C-Gal's Sea Star

Caroline created this beautiful Auraknot ZIA on a note to someone special.

I'm glad the glitter glue scanned well. It's a fun addition to her design.
Yay, Caroline! I'm so proud to post this to my blog and share it with the Zentangle community!

Auraknot Noir

Auraknot is such a friendly tangle...I just want to hang out with it and take it places! Introduce it to my other art materials...host parties so it can mingle with other tangles....

In the second Auraknot tile that I am submitting to the Diva's Challenge this week, I chose to pair the latest official tangle with the first one I learned: Crescent Moon. I completed this on a black Zentangle tile with a white Gelly Roll pen. I used a white charcoal pencil for just a little bit of blended lightness around the edges.

I've been wanting to work more on the black tiles for quite some time, and this was a perfect opportunity. I did most of the line work at my son's guitar lesson on Tuesday. I love tangling while sitting in on Joseph's lessons. I get to hear everything, but don't intimidate him by watching. C-Gal enjoys going to the lessons, too. On this day, she was recovering from the oral surgery she had that morning, and her medication was starting to wear off, so she a bit uncomfortable. She simply enjoyed watching as I drew a line, turned, the tile, drew another, turned, drew another, and so on.

So down below are a few pics of Joseph. I had mentioned in a previous post that he had transformed into a Greek god...given that this is the Tanglefish blog, you can only imagine how cool I thought it was that Joseph had to dress up as Poseidon for a Greek Fashion Show at the end of the school year. We had a ball pulling this costume together! Blue pillow cases (thanks, Tuesday Morning!), a homemade beard (created from the fluffiest furry fabric we could find) a Greek fisherman's cap, a beaded, sequined vest (weighs a ton!) that a colleague had picked up at a Brooklyn stoop sale and given to Caroline a few years ago...and a custom light saber Joseph had put together as his Spring Break souvenir from Disney this past March, to make a great light-up trident (thanks to some cardboard and tinfoil), complete with sound effects. Oh, and a crushed velvet cape in silver. And a fishing net that had been in Joseph's dresser drawer for years without him even knowing about it. But I knew. I had bought it when I thought his deep blue room would have a nautical theme.

And here's Poseidon on his birthday a few months ago, with the guitar that I got him with. He asked for nothing for his birthday except a few helium balloons for his group's Euro Fair table display on Finland since the Euro Fair just happened to fall on his birthday. So I had to think of a good gift to surprise him with. I think the guitar plus lessons was not a bad choice! He's progressing well, and I love to hear him practice.

Here it is before I added white charcoal
 outside the the Crescent Moon perimeter.

Back to Zentangle: here's a small image of my tile before adding the white with the charcoal pencil. I rather liked it like this, and it was difficult deciding whether or not to add any white highlights. But Zentangle offers opportunities to explore the wonderful concept of "what if," so I went ahead and forged forward with the white pencil (after scanning it first to have a record of the "before" look). What do you think? Do you prefer it with or without the blended white charcoal at the edges? You won't hurt my feelings--I like it either way!

 In my next post I'll be bragging on C-gal and sharing her first Auraknot ZIA. :-)

Glorious Auraknot

The newest official Zentangle Tangle has been named; it's official! Auraknot. I LOVE this new tangle! Read all about it here. Congratulations to Mattie Arnold for coming up with the winning name, and to Jeanne Kero for figuring out how Rick & Maria draw it. You can see Jeanne's step-outs here. I was sooooooo "off" in my efforts to figure it out--but I had so much fun trying!

And, yet, I am a WINNER!!! YAY! While I did not deconstruct and diagram it correctly, nor did I come up with the winning name, I was one of the folks who did actually submit my efforts to the new tangle contest...and so, my name went into a drawing, and was one of five drawn for a bonus prize! Yippee!!! I don't know what it is, but I'll let you know when it arrives. :-)

So here is my first tile featuring Auraknot:

 

 

I completed the entire tile in the waiting room while my C-gal (that's Caroline) was having oral surgery this morning. Nothing serious, just a step in her orthodontic plan, but it did involve tooth removal and putting a chain on another tooth that has not yet ascended into place and was heading in the wrong direction. She had to have general anesthesia and get stitches--both of which were firsts for her. She did great, and the tangling helped keep me calm as she was in surgery.

Before I go, I have another Cool WiP tile to share:

I had started this one for the Tanglation Nation: Cadent challenge (#75)
Like most of my Cool WiP tiles, it still needs shading.

Also, I finished my Pietro di Fiore tile; you can see it here, along with another Cool WiP tile.

As always, I'd be so happy if you left me a comment. Thanks!

Fiore di Pietro

Last week I the linework for the Diva's 77th challenge: Fiore di Pietro, a beautiful new tangle created by Rho Densmore in memory of her brother-in-law. It was a work-in-progress at that time, but I have added shading and it is now complete.

Fiore di Pietro, Pweeko, Ving, and Tipple.
Rho, please feel free to use this in the tangle book you are creating for your family.

To see it side-by-side with the unshaded version, click here.

Work-in-Progress!
Note to the Diva: Please don't put this in the slideshow
unless I have removed this message from the caption!
Thanks!

Here's another tile I have started using Fiore di Pietro and an olive green 05 Micron, which produces a bolder line than the 01 that I usually use. It's completely different from the first one I did. I don't love it, and I certainly don't think that the linework is complete. It evolved from a series of efforts to compensate for marks that I put in the wrong place. I am still contemplating how I want to finish it. I'd love to transform it in a way that makes me really excited about it. So, I am posting this in the spirit of celebrating process over product, and to make good on what I said I'd be doing in my next few posts: sharing tiles in the "Cool WiP" category.

Cool WiP & Fi di Pi & Cintronica

WiP: Work in Progress. Need I say more? Of course I do. Even if I don't need to, I will.  After all, that's why I have a blog: to elaborate on my ideas with anyone who cares to take the time to read them. :-) If that's you, then thank you for reading!

I have just returned home from a delightful family vacation...I thought I'd be blogging from the beach condo, and tangling up a storm, but that didn't happen. Instead I read...and shopped and dined and slept, and took in a show (SHOUT! The Mod Musical), and enjoyed time with my inlaws and nephew as well as my husband and kids. So now I feel very relaxed, but also waaaaay behind on Diva challenges and blog posts, as I was already behind before I left on vacation!

My next few entries will feature unfinished tiles--ones that I started for various Diva challenges, including this week's challenge, UMT v. VI: Fiore di Pietro (Challenge #77). Fiore di Pietro is a new tangle by Rho Densmore, CZT, in memory of her brother-in-law who passed very unexpectedly a mere two-and-a-half weeks ago. It's a beautiful tangle, full of possibilities to explore. Click here to link to directions. This first tile in which I've utilized Fiore di Pietro is incomplete in that I haven't yet shaded it...but I am so eager to get a post up, after skipping a few weeks, I want to go ahead and share it! I'll post it again after I've shaded it. (DONE! 7/10/12) I love seeing other people's work mid-process, so I hope you can enjoy mine in stages.

Tangles used: Fiore di Pietro, Pweeko, Ving, Tipple

And here's the finished tile. Rho, you are welcome to use this, if you wish.

Also in the WiP category--make that the Cool WiP category; I wouldn't post something if I didn't think it was cool--is a glorious new tangle from Zentangle! It is currently nameless. (!!!!!!) Rick and Maria posted it to the Zentangle newsletter and blog last week and challenged us to name it and draw step-outs (the diagrams that break down a tangle into simple steps). 

My proposed name is Cintronica, after Tina Cintron (see explanation below). I completed these step-outs super fast on vacation at Hilton Head Island on the coast of South Carolina last week. I jumped right to task as soon as I saw the newsletter about the new tangle and the name/step-out challenge. I had to rush through them for fear that I'd peek at directions if someone else posted their version before I'd finished mine. I allowed myself very little time to do this, as our family was about to head out for an afternoon of kayaking. (Our first ever kayak excursion...and it was WONDERFUL! Our tour group enjoyed the presence of a lone dolphin who surfaced in our area numerous times...once a mere 15 feet or so behind me!)

My step-outs, messy thought they are, and crudely photographed with Caroline's iPad, are as follows:

About the name I propose, Cintronica, and it's origin: Tina Cintron has an instructional DVD that I purchased for use in my classroom. The DVD's focus is on watercolor resist techniques, but a bonus feature is that she shows how to draw basic Celtic knots using a configuration she calls "Headless Dancing Man." Headless Dancing Man is a square whose sides are extended in four different directions, as seen in the first diagram of Step 2 of my step-outs above. If that figure is turned diagonally, it really does look like a block-bodied stick man that is missing his head and doing the can-can. Or about to do a cartwheel.

Headless Dancing Man is a great way to start an endless number of Celtic Knot design variations...and as such, has become an important figure in my teaching. Thus, when I saw this new tangle that utilizes the concept I learned from Tina Cintron, I wanted to propose a name that honors her. The "ca" I added at the end of my proposed title is short for "cabin," as in "log cabin," the tradition quilt block construction method that utilizes strips of cloth. My daughter Caroline has a tangle that we call DecoLoCa (see it used here on the egg), which is short for Deconstructed Log Cabin, which is also inspired in part by the log cabin quilt block.

About my Cool WiP concept: This past school year our PTA adopted a food/cooking theme for the annual back-to-school activities and membership drive. It was a fun theme; I thought of our art room as "Smorgasbord Studio," though I never officially named it that by making a sign. I also tried to think of unusual ways to work the theme of "food" into the art curriculum. I  had a lot of ideas that never made it to fruition (note the pun I worked in there? FRUITion?!), but one of my ideas that I did bring to life is the Cool WiP board: Cool Work-in-Progress. I had a bulletin board that I would occasionally post impressive artwork-in-progress by my students. Sometimes I even gave out a Cool Wip wristband that I made up as an award that students could wear home to show their parents that their artwork had been honored. I didn't get it going until late in the year, though, so it wasn't a main feature of the artroom and class routine...but next year I want to carry on with it and make a bigger deal about it to get the students excited.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far! As always, any comments you post are cherished. 

Happy tangling!