Black & White Week

well well, I'm getting a blog post done midweek, not on Saturday ha!

I've settled in to some steady tangle time, after work, after dinner, using that time to sit and tangle.

This week, I managed to do three challenges, and they all managed to be "classic zentangle" with a tile (drawn into my sketchbook), a string, and patterns all in black ink on white paper, with shading!

And here they are

The Diva Challenge:

Jessica Davies, who gave us the wonderful heart challenge last week, has gone one step further to a REAL CHALLENGE...using Peaknuckle! ack!

But I found out how EXTREMELY cool that tangle is, when I played with it. I love that you put S's down in columns, and when you're finished, there's nary a trace of S's, just lovely curvy cascades.








This is the string I created, and here is the tile:

Peaknuckle is in the upper right and lower left, with Indyrella, Flux, Niuroda, Florz, and Diva Dance. Once I put the shading in...wow!

the Joey challenge has a guest blogger, too: Susie (whose style I absolutely adore)

She gave us a start, with a very unique string, and some Asian Fan in there.

This is what I did for that challenge:

I had a hard time knowing what to do, so after I got the string and Asian Fan start, I put it aside for a day, then came back to it. I put a dangling Domizil in there, then *tried* to make something graphic and bold (that's those leafy looking things to the right of the Asian Fans)...but though they don't look anything like the pattern I was trying for, they are still kinda cute and quirky. I might develop those later.

Aloha by Suzanne Fluhr is that large shiny leaf looking thing, and then some Sevaw in the background, and some bubbly tipple down there on the right.

One last challenge, just to myself...I got the idea from Susie, who is going through the refreshers on Tangle Patterns. So this one is Refresher 157 with  Molygon, ZooLoo, Tattle, and Wocar. Natti is part of that refresher, but I couldn't get it to fit at all.

   ZooLoo is the one on the bottom left, with a larger individual motif in the center....FUN! and I like the way it turns out. Wocar is the upper left and I don't fancy it much. Tattle was fun, too. Getting back into the pile of tangles is a good thing, man. 

I did do one colored tile, using that delightful string from last week's Joey Challenge:

This dark blood red...wow. it needed something dramatic and I think all that onomato on a swirl just works. :) 

and now for two baby pictures

I'm not so sure about you

How did you get SO cynical, so young!

Isn't he just something? In both of these pictures, he looks exactly like his dad. hahahaha! and it was his dad who had him in the carrier. This was at the family reunion. His name tag says Orion, Heidi's Grandson.

Fun times!

Heart of my Heart

Wow my new job is not giving me as much time to blog as I used to have...nor tangle as much, either. It's real nice to be sitting at a desk, with a little bit of time between calls with pretty much free rein with what we were allowed to do...I tangled non-stop back in those days :)

The new job, no down time, and besides I'm in training and still doing new employee stuff, and such. And I earned beaucoup bucks this past week. And that's alright with me.

So, I did get a couple of challenges done, and a couple of swap bot swaps sent.

The Diva this week has a guest blogger Jessica Davies, whose recent bout with heart issues drove her to many meditative "heart" tiles and tangles. She did beautiful things, and challenged us to use a heart string.

This is what I did:

Hollibaugh Heart

And here is a picture for you: bebeh feet!

I LOVED the challenge at Joey's this time. Michele Wynne is the guest blogger while Joey takes the summer off and if you haven't seen Michele's blog post about it, get on over there now!. Some mighty impressive and inspirational stuff there...thanks, Michele!

The challenge is centered on a string: Rope by Margaret Bremner.

                                                                                 I mean I want to make a dozen tiles with this string and do them all! woo!

And this is what I made of it:

this is in my sketchbook on a tile sized section. It's going to be one of those when I go back through old sketchbooks, I'll be so happy to see this one again. It was fun to do, and I think it's quite enjoyable to look at.

Telis in the upper left and bottom center; flux; a version of b'tweed; remo; pinbawl with nippa; echoism; b'tweed; more telis, and flux with lots of auras. The shading on this...sigh...shading is magic.

at a recent family reunion, my Aunt Dorothy wanted to hold the baby. :) she walked around with him a bit then sat down and he fell asleep SOLID...and so did her arm! ha!

and here he is on another shoulder, looking around some more. My little angel baby. Slurp!















I got to feed Orion second breakfast today, and he fell asleep in my arms. When I put him into his little seat, his hands startled, but he stayed asleep...

his hands stayed all up and alert for a long time!

Now, back to tangle stuff.

Here are a couple of things I've sent on for swap bot:

this is all about the ATC, with a Bee theme. Since bunso has always reminded me of bees it came to mind immediately.

And, with the ATC I decorated a notecard to send along, and inspired by the heart theme from the Diva, and flat out mimicking something I saw on a blog somewhere, made this heart and ribbons...and LOOKATIT! I was absolutely delighted with how that shading turned out!








One more....

This is a first round for a pass & paste...I can't wait to get it back, some time, when everyone else gets a chance to put something.

So, hopefully I'll get used to my new schedule quickly, and be able to post things before Saturday in upcoming weeks...meanwhile...

Who melts my heart? Orion Isaac Spencer Hartley, that's who...my sweetest angel baby love bean.

Diva and Joey and Pass and Paste! And Orion!

there's a few here today. I'm including the Diva Challenge and Joey's,, but I thought I'd lead with a challenge on swap bot, because there are a few people who might be interested to see how the "pass and paste" turned out.

Pass and paste is similar to the Traveling Tangles project, but it involves four artists and a "round robin" type postcard. You make a blank postcard out of card stock, divided into four sections, and the first artist creates something in one of the squares. Four lines on the back, where each artist can put their name, or something about what they've created. Then you put your own address ans a stamp on it, slip it in an envelope, and mail it to the next person, who does something in one of the squares USING AN ELEMENT OR TWO from the completed squares, and then sends it to the next, until all four sections are filled up. Neat, eh?

In my case, I got a card that already had three squares filled in, and I did the lower right square to finish it, and I just popped it in the mail to Barbara, whose address was on it.

This is what I received:

Lots of Knightsbridge some Onomato, I see Tagh, Hollibaugh, Aah, Tipple, Well, and I JUST LOVE the pearlized perfs in the upper right. The impressive, swirly pattern in the upper right...I think that is Joki...Cecily, could you correct me if I'm wrong?

Oh! and the red roses are fabric that have been appliqued to the card...neat, huh?


Well, using some of the patterns straight off these sections, I went for it:

the roses inspired me, so I made a bunch of String Roses

a tutorial for string roses here

then wanted something water looking, so Nippa which continued the curve started in Knightsbridge...and I did teeny tiny Knightsbridge "under" the nippa. Then I picked up the Well from the upper right, Tagh from the upper left, with Beelight curves in there, and finished off with some Hollibaugh in the very back. This was fun to do, and I've put two "starts" in the mail, and can hardly wait to see what everyone does with them.

I also created something for the Diva Challenge this week. The theme was "home"...well, I live in a high rise apartment, on the fifth floor, so I started with that (Dex):

check that Cubine in there...don't know why, just wanted it in there.

Then I put in favorite patterns (the ones I feel 'at home' with, eh?) such as Hollibaugh, Fricle, N'Zeppel, Flux, Shnek, Jute, some more Nippa with a few individual Cypresses swirls, and ribbons, with black perfs. Oh...Printemps!And for a change of pace, I did all my shading with pen rather than graphite...my favorite part is where Hollibaugh and Printemps are playing together.

And at long last I come back to the Joey Challenge...she presented us with an auraknot string, and asked us to do stars. I was just in the mood for Auraknot, so that's what I did, after putting the string on a sort of splotchy tile:

with some tipple in the corners...If I were to use a tile like this again, I'd incorporate the splotchiness into the string more. But...this isn't too bad. Oh, there's Hollibaugh weaving in among the auraknot auras, too.

Orion started smiling last week! what fun!

Oh....I LIKE you, Opa!

full of smiles

Wylie makes a great Opa

the wonderful thing about this boy right now is that he wants to be held while sleeping...mama doesn't think it's all that great but every Gramma I've talked to about this says Yay! babies asleep in arms! I mean, we even managed a big shopping day the other day...when Mama was trying on things, YaYa held the baby...and when I needed to select and try on, Mama held him. He made it through a feeding and two naps while we circulated around the thrift store. Just wonderful!

well aren't you interesting to look at.