Kristi’s Smackdown #6 Response

Hormones and trying to pack your husband’s possessions don’t mix well. I was a holy hot mess last weekend and I’m still struggling with residual exhaustion and interrupted sleep patterns (I’ve been up since 3am this morning).  I had a nice boost to the spirits yesterday when my sister made arrangements to come help me for a few days soon and one of our good friends had me over to cook dinner together and play a game. I have to say we made a great cooking team and he sent me home with leftovers! I’m also looking forward to some acupuncture on Monday that I hope will help with some of my muscle issues and thus the sleep. I just keep repeating a new mantra another friend gave me for my birthday in the form of a necklace that is going to hold very true for this coming year – “Be Brave and Keep Going!”

Somehow, Cate, you hit a magical Sunday Smackdown for me this week. A challenge, but not daunting. Totally accessible! I’m totally amazed because pretty much everything right now is daunting. In fact, I may give the challenge another go this evening. Or, I may fall down the stacked tangle rabbit hole. Maybe I’ll combine them both like I did with this one. We’ll see…

My Sunday Smackdown #6 tile on a 3.5″ square of Fabriano Artistico featuring paradox, tipz and pearls in a pattern as a string. Can you name the string pattern?

For those who may be a bit confused about what constitutes a stacked tangle, this one counts because I shaded the patterns so that paradox falls to the back and it looks like tipz and the pearls grouping are vertically layered on top. The lighting is a little poor, but in person I think the stacking pops a bit more.

So, can you name what pattern I used for my string? Maybe the photo below will help?

My pattern as string – yew-dee!

Do you have any tiles you’ve made with a pattern as your string? Please share a link in the comments below! We’d love to see them!

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Renaissance Infatuation

Zentangle 2015-096, a study of Roscoe with some accidental orbs on a Strathmore Toned Tan Artist Tile.

Ever since the Renaissance tile class with Sue I’ve been a woman obsessed.  There is just something about working on the mid-tone papers, be they the usual tan of the official Zentangle Renaissance tiles or the Strathmore Toned Tan or Tone Gray. It seems as soon as you put white to them something magical happens and everything pops. I just love it.

My three Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel Pencils for shading Renaissance tiles.

 

All of that said, I’ve not been overly enamored of shading the primarily brown tangles with graphite in all situations. So this week in the couple tiles I took time to make I played with using some colored pastel pencils in place of plain graphite. I picked up three Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel Pencils from my local art supply store in 283 (Burnt Sienna), 192 (Indian Red) and 225 (Dark Red). I haven’t really used the dark red because I haven’t yet played with adding in some red ink on my Renaissance tiles just yet. But you’ll see both of the other colors in each of the two tiles of this post.

Zentangle 2015-097, my second stacked tangle where I practiced some of the patterns from Sue’s Border Patrol class plus a few others.

Have you played around with shading with other colors on Renaissance tiles? What medium did you use, pastels, colored pencils, markers?

BTW, Alice Hendon of The Creator’s Leaf along with Jane Eileen of See Jane Run started a Facebook group dedicated to Stacked Tangles called Zentangle: Stacked and Tangled. I highly recommend checking it out! Note the first tile in this post is not stacked, but the second is.

 

Kozy Zendala

 

Zendala template no. 7 from TangleHarmony.com with isochor, poke root, paradox, kozy, and pearls.

 

I’m obsessed with zendalas. I used another TangleHarmony.com template, number 7. I think I may use that same one today too. An idea for taking it in a drastically different direction has percolated in my brain this morning.

I started with the isochor “baskets” that I filled with poke root. I feel like my poke root has degraded. In reality it’s probably the whole tangling in bed thing (get your head out of the gutter!). Then I put in that central poke root branch and surrounded it with paradox. Kozy begged to be next even though I hadn’t ever done that one before. Of course the very first kozy is screamingly obvious. Then graduated pearls were the last little finishing touch.