DIVA Challenge #178: Duotangle By The Letter

Another fun duotangle challenge from the DIVA!  This week we were challenged to use two tangles that start with your initials.  I haven't tried SPRIGS yet, so I used that for my first initial "S".  I drew two circles as my string and wove the vine for Sprigs around them.  I was thinking of putting a grid based pattern in between them, but when I searched the "C" tangles on tangle patterns. com, I saw one of my favorites, CAT-KIN.  I think that made for a light and lovely organic tile.  Thanks for another fun challenge, Laura! 

DIVA Challenge #177 Truffle

This week's DIVA challenge is brought to us by Caroline Broady, our youngest CZT and daughter of CZT Amy Broady, who hosted last week's challenge.  Caroline has challenged us to use her tangle, Truffle.  Very pretty tangle, Caroline!  I have been camping this week  and haven't seen any of the entries, but I hope to get a chance to this weekend.  I did my tile in our tent camper, while listening to the sound of the river and watching a squirrel running back and forth with a mouth full of pine needles, to make a nest high up in a tree.  It was a very relaxing time and place to tangle!

I used Truffle as a boarder, with Paushalov (Amy Broady's tangle), and Hollibaugh.

DIVA Challenge 176 B.Y.O.B.

This weeks DIVA challenge is brought to us by another guest CZT, Amy Broady from Tennessee.  Amy is also a fellow classmate of mine from the 4th CZT seminar in Oct, 2010.  This week we were to bring our own beverage to our tangling and incorporate it on our tile, in whatever way we wanted.  I used some Celestial Seasonings, Black Cherry Berry herbal tea on my tile.  I don't care for this as a hot tea, but it is really refreshing as an iced tea in the summer.  First I tried just putting some on the tile with a spoon, and ended up just setting the tea bag on the tile.  You can see that it made a darker spot that I ended up leaving blank.  At first I really hated the color and the totally messy splash and almost tossed it, but decided to give it a try and see what resulted.  After I tangled, I added a light lavender water colored pencil for some shading, and a little red water colored pencil around the open part.  I wasn't crazy about the outside, so I added Printemps with a silver gel pen, and here it is.  Thanks for the challenge, Amy!  It was nice to see your smiling face again!

DIVA Challenge #175 UMT: Crux

The first Monday of the month over at the DIVA's is another UMT (use my tangle) challenge.  With so many new tangles coming out every week, these challenges are always fun for me.  I have never tried this tangle and it was a little tricky connecting all the lines behind the Bales-like pattern, but once it's done it sure is a beautiful pattern with lots of variations.  Thanks to Henrike Bratz for creating this pattern and to Laura for sharing it with us on the UMT challenge!

My Mini-Gallery

The mantle above and around my fireplace is white and for years I have wanted to do something with it.  Of course, I would have loved to tangle it, but the surface is very textured and bumpy and doesn't take the tangling well.  I know this because I have tangled a tile on a wall upstairs with the same texture.  While it was okay for a tile size, a large area like this just wouldn't look good.  I had mounted several zendala tiles on canvas that I painted for class examples and had a light bulb moment....hmmm, these are the size of the sides of my mantle.  I hung them up and decided I needed some smaller ones on the top, so I mounted some regular zentangle tiles on smaller canvas.  Now I have my own little mini-gallery! 

DIVA Challenge #174 Superimposing Strings

We have another guest challenger this week at the DIVA's blog, CZT Aimee Belair. Aimee has challenged us to place one string on top of another string and then tangle.  I have done this a lot while drawing strings.  Mine aren't always just done with one line, but sometimes 2, 3, or 4, but always without planning, just let the lines go wherever they want.  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the string prior to tangling.  Thanks for the challenge, Aimee!