Alphabet Challenge Letter Q

We are at the alphabet letter Q in Joey's tangle challenge #162. While the capital Q rolled easily from my pen, I cannot say the same for q. Again, somehow I succeeded to hide the lowercase q really well (I simple couldn't think of an idea on how to incorporate it into the patterns), but this time I gave a clue. Patterns new to me were q-belle and quoval.

So here we go with the capital Q first.

Patterns: Q-Belle, Quoval

And this is the oooqward lowercase q.

Patterns: Q-Belle, Quib, Quare

Animal Happy Day

Who says horses don't have fun?

Human Happy Day

Pet Adoption - Right! A cat, a rabbit and a dog. Or is it? These are a series of posters in Mumbai, India, to promote homeless animal adoption. It's genius. To visit the website and see the images larger click here.

Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: R
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: P

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Inspired by... Faux Weave

Recently an email snowed into my inbox from the website A Little Time (I subscribed to it) by Helen Williams, where she introduced us to her new tangle pattern Faux Weave. I knew right away I had to give that tangle a try. It is again a one stroke pattern for which I am actually not very talented, but after reading her convincing easy-to-do instruction, no 10 horses would have stopped me. Pen in hand, her website open in my browser, I started my Faux Weave exercise... and, surprise, surprise, a few minutes later I drew my version of it using her meanwhile famous 'wonky grid' and was quite satisfied.

Pattern: Faux Weave in wonky grid

Two days later I still felt a nag a the back of my mind, hmmm... there is more to the tangle. Back to the drawing board and I came up with Faux Weave World.

Pattern: Faux Weave World

As soon as the circle version was done, I went back to my drawing board and tried different shapes until I had the triangle version.

Pattern: Faux Weave Hershey

Okay, great, I like that too, but.... What if I aim at the straight line ends narrow and wide...more like a Paradox. And a flowery Faux Weave was born.

Pattern: Flowery Faux Weave 

Next day the flowery version idea got bigger...Here on a piece of paper that I still had from my messy experiment with eye shadow. I had since rubbed off all the loose eye shadow and the tile looked great to be used for a special tangle.

Pattern: Faux Weave Pedal Flower

I had just finished another tile the next when Faux Weave was creeping in my conscious again. What if I stack Faux Weave segments on a string? So here we have Faux Weave as String Beads.

Pattern: Faux Weave String Beads

And finally! Faux Weave Balls. Of course!

Pattern: Faux Weave Balls

Please note that all these Faux Weave segments were drawn with ONE stroke! Yes, I finally did it.

What is your Faux Weave version?

Anybody reading this post, if you have an idea how you like to draw Faux Weave - as a Monotangle or combined with others - you can put your link to your tangle in the comment section and let me know whether I may add your image to this page as well. It would be my honor to add it here and have a mile long page to scroll. And please, click here to let Helen know of your version, too, and place the link on her page as well. I am sure she'll love that.

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DIVA Challenge 312

DIVA challenge #312 forces me to spill my coffee to create a stain. My mum would have a word with DIVA, I am sure.

Since my spills are never beautiful I got creative and used a 'blending palette" (a trick I saw on Bine's site - but because I don't have the pro tool I used a plastic sheet), spread some watercolor onto it, smeared it around, dipped an upside-down mug into the smear and twisted it a few times. Voila, my coffee spill art on plastic. I pressed my tile onto the mess I created and carefully lifted it off. To quicken the drying process I scattered sand onto the wet stain.

The sand actually sticks on the watercolor, but to be on the safe side, I spilled liquid glue over the sand and let it dry over night. Perfect. Well, I haven't done that yet on this tile, but on a test tile. Ouch, I forgot to take an image prior to tangle the tile.

Patterns used are kensington, meringue, reef, mooka, and leafing.

Patterns: Kensington, Meringue, Reef, Mooka, Leafing
on watercolor stains covered with sand

Update April 24th: I glued my sand texture to the tile, let it dry two days and here is the result. Except of losing a bit of texture and some added smears the glue worked perfectly. The tile is glued into my sketchbook and there is no sticking pages.

Same tile as above, but now with glue added to immortalize
the sand to the tile. 

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Alphabet Challenge Letter P

Peeee-Time. We are at the letter P with Joey's Letter Challenge and her chosen tangle pattern is pea-fea. Pea-fea certainly means peacock feather, however, I succeeded again to hide that well and make a leaf-looking pea-fea instead (something about leaves...). When I checked the net for other 'p' patterns I felt inundated by the amount of beautiful and intriguing tangles. The choice was hard and in the end I ended up learning 6 new tangles (pea-fea included). Loved every bit of it.

First is my capital P and I drew 3 pea-fea tangelations. The other new patterns are plandi (what a georgeous tangle!), poly-nil (drew 5 of them), and pufff. And the all reliable printemps.

Patterns: Pea-Fea, Plandi, Poly-Nil, Pufff, Printemps

The lowercase p sports a more recognizable pea-fea, but off leash. The new patterns are pinho which is similar, well, the same as echoism, and plum leaf. It is funny how I am not particularly fond of echoism (I banned a ONE loop combination into a corner on my IAST 191 challenge tile), but love pinho. Must be the name. Again with printemps giving the tile a bit more volume.

Patterns: Pea-Fea, Pinho, Plum Leaf, Printemps

Animal Happy Day

Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: Q
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: O

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IAST Challenge 192

It's a String Thing challenge #192 was a bit of a nutcracker for me. Three tries and still only half happy. I also don't seem to get the warped eggs tangle. Well, there is always next week challenge to redeem myself.

First flop - I used glitter nail polish and glued sand onto the tile.

Patterns: Hearts-A-Flutter, Warped Eggs, Msst
Glitter nail polish and sand

Second flop - with glitter nail polish

Patterns: Hearts-A-Flutter, Warped Eggs, Msst
Glitter nail polish

Third half flop - with glitter gel pen and nail polish

Patterns: Hearts-A-Flutter, Warped Eggs, Msst
Glitter nail polish

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Alphabet Challenge Letter O

While this week's alphabet letter challenge is O and we are to use O2 as the prevailing tangle, here in Thailand we celebrate Thai New Year, or Songkran. Traditionally the younger dipped fingers in a silver bowl of water and gently sprayed their elders to indicate honor and respect. Today the tradition has somewhat changed and many prefer to stay home and safe as it can get quite wild. Where I live we will have our big day this coming April 18th. But I digress...

I search the net for more O named patterns that go along with O2 and found two new ones I fell instantly in love with: olin and opally. Just to be introduced to these two patterns made this particular challenge worth its entire while. Thanks, Joey.

So here my tile with tons of Os everywhere, but to be considered my capital O!!!

Patterns: O2, Onamato, Olin

My lowercase o is more subdued, not so flashy as most of my tiles end up to be, but, if you can see it, I enhanced the tiny 'o's glued to the big 'O's with sparking nail polish. After the disaster with my eye shadow experience I hit the bullseye with rose glitter nail polish.

Patterns: O2, Opally, Glitter Nail Polish

Animal Happy Day

Do you know Eldad Hagar?

I am sure many of the tanglers all over the world love animals, have a pet, or, in some small (or big) way lent a helping hand to an animal in distress. Some of the tanglers may even know the man, who I admire from afar, Eldad Hagar. He has become the leading animal rescuer for mainly street dogs in L.A., USA, but doesn't shy away from going a step or two further. I have been following his rescue missions on YouTube for years and always wondered, who is this Hope for Paws guy? If you wonder, too, wonder no longer. Here the impressive interview with this 'extreme' dog rescuer.

His videos can be found at youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/eldad75/videos

I have to warn you though. If you start watching one video you may well end up clicking on the next and next....until you forget picking up your kids from school. Here a sampling:

Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: P
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: N

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Alphabet Challenge Letter N

This is week 14 in Joey's 'Finish my Tile' Challenge and it is the letter N. As is the norm in my 'creativity' I have to wait two or three days until ideas form in my head. Sort of familiarize myself with the target at hand. Wasn't any different this week with the exception, I shot way past the target this time.

I made the blue tile first. While working on it I realized it was getting more and  more difficult to find the n... or N. Maybe there wasn't ever an N and I completely messed up on the objective. Well, there are no mistakes in tangeling and I am not the first. So here to the blue tile and and narwal hides the low-case n.

Patterns: Natti, Narwal, Nzeppel

Above image shows, I cannot draw natti (by Anita Aspfors Westin). I never spent so much time practicing such a simple Zentangle pattern as natti and still cannot draw it. I followed the step-out to a T, but it never looked like all the other natti drawings I have seen. So for the N tile I changed my approach to the pattern and started with 2 long parallel lines.

Patterns: Natti by Anita Asphors Westin
Step-out variation by me

Now natti will never be a mountainous barrier to my tangle drawing ability. And below my capital N - clearly visible.

Patterns: Natti, Nia Kai, Nesting

Updated the page by adding another n low.

Patterns: Natti, Neuron, Nymph

Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: O
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: M

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IAST Challenge 191

I really wanted to give this one a no-go, but because I have a brain block with Joey's alphabet challenge - still! - I opted for It's a String Thing IAST #191, which is very much in accordance with upcoming Easter. Although I am not really a keeko fan, not an echoism fan either (poor echoism, again I banned a pattern into the corner - out of the way), and zenith...zenith is OK. However, what really brought on the interest was mel mel by Adele Bruno and no, I don't say that to get into her cookie jar. Flower. Round form. Loops. Leaves. That is more my liking. Yes, I can honestly say I love mel mel.

I actually drew the tile upside down. When I was finished and looked at it from a distance, I noticed the 'egg' was falling out of its 'basket'. So I turned it 180 degrees and hence saved the egg.

Patterns: Mel Mel, Keeko, Zenith, Echoism

Because the tile looks so dull, I decided to select all the yellow color and enhance it in Photoshop. Quite a difference. Click on it and look at the tile enlarged.

 

Patterns: Mel Mel, Keeko, Zenith, Echoism

Here a close up, tons of tiny little dots.

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IAST Challenge 190

This week's IAST (It's a String Thing) challenge #190 was a real treat. I was introduced to Ria Matheussen's new pattern NOUVART and loved it right after I did the first few drawing lines. It is simple, really looks like new art, but after I finsihed my first IAST tile, I suddenly had a different feel for the pattern.

Patterns: Nouvart, Windfall, Box Spirals

I thought maybe with less windfall and box spirals I would know what it was that kept my mind going. I tried another tile, but something was still not right...

Patterns: Nouvart, Windfall, Box Spirals

So I started another tile and all of a sudden it became crystal clear. Click here to visit my Inspired by... Nouvart page to see the nag I had at the back of my head ever since drawing the IAST 190 tile.

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Inspired by... Nouvart

It was with the It's a String Thing IAST #190 challenge that I saw Ria Matheussen's new pattern Nouvart in a different way. I may not yet have the perfect tile, but the vision is clear.

It started when I drew the sketch for the IAST #190 tile. I never drew Nouvart before, so I thought a practice session can't hurt. Below the sketch, which I later finished with tipple. The dirt on the tile is eye shadow. Ria mentioned in her latest post Candles, Watercolour and Bistre to use Bistre Powder. Me, having no idea what Bistre powder is, thought eye shadow will do and made the biggest mess in my personal Zentangle carrier. The eye shadow was everywhere and stained anything.

Patterns: Nouvart, Tipple

My IAST #190 is based on this sketch, but in the back of my mind there was something else nagging me. So I started another tile, a fun tile - non-IAST, and combined nouvart and abeko.

Patterns: Nouvart, Abeko

While drawing above tile, I stuck some nouvart in the corner to fill the emptiness... and while drawing it, it all of a sudden hit me: EUREKA, I see it now!!!!! Crystal!!!! So I drew 2 more tiles and although I love them both, I am not there yet. Close though, but something is still missing. Maybe later... If anyone sees what is missing, let me know.

Pattern: Nouvart as a natural crystal

Pattern: Nouvart as a natural colored crystal

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