Traveling Journal Pages

I am sorry I haven't posted in a while. I have a friend working on a new book and I have been working on artwork to include - at least hopefully some of it will get accepted. 
Today I decided to take a break and work on a new project. I will tell you more about it tomorrow, but for today I took a sheet of Strathmore watercolor paper and spritzed it with water. For these wonderful colors, I used three shades of Dylusions Ink Sprays - calypso teal, lemon zest, and funky fuchsia - and spritzed them on top of the water. Then I let it sit for about 30 seconds as the colors started spreading. I spritzed a bit more water in areas that needed assistance, waited a few seconds, then rolled some paper towels over the top to pick up some of the liquid.  Next, I used four different stencils for some background texture. Place a stencil where you want some texture, spritz some water over it, wait about 15 seconds, then lift the stencil straight up. About 20-30 seconds later, dab the surface straight up and down with a paper towel. Beautiful texture just pops right through! When you get to where you want to be, hit it all with a heat gun to dry. 
Tomorrow I will go on to step number two and tell you what I'm working on. As soon as I figure it out :).

Excitement in My Mail Box!

The UPS man brought some magic in the mail today! I went outside to check on the crying kitten and found this package on the porch.

Of course, I knew what it contained and I couldn't wait to rip the package open - carefully rip - because I knew this brand newbook of zentangle was enclosed!

I have been waiting patiently for the book to arrive because on page 58, you can find my steampunk wall! This is the design I use on my business cards and on my About.Me page. It was the first drawing I used color on. (And on page 166 they included my pattern Blox.)

Design Originals did an amazing job pulling all the art together for this book. The colors are wonderful, the crispness of the black and white spot on.

And they included this pretty awesome certificate! This is just a portion of it, but check out those couple sentences - - - especially that last line! Whoot! Whoot!

This is my third time being published, but the first time in color. The entire book is amazing, full of beautiful, wonderful art!

I can not even begin to tell you how amazing it is to be a part of the overall presentation. Well, maybe you can tell - - - just a little bit!

Happy Birthday to Me

If you are as old as I am, you probably have some of these hanging around your house. Actually, I had mine stashed in two different places. Covered in dust, lots of dust which I've been working on removing. (That Lynyrd Skynyrd record is Freebird. Didn't notice the title didn't show until now.)

It's my birthday today, turned sixty. Ugh. A couple weeks ago, I saw these turntables on Fab.com and sent an email to Mark that this particular one would be a good birthday present. Hint, hint.

Honestly, a wonderful present. Not only can I play 45s, 33s, and 78s, I can plug the player into my computer and make music CDs and MP3s. Good stuff! Kali and I spent some time this morning going through these old 45s. I have a lot of songs that she knows from Glee, only I have them in the original versions. Ha!  Tonight I am going to pull out the 78s and see what I saved there. Fun!

Heading Home (Old News, I'm Home Now)

I am actually typing this Saturday evening. Kali and I just went to see Austenland at the movie theatre. Not being a Jane Austen fan, I thought it was hilarious! I think Kali was offended through most of the first half, especially when I was laughing so loud. Not a serious movie at all. It's about people who pay to go spend a week living the Pride and Prejudice life. So funny! Anyway, I am typing this up tonight and scheduling it hit the blog Monday during the early, early morning hours. I will be doing the drive back home to Florida, expecting to arrive late Tuesday if all goes well. I hope you have a great week!

Note: actually this is a post that was supposed to hit a couple days ago while Kali and I were driving to Florida. Something happened to my blog and many photos disappeared, and this didn't post. For whatever reason, today all the pictures are back and things look normal again. So, here is a late post, hope you don't mind that it's late :).

Playing With Rollin'

Two nights ago I posted an ATC with a new tangle I'm playing with called rollin'. It started off as part of crescent moon, but then it just kind of took on a mind of its own and turned into this rolling fun thing. It reminded me of Michele Beauchamp's spiral, so I drew that and started filling it in. I am going to keep playing with this one some more :) cause it's fun! And as a side note, I am starting the drive back to Florida today. It's an 800 mile drive, so please keep me in your prayers. I'd appreciate that a lot :).

Happy Fall, Y'All

So I am finally done with all the fall ATCs for the swap. This was a really hard one for me, I had trouble finding my niche. So to speak. I finally just gave up on fall designs, and went with fall colors. I've been looking over some tangles I don't use very often, and noticed that golven and twing are very similar. I like the way they combine in this ATC. This last one is heading out to the United Kingdom. Traveling a long way! Now, on to the brown/black swap! I think I have 15 more of those to do!

Rollin'

I am working on the ebook. Again. Drawing, designing, experimenting, making step-outs. This particular piece is an ATC that I made for the fall swap. (I just realized - again - that I was supposed to stick with three tangles. Oh well.) I was playing with crescent moon, which turned into that far right slice with the squiggle down the middle. I am thinking of variations I could use with that - and call it rollin'. That's what I'm working on now. 

The colors were the most fun part of this piece for me. I just took a wet, flat brush, swirled some watercolor on it, and swiped it back and forth across a slightly damp tile. I did this with about six different colors and let them blend together a bit. Once it was dry, I started my tangling. Someone in the United Kingdom is getting this ATC. Rollin' out in the mail tomorrow!

Merely Meer

It's been a couple days since my last post. I got a message from a friend asking for some artwork, so I've been working on that. Diligently. This afternoon, though, I took a little time out to work on some ATCs that I still owe people in the fall ATC swap.

I may have mentioned that I was having trouble drawing fall-ish ATCs. It's been in the 90's where I am and fall is about the last thing on our mind. So, I decided to just drop the fall theme and go with fall-ish colors. One of the tangles I've been enjoying lately is meer. That's the big flow-y one in the middle. It just kind of takes on a life of its own. I ribboned out the sides and curved the inside spines a bit. I like it better this way! Two more ATCs to go. You will probably get to/have to look at those tomorrow :).

Trying to Learn How to Draw

Fair warning - this post might be a little scary. I am trying to learn how to draw. Now, that's a scary thought! I get told all the time that I draw really well, to which I always respond with, "I can not draw." Like, not at all!

I am taking a class from Dion Dior, (wow! am I ever far behind!), and this particular lesson was a push for us to start sketching. Now, Dion is really, really talented! And it would seem she makes enough sense to be able to walk me through the basics of a couple pieces of fruit. (Hopefully you can tell what they are supposed to be. Hahaha!) My husband said that one of my pears is slumped over taking a nap :).

To say that I am stunned would be an understatement. I can even tell what they are! (Of course, I am cheating because I have the lesson plan.) Next? To paint some of these little guys. Yeah, that one may take a bit longer! But, I'm getting pumped, trying to psych myself up to get in the mood. Probably not going to be a happening thing today, though. Hahaha!

54º This Morning? Let's Make Some Fall ATCs

I have been having a really hard time getting into this making fall ATCs. Primarily because it's been in the lower 90's for the past week or so here in Maryland. This morning when I woke up it was actually cool in the apartment. According to my phone app it was 54º outside. Nice!

Those cooler temps (high in the low 70's) motivated me to make a couple ATCs. I'm going with the fall-ish color theme, and hoping whoever gets these ATCs are flexible :). Hahaha! Only four more to make, then on to the brown/black swap! Yes!

Bault - New Tangle from Erin Olson

One of our CZTs - Erin Olson - sponsors the weekly Zendala Dare. She is so creative and for the past couple days Erin has been busy posting new tangles she has created. Here is her pattern bault:

I like organic tangles and thought this one would work great with the garden drawings I like to make. So, I pulled out my zentangle sketchbook that I got at CZT training and started playing with bault. 

This tangle came a little quicker to me than the last one Erin posted. 

For me, the pattern works best when I made the first two petals touch each other at the base point before I moved on.

This was the first thing I drew with bault. I centered it and added diva dance waltz under it. Since I'm using it as one of the ATCs for the fall swap, I added some leaves into the waltz lines.

This looks much better in person, but I'm posting it anyway. I added some fall colors and reworked some pen lines that got covered over in watercolors.

When I was getting the pictures ready for this post, I noticed this laughing face in the drawing. I guess he was enjoying the diva dance just a little too much! Hahaha!

Then I moved on to this and did something I've never done before. I added color in my original CZT sketchbook that I got at training. I defaced my book with color :) and I'm smiling about it. I love color! I wouldn't necessarily recommend it very often, though, the paper didn't accept the watercolor pencils all that well. But, I do like how it turned out :) Thank you, Erin, for another cool pattern. My daughter thought it was mine, but I gave you full credit Erin. Got to say Kali was a little disappointed, haha! OK, I've caught up on sleep and I have coffee now. Fire away, Erin, I'm ready for another one!

Teddy Bears and Fall

The fall ATC swap is upon us. I am really having trouble coming up with ideas. It was 90 degrees here today, who could possibly be thinking about fall? For this swap we can use any type media we want. So I pulled some old scrapbook paper and salvaged this little teddy bear and flower blocks from a sheet. The rest is tangled and colored with Koi Watercolors.

I've been working my punkin' pattern into several pieces lately. It speaks of fall, so I figure it's fair game.

I was still having issues with 'fall' ideas, so I thought I'd try something a little different. Made a bunch of random width (and unparallel) lines. . . .

. . . then filled them with tangles.

Next I added some fall-ish washi tape down one end, and pop-dotted three fall leaves into a corner. The ATC edges were dipped into a gold stamp pad. Voila! A fall ATC, and I still don't know what to do with the rest. Haha! Hopefully something fantastic will come to mind. Soon. I hope.  Stay tuned. Better yet - send me ideas. :)

Midoosa, Erin Koetz Olson

Erin Koetz Olson hosts the weekly Zendala Dare on her blog The Bright Owl and yesterday she posted a new tangle she created called Midoosa. I liked it so much that I turned off my computer *gasp* and started working in my sketchbook. What you see above is my first mostly successful shot at midoosa, but before this I did a good bit of practicing. Let's look at Erin's step-out for midoosa.

Pretty straight-forward, beautiful, graceful, and (for me) unpredictable. Erin even showed some variations.

As you can see on my sketchbook page, I started with some of the pointers Erin wanted us to remember. The most important points for me were: use an even number of points (not 'equal' as I wrote in my book), and complete one section before you move on to the next. As you can also see, I had trouble getting my barbell sections to be equal in size. No way in the world can I draw a six-pointed star and have it look like a six-pointed star, although I did get closer. Sort of. The flower idea just looks awful.

As much as I tried, I could not get the points to be even in size. And, yes, I do know that true zentanglers don't use rulers, or erasers, but, hey! What are you going to do? It is less stressful for me to pull out my tools, than to sit here and draw lines over and over and over and over that don't look right. So, I used my small ruler and pencil and drew the four overlapping shapes you see above.

Next, I went over the outline with a micron, then erased all the interior lines.

I picked two sections, drew the connecting lines, and auraed the inside of each end of what looks like boat oars to me. Then I moved on to the second oar.

And to the third, auraing as I went. (Is that a word?)

Finish up all the sections, aura around the outside of the whole thing, then add any black fill that you want. I filled the small interior spots - similar to fingerprints - as well as the underlying color behind the paddles.

Finish it off with some shading. I was happy with how this one turned out, so I moved on to the star. There had to be a way to make a star - not boat paddles - and I was determined to figure it out.

I started off with a circle drawn in pencil. . .

. . . which I split into six sections.

Then I put some pencil dots in the centers of each section to act as a base point for my star . . . . . . points,

which I drew with a micron.

I erased most of the inside lines,  but you don't really have to. Then just like in the first example, I started connecting the sections and auraed them.

Add the next section, notice that it falls underneath the first section ala-hollibaugh.

Then the last section.

All that's left is to blacken in the fills. I elected not to aura the entire piece, but to fill in that background with tipple. Shade. I was happy with the way this star turned out - very happy, actually. So I decided to move on to a project.

I know I have step by step photos somewhere, but it's late and I'm super tired. I layered three circles, which included the star, the snowflake, and a flower. That flower? I used my ruler idea, but turned the flatheads of the oars into rounds and called it a flower :). Notice in the snowflake that you do not have to connect points directly across from each other. I added some Derwent Inktense Pencils for color and splattered  various colors for some extra texture. For this one, I used Strathmore's new artist tiles - the vellum one. 

Erin's tangle midoosa has a lot of options and I know I have only scratched the surface. I think I'll be using this one a lot in the next couple weeks, trying to perfect it. Thanks, Erin, for such a fun pattern!