sure what to do for a string so I just looped around and ended up with this popcorn looking shape.  I used Eye-Wa for the background and a dressed up Bales as the center.  Bales looks like Puff though.  I have been wanting to learn Puff but the center squares keep me away so maybe I'll try Bales this way when I want to make Puff.  I hope you enjoy them.  I can't wait to see more of what you all have done!

Housewarming

I have a friend who loves nature and has just bought a new house.  While I haven't seen her new house yet, I think that she has more wall space than at her old house so I decided to make her some art!  Hopefully she will enjoy it. 

This piece was my biggest one yet.  At 12" X 18", it took a little wile to finish.  It was inspired by an album cover from one of Erik Friedlander's albums.  Since I used a standard size, I was able to find a really nice frame at Michael's right off the shelf.

I plan on giving it to her this weekend. 

The finished piece in it's frame.



A little closer look at the piece.



Assunta - Challenge # 36

When the Zentangle email arrived last week, I knew a new tangle was waiting for me.  I was excited that there was a new tangle to learn and also glad that it came after the weekly challenge had been posted.  I like having a little time to play and work out a new tangle.  At first, Assunta looked like it might be too complicated for me.  But then I realized that Assunta would always be too complicated if I never tried it out.  Boy am I glad that I did.  I start with a penciled grid so that my lines are evenly spaced. My curves aren't so uniform but I didn't do too badly I think.

I really like the possibility of variation with Assunta.  It can be dark if you need dark, or light when you need light.  Lots of places to add texture as well which is nice.  I enjoyed working with it and look forward to using it again soon!  Thanks Rick for making it up.  Happy Belated Birthday to Maria!

Time out for a photo or two.

Part of the reason I have been distracted in the last month is that I was participating in the SoFoBoMo (Solo Photo Book Month for short.)  Like the writing challenge that you may have heard of, this gives a photographer one month to take photos and create a PDF book.  Check out their website for more details.  If you love photos this is a fun challenge.  You don't need a fancy camera, I've seen some great iPhone photo books, or fancy anything.  Just the time, the desire and BAM! you're there.

I share mine with you here.  While you are on the site, check out some of the other books too.  There are some super talented people out there.  You can download the books as well if there is one that tickles your fancy.

Tile on a Tile - Challenge 35

It feels like forever since I've blogged and posted!  I was visiting family for two weeks and got out of the swing of things.  I think that I'm almost back though and to prove it, I have done and will post this weeks challenge in a timely fashion!

This week The Diva's challenge was guest hosted by Margaret Bremner of http://www.enthusiasticartist.blogspot.com/.  I loved Margaret's challenge tiles and thought they looked so wonderful!  It was fun to play with the thickness of the border.  Something that I think I shall keep in mind for the future.

So, as it is late and I'm still feeling rusty, I will get to the reason you are here, my tile...

I hope that you like it!

I've been away

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while.  My family and I were away on our summer vacation and my plan of tangling while on the road didn't pan out as I thought it would.

This vacation was a chance to get away and for me to work on my photo book project.  This is a yearly challenge by the great folks at SoFoBoMo.  Hit the link and see what great photo books people are making around the world.  You can see mine here.  I am still working on my PDF for the SoFoBoMo site.  I'm running into more of an issue than I did last year.  I still have a week to get it figured out though.  I sure wish I remember how I did it last year....

Anyway, I'm working on this week's challenge.  I hope to have it up tomorrow but I also have to do some back to school shopping.  Yikes!  It's almost time to send the oldest back and the youngest off to pre-school.

I hope you are having a great week and I'll post again soon!