Joey's Weekly Challenge 200 - Exeter

I was not to miss this! I pledged that no matter the tangle, no matter the string, I will do this one for sure because it is a milestone: Joey's Weekly Challenge #200! Congratulations, Joey, and tons of thanks for keeping us followers interested in your varying challenges!!!

The aim of this game is to use the tangle Exeter and maneuver it into the tanglepatterns.com string #165. When mine was finished I had a bit of trouble signing it. It looked wrong in the north/south position and it looked wrong in the south/north position. East/west and vice versa didn't even qualify for positioning. Hence I posted the same tile twice, and let you decided, which one looks right way up.

Patterns: Exeter, Toodles, Tipple

Upside down version

Animal Happy Day

Today my 'Animal Happy Day' is my 'Animal Lucky Day' or my 'Human Hero of the Day' Day and it is not a video, but a webpage link. Please watch how a selfless young man rescues his neighbor's dog while the house starts to collapse. (1.30).
Click here.

And now something completely different

Could I have one tube of bathroom, one tube of bedroom, a tube of living room, and.....oh, of course, a kitchen tube, please. No kidding, this might well be our future hunt for living space and I love it!
Click here.

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IAST Challenge 225 Dewd & 226 Rumpus

Adele Bruno's last challenge (IAST #226) sports one of the latest Zentangle HQ tangle - Rumpus. I have already made a few Rumpus tiles, but can we ever have enough? Variations are endless and to experiment is the fun part for me. Hence below I drew one tile with leafy-like petals and in the other the petals are all torn, broken,  and only "inner strength" hold them together.

Patterns: Rumpus, Box Spiral, Tipple, and a butterfly

Patterns: Rumpus, Tipple, Knightsbridge

This is my version of IAST #225 with yet another new HQ tangle - Dewd. I didn't send it in as it was more of a test tile, testing tiny circles, or better, testing me drawing tiny circles. I was inspired by Ria Matheussen's Diva tile #338. I couldn't quite imagine how one can draw tons of small circles and each one is the same in size as its neighbor. Hence I used this IAST challenge as my tiny circles test.

As it turned out, it was not so much the circles' sizes I should have worried about, but the cramping up of my fingers. Several times I had to shake my wrist, stretch my fingers and consciously tell myself to loosen my iron grip on the pen.

However, I did experience the 'Zen' moment every once in a while.

Patterns: Dewd and tiny Tipple

Animal Happy Day 

What a life!!!!

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DIVA Challenge 347 - Objects

DIVA Challenge #347 is easy: gather some objects and use them as the string; use tangles of your choice. Then why did I make it so difficult for myself?

My first attempt was using the simplified icon of a figure skater. After all, I thought, the Winter Olympics 2018 in SK's PyeongChang start Feb 9th. As is obvious, a) my figure skater is a bit pregnant and b) my source is no object.

Patterns: Narwal, Nicole's Ice Flakes, Frost Flower, Henna Drum

I didn't fare better with my second, the geometrical, attempt. Saw some funny shoes sculptures on a webpage and picked one as my misguided 'object'.

Patterns: Florz, Ragz, Hypnotic, Nzeppel,
Diva Dance, Footlites, Flux, Lichen

For more funny shoes sculptures like this flamingo, click here.

Last, but not least, my third and final, and most successful, attempt on choosing 'objects': shells and a dried leaf that hence has become an object. Don't argue; you'd lose.

Patterns: Florz, Onomato, Tipple, a somewhat version of Knitting,
or influenced by Knitting.

Animal Happy Day

This is my sleepy, very happy and extremely content senior dog Shadow. Thanks to new meds, his long-time suffering of itchy skin, everywhere and all the time no matter how many medical baths, is finally in the past. Thanks heaven!

My darling Shadow practicing his favorite Yoga position.

From designated meat on the table to running and playing in the garden.

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Joey's Weekly Challenge 199 - Didada

Short and to the point: Here is my contribution to Joey's weekly Challenge 200-1. The tangle is Didada and the string #237. I could have done more, but I am a bit in a hurry. There just aren't enough hours in a day!!!

Patterns: Didada, Narwal, Hollibaugh

Animal Happy Day

This is cool! Yes, it is cold outside but still, this is super cool!!

Two images I thought are a perfect way to launch animal torture awareness campaign ads. You may have similar campaigns running in your country (not mine! but we ban cigarette smoking on several tourist resort beaches as of Feb 1, 2018), but I lift my non-existing hat to Australia.

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DIVA Challenge 346 - Phicops

DIVA Challenge #346 brings Phicops and Huggins together on one tile. I am familiar with both tangles so I appreciated the opportunity to play around with Phicops a bit. One Phicops I drew with the segments looking from the inside out and the other from the outside in. And no, there is no Betweed at the bottom, but the middle part got pulled up slightly, half revealing what is going on underneath Phicops' top layer...when drawn from the inside out. (I always wanted to know that)

Top tile I slightly manipulated in Photoshop, giving it more shadow...below is the original all handmade. I could have done the shading by hand, but I didn't dare. Each time I used the stump more and more paper fiber came off. This is watercolor paper and I completely soaked it in water several times because I wanted to try the soap bubble background effect. I can now safely say that the trick doesn't work with watercolor and you need distress ink, which I don't have. In case you are interested, click on the link.

Patterns: Phicops, Huggins

The original

Animal Happy Days

Shadow was in the play mood this morning. Hide and seek is on. He hides, I seek. After an hour I finally found something that indicated this could be my dog. Yes!

"Com'on, get out of there!"
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Pitties and Kids

If this isn't one of the best pitty/kids video.... Enjoy! (1.50)

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Joey's Weekly Challenge 198 - Ta-Da

Joey over at Joey's Weekly Challenge #198 started a new challenge theme: Tangled in a String. As with Adele's challenge she gives us a string and a tangle and we followers make the best of it. At least we try.

This week the tangle is Ta-Da and I planned to place two Ta-Das in opposite corners as the string leads us. Then I thought, oops, maybe somebody else already had this fantastic and unique idea. So I made a slight alteration to the bottom left Ta-Da and now I have a real Ta-Da facing an impostor Ta-Da. Hence forward this tile is now called "Fake Ta-Da in Pink".

Pattern: Ta-Da

Animal Happy Day

Ah, when I saw this video, I had to share it with you. The main character is Faa Mai, an elephant in a Thai Sanctuary, and the 'play thing' for Faa Mai is played by Lek Chailert, the founder. Your heart will melt. Here a link to the short article. I am glad Thailand has people like Lek Chailert! (0:58)

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IAST Challenge 224 - Toodles

WOW! I just noticed my last IAST challenge contribution was #209 with Spoken end of August 2017. So it was about time I joined Adele again. IAST #224 is about the New Year with an '18' string, and the old year with tangles created in 2017, such as Toodles. I already created two posts with Toodles and lots of Toodles tangelations (this one and this one2)...why not a 3rd? Besides, this tangle is a real treat, you can never have enough publications! Yes, mam!

So here my 2nd attempt at the '18' string with Toodles tile. I themed it "Tangled Up In Blue", a song by Bob Dylan. Notice the undeniable resemblance to the one below. Yes, once again I had something in my mind and both results went awry. It was already Saturday night and I had to make the decision, which to send off.  So I did my "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" and the one themed "Tangled Up in Blue" left to land in Adele's inbox.

"Tangled Up in Blue" with patterns Toodles and Slowpoke

Below the "other one". You may notice the little lines at the edges of the tile. These are strategically well-placed distraction lines so your eyes won't notice the mess I made with the gel pen - again (!).

sng: "Trudi!!!!! I am still doing it!"
Trudi: "Duh! Told you to use the gel pen for the very last task and then don't touch the tile for 24 hours so it can dry. "
sng: "I did! It happened WHILE I was USING the gel."
Trudi: "Pick up Cribbage!"

Patterns: Toodles, Slowpoke

Animal Happy Days

Don't think Shadow has only a small-bed problem. Here you can clearly see that if provided with a huge double pillow bed he still has something hanging off. Now he complains about losing orientation when on the pillow, having a hard time to find his way off the pillow - hence the 'radar position'.

"Mum, will you ever get it right?"


For this post I chose another 'elephant rescues elephant' video. This time two female elephants involved in preventing a baby elephant from drowning. Keep an eye on the back of the video, too, where a fenced off elephant gets visibly distressed from the ordeal. (0:51 - no sound)

Thanks for stopping by!

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Joey's Weekly Challenge 197 - Mirrored Pencils

First Zentangle challenge of the New Year comes straight from Canada: Joey's weekly challenge #197 featuring a string of two pencils positioned tip to tip. Tangles are not specified, but we are to draw inside the pencil on one side and outside the pencil on the other. If you have no idea what I am talking about...

....here my three contributions or check out the link above to see what the 'real' challenge string looks like. With the yellow tile I looked for a radial tangle as I thought the many corners would be ideal for such a pattern. Hence Veezy.

Pattern: Veezy

And again, I couldn't resist and violated the 'where we are supposed to draw only' rule. But note, I just penciled it in, so it is not really there. In other words, if Joey has us do something with the white space in her next challenge, I can erase! In this tile I used only Nzeppel, but instead of shading the round shapes I shaded some of the lines.

Pattern: Nzeppel

This was actually the first tile I drew of the three. Somehow I thought the many tangles didn't bring it. Or maybe the two different sized pencil strings make it look awkward. Anyway, after this tile I had to try monotangle tiles and for me the result was a lot better. (That is why I placed them first)

Patterns: Nzeppel, Pop-Cloud, Toodles, Molygon

Animal Happy Day

When I saw this video I was instantly thinking of me and Shadow, my 15+ year old Cocker. With age his back legs have become weak and taking the steps has become cumbersome. But help is not far. I do  exactly the same as the mother elephant does in the video only I don't use my nose.




Apropos Shadow. Recently he reminded me he needs a bigger doggy bed. He complained that he just can't get it all in.

He sleeps now in my bed!

Then he had attracted a new friend, DAM (in Thai: Black). Dam is one of my neighbors' very friendly cat with the most beautiful golden eyes (the image does not justify the color!). Recently he conducted a study, went from house to house to test the softest pillows. Guess what, I won.

Dam, testing pillows

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Inspired by... December 2017 with Rumpus

... Alien Spore by Nicole Dreyer - The colored one is on the cover of my 5th Tangle Journal - upside-down.

Patterns: Alien Spore, Zinger, Henna Drum, Tipple stones

Patterns: Alien Spore, Mooka, Zinger, Tipple, Printemps, Fescu

... Rumpus. It was another 12-Days-of-December new tangle by Zentangle HQ. I admit the tangle didn't flow easily from my pen albeit intense practice. Then I changed my approach to drawing circles and now this tangle does not give me headaches anymore.

Pattern: Rumpus

Here my approach to Rumpus: it works better for me if I outline with big circles where the leaves go.

Rumpus tangle string

This is actually one of my Rumpus practices once I got the circle idea. I was surprised how much easier it was and instead of starting all over (and on drawing paper) I erased all the ugly pencil sketches around it and inked and colored what I considered the OK parts.

Pattern: Rumpus - from rough practice sketch to color

The following Rumpus tile after I had some more practices...I started to "get it".

Pattern: Rumpus

...Joey's Blob on her 'Kids' art week at Carla Sonheim on her old blog dated July 25th, 2017.

Patterns: Nymph, Sez, Printemps, Tipple

Joey's blob

... Joey's weekly challenge #195, string provided by Margarete, a Snowflake for the Christmas tree. I didn't quite meet the string nor the tangle Jax, let alone producing something worthwhile although I tried. Twice! Oh, well, I'll try next year again.

Patterns: X-mas Red, Jax, Stippling

Same as above with strings of beadlines

... a simple Christmas card. Am not much into Christmas, but when I saw a simple Christmas tree card I had to tangle it. I used the tangle Static, an official tangle (created by whom), which I don't see drawn often.

Pattern: Static

...Poinsettia by Ekaterina Berezhnaya. It was a tangle that caught my eye and I did a quick small season's tile with a candle. I had it the wrong side up when I signed and dated it. So the question arose: What makes less sense the date upside-down or the candle?

Patterns: Poinsettia, Xmas Red, and a candle

Three tangles from my December refreshers bunch. Batumber by Kelley Kelly (#167); Sati by Jem Miller (aka Ragged Ray) (#159); and Flovine by Lin Chiu (#123) - just because I think they are great tangles.

Patterns: Flovine, Batumber, Sati

My try on Embedded Letter suggested by KTT015. It was also one of Joey's December challenges. It is so obvious that my heart was not in it.

Patterns: Letter S hidden among Printemps, Pokeroot, Henna Drum,
Crescent Moon, Shattuck, Knightsbridge, Antidots

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