Footsteps to Follow

Whoa­—summer is already halfway over, for us here in Tennessee anyway. For this post, I (Caroline Broady) am guest-writing for Tanglefish. I just got back home from the 11^th CZT training seminar, which intensified my interest in Zentangle. I had a great time and met a lot of fascinating people. I am super excited to explore different outlets, which include starting my own blog. Right now, my biggest obstacle is finalizing a name. Until then, keep checking here. I know Mom (Amy) is eager to post about our family adventures.

                                  

Birdie Feet and Hollibaugh

With those updates out of the way, I can share my submission to this week’s challenge from the Diva: UMT v. XVIII Birdie Feet. Owl Loving April's tangle is representational, so I made my tile accordingly. (Usually, I head for the abstract, rather than literal, patterns.) I had a lot of fun with shading and used my tortillon a bunch. I love how just a little bit of strategically-applied graphite can bring a tile to life.

Now that my mom has “retired”, she has a lot more time to spend doing other things she cares about, including taking on the Zentangle for Kidz Blog. (Read more about CZT Training #11 on her latest ZT kidz post here.) We really want to increase interest/activity, so check it out and spread the word. If you visit, we'd love for you to leave a comment. :-)

–Caroline Broady, CZT 11

Seeking Balance

Crescent moon, shattuck, dyon, and
a hollibaugh/pepper/tipple mash-up.

First: the eye candy! Caroline completed two tiles for last week's Diva Challenge, #119: Ebony and Ivory. This challenge was all about balancing black and white. I love these tiles, and how different they are from each other.




We are both excited about the current week's challenge, Tangleation Nation: Bales. Hopefully I'll make the time to complete the challenge this week despite all the things I have on my plate. It's a busy time for me. Read on.

Pepper, sand swirl, bunzo, jetties, Rick's paradox, bales,
angel fish, dl nebula, sanibell, inapod, pweeko, jest, cadent,
featherfall, and mooka.

You may or may not have noticed that I have been out of the loop, out of blog-mode and Diva Challenges for a while...I have been quiet and seemingly unengaged. The truth is, in a quest for balance in my life, I'm in the midst of closing a significant chapter. It is almost done, but I still have some loose ends to tie up. And it has monopolized my time and attention for the past few months. Specifically, I am walking away from my position at the elementary school where I have been honored to be an art teacher on staff for the past 7 1/2 years (I was hired mid-year, at Christmastime, 2005). It's not that I don't want to teach there anymore. It was a fabulous job in an amazing classroom with students, families, and colleagues that I adore! It is an emotional parting. Some days I feel like I have made a terrible mistake, but deep down I believe that I am doing what I need to do. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions...sometime we have to let good things draw to a close. This is one of those times.

It boils down to this: I am now the mother of two teenagers. (Caroline's brother, my only son, turned 13 this month.) This is, of course, a temporary state: teenagers grow up all too quickly and leave the nest to fly on their own. Quite simply, I have limited years left with my kids here at home with me, and I want to be free to make the most of them. When my husband and I began our family, we were not planning for me to be a working mom. It just happened when the perfect opportunity presented itself to me. So I thought I'd give a a try. And I loved the job. BUT: it turns out that balancing my personal life (motherhood) with my professional life as an art teacher within the confines of the demanding and ever-changing public school system is NOT one of my superpowers. After years of trying to establish such balance, I have not been able to make it work to my satisfaction.

I want for "back-to-school" season to be about my son and daughter, not about my classroom. I want for the Christmas season to be about my faith and my family and the full range of joys of the season, and not have my time, attention, and energy be monopolized by the International Children's Day extravaganza that my elementary school produces each December. And I want for the end of the school year to be about celebrating my children's achievements and about honoring and thanking their teachers, not about completing my grades, returning student artwork, and completing my end-of-the-school-year checkout list, which included the overwhelming task of packing up the art room for the summer. So this will be the last time I need to clean out my classroom; I am passing it on to another art teacher. This is a very difficult transition for me...yet so very exciting! I have so many adventures that await me! That is, once I have succeeded in removing my enormous treasury of "stuff" from the art room...boxes and boxes of books, stacks of posters and visual resources, multicultural treasures, file cabinets full of documents & lesson plans, tons of personal supplies, tools, and materials (I counted 13 pasta machines, not to mentional all the cookie cutters and clay tools...and that's just for polymer clay, a tiny portion of all the media that I've taught over the years!). Not only do I have to remove them from the classroom...I have to find somewhere to put them all! Aaaaaaack!!!!! I don't know where...my house is full. So: my first adventure will be excavating all my overflowing storage areas, pitching what I can and organizing that which I feel the need to hold on to. The first word of "creating order" is "creating"...and I am a creative person, so I definitely see organizing as a creative challenge. Woo-hoo! It's time to let my inner neat-freak out to play!

Making this major change in my life, once I get the "stuff" situation under control, will allow me to focus on so many ideas that have been percolating in my imagination for years. I will be establishing a personal studio for Caroline and I to work in. YAY! With regard to tangling...freedom from the school system will give me the flexibility to organize some Zentangle classes in my community. I am sooooo excited about that! So stay tuned for details. Working out a community teaching schedule is a challenge that I have not been able to meet in the past...but now I can seek other venues in which to do what I love (teaching) without it taking away from quality time with those that I love the most.

I hope you'll join me on my journey and cheer me on as I establish new routines. Including paying more attention to this blog...as well as another blog that I am so excited to be taking on! More about about that in my next post. ;-)

-Amy

Timeless Mooka

C-Gal did some wonderful work in her 2012 Tangle-a-Day Calendar...but she did not even come close to finishing it, so she did not want for me to order a 2013 calendar for her. Such a practical daughter I have!

(I have to admit, I did not come close to completing my 2012 calendar, either...but that did not stop me from ordering the 2013 version!)

So C-Gal worked on this week's dates in last year's calendar, which explains why March 25th is featured as a Sunday.

I have to say, I am most impressed with what she's done with mooka here!

She used my Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer watercolour pencils (my favorite water-soluable color!) and my Creative Mark Micro-Mini Brushes--a fabulous brush set for Zentangle artists. (I treated myself to a set when it was on sale for $19.95...and have been sooooo happy to have this group of brushes in my art supply inventory.)

Leave C-Gal a comment below...I know she'd love some feedback!

Mooka Monday

Woke up this morning to find the Diva's newest challenge to be perfect for today's entry in my Tangle-a-Day calendar! And perfect for tangling some more of the coffee-stained rim tags I found on etsy. Click here for the website of the company that makes them...my order came really fast, and I love the tags!)

Mooka is one of my favorites. I never know how it's going to turn out, though. It takes on a life of its own, and it's always (well, usually) fun to see how it turns out.
I am sure I will be mooka-ing more as the week goes by...and since I am on vacation, I should have no trouble finding time to share! 

Speaking of coffee...I want to bring up a little something called the Friendship Cup. You can read more about here...and here and here. Cathy, a blogging, tangling teacher here in TN, sent me the Cup in February, when I was all caught up in Moose and traveling and getting ready to presenting at a national convention...and I had to put it on hold. This Friendship Cup is soooo cool and is something that deserves mindful attention, and at the time that it arrived, my attention was spread in other directions. But now is the time I am able to focus on it, so here is my first mention of it. And your first chance to sign up for me to send it to you!

So...would YOU like it next? Post a comment down below if you wish to be entered in a random drawing to be the next to get the Friendship Cup! Here on vacation I will be gathering some goodies to send with it....

Sadly, I do not have any photos of it here with me right now, so I will be have to post those after we return home. Until then, you can let your imagination run wild as to what it looks like now and what goodies it came to me with, and what goodies I might send away with it...and, you can sign up for a chance to be the next recipient! Fun times!

Tri-Neon Noir

For the Diva's Challenge #110/"Get rid of the box," C-gal (my 14-year-old) decided to
a) tangle an ATC for the first time. (This was not her first ATC, but her first tangled ATC. She participated in her first ATC swap at the sweet young age of 4 or 5...but that's another story for another blog entry.)
b) use only tangles that featured triangles
c) layer color onto a white-on-black design.

She had fun "tri"ing those three things. Unfortunately, I do not have access to my scanner, so a photo taken with my iPad mini has to suffice. I don't like how it's not properly squared up, but it's the best of the different photos I took.

How fun it's been to sit together at a table for a few hours today and tangle and talk. It wasn't so fun when I spilled my Zen tea all over the table filled with art supplies...but that's all cleaned up now and we've moved on!

She's almost done with a second entry for this challenge...I might be adding it to this post in just a little while, so check back!

groovy, jilli, planateen, pea-nuckle, basket weave, sugarcane, unyun, snood,
escalator,  tagh, angelfish, verve, paushalöv,  zinger, bugles, and one other...
I am still trying to figure out the name of the one on the lower right. Caroline
modified it, but I am not sure which tangle it started as.

...And here it is: C-Gal's 2nd entry for the "Get rid of the box" challenge. Caroline used only tangles she had never used before, and had fun researching unfamiliar ones on TanglePatterns.com.

Pause, please!

Whew! Winter ended and spring began in a blur. I have been home, out-of-state, back in town, husband out-of-state; once he was back, I flew out-of-state, back home, and now am out-of-state again. All since my last post. The school year is flying by: we are in the final nine-weeks grading period already!

But I am trying not to think about work/school this week.  I'd like to slow down. Right here, right now would be just fine. Where's the "pause" button?

It is Spring Break; I am on vacation with my family. Ahhhhhhh! We are on a coastal island, but temps are predicted to be in the 50s this week. Not exactly beach weather. So I will shop! I will read! I will dine! I will blog! And most importantly...I will tangle!!!!! I brought an ample bin of art supplies which I look forward to using. And I could not be happier! This kind of opportunity does not come along very often.

crescent moon, hollibaugh, static, bales, sez, munchin,
ennies, betweed, and patena

The first thing I wanted to do today, after our delicious brunch at a pancake emporium, was to start up my Tangle-a-Day calendar habit. My poor calendar is practically blank. So I did that first, having fun with Terri Brown's fun new tangle snugz. Then I did a quick coffee-stained rim tag (small), using auraknot, at Caroline's suggestion. Then it was time to pull out the latest Diva challenge, which I had begun on a Zendala tile. Her challenge #110 was entitled "Get rid of the box" and we were supposed to do something that was a bit of a stretch for us. I chose to do a pre-strung Zendala tile, as I had never done one before. As much as I love the Zendalas I see others doing, I have dragged my feet in trying them myself.  So here's how that turned out.

(My only other Zendala piece was on a blank Zendala tile almost a year ago, for the Earth/Amanda Day challenge. Click here to see that Zendala and blog entry; I was rather proud of the title I came up with for that one!)

So now I go quickly to post this link to the Challenge; maybe it will find its way into the slideshow, even though it is a day late. Then I will post C-gal's. She chose to tangle an ATC. One of the reasons I am so excited about Spring Break is not only do I have time to tangle; C-gal has time to tangle with me. YAY! What a rare treat these days!

I hope your week is as enjoyable as I plan for mine to be. Comments are always appreciated, if you choose to leave one!

Moose's Latest Photo Shoot

The most recent photos of Moose are here…there are a few areas that we have gesso-ed over to “re-do”, i.e. on the front legs—Caroline is determined that her “punzel” be “just so.”

 

 

On Moose’s belly we have decoupaged the encyclopedia entry for “Moose” from a set of old encyclopedias (copyright 1925!) that I rescued when my parents were going to discard them. It was such a short entry with no photos or illustrations, it practically asked us to apply it right there.

 

That's it for now! The highest bidder will get to choose whether or not Moose gets a sealed with a glossy finish or a matte one!

 

Bid quick!!! Here's the link....the aution ends at noon!