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!

Challenge 30

This week the challenge is guest hosted by Christina Vandervlist.  She has us using our initials as strings.  I do this quite a bit as sometimes I'm at a loss of where to start.  If I'm making a tangle for someone, I'll use there initial as a starting point. 

As my initials are JL, I used cursive letters to add more interest to the shapes in the string.  I was afraid that JL on top of each other would look like an inverted T.  I tried some new tangles on this challenge and maybe developed a new one.  I'm still tweaking it and need to come up with a name.  :)

J and L over one another.  Lots of loops!

All done!  I had to fight myself to make sure I didn't fill in every space.

String Theory v. IV - Diva's Challenge 29

Happy 4th of July to all you Americans out there!  Happy new challenge Monday to everyone else!

This week I got to do the challenge in wonderful quiet as my Husband and sons headed off this morning to go camping.  It's amazing how much quicker I can get this done without being pulled to do something else every 15 minutes or so.  :)  Because they are off camping, Husband took my camera so please forgive the poor quality of the photos.  Yea for iPhone cameras though!

I thought the idea of using an actual string to make the string for the challenge this week was a super idea.  I may have to try this on larger pieces.  I am always perplexed when doing a large ZIA on the best way to divide up the space.  Using an actual string will be a nice way to solve that I think. 



 I used my son's yoyo as my string.  It already had a weight attached. 

I laid down the yoyo as I knew that I wanted part of the circle in the tangle but not all of it (the yoyo is a bit large) so I set it in the corner and draped the string on the tile.  This is the first draping and I thought it looked good, so I went with it.










Next, I traced around the edge of the yoyo and followed the string around with the pencil.



 I used the die to pick my tangles this time.  Lucky for me, the die chose some of my favorites.  :)  Blogger is giving me a hard time this morning and uploading this tile on it's side.  I know there really is no top of bottom, but I like this tile with the tipple in the bottom left corner.

So, thanks to the Diva for another great challenge and thanks to my family for going camping.

Trip to Tripoli: A new challenge and pattern

When I opened my email on Sunday and saw that Rick and Maria at Zentangle had a new pattern for us, I just knew that the challenge this week would be to use Tripoli in a tangle.  New patterns are always a challenge for me.  Sometimes I can pick them right up and sometimes they are a struggle.  Luckily Tripoli is a bit of both while not being too challenging.  I seem to get a bit out of sorts as the pattern extends out from the center but hopefully some practice will fix that right up.  It is fun to see the different variations in the triangles.

A little closer look at the detail in the triangles.