Tangle Organization

I have been tangling since 2004 and I guess it is fair to say that it has taken me almost about 8 years to find/develop a tangle organization system that works for me.  When tangling was brand new, it was pretty easy.  I had a nice print out of tangles given to me in my first class and from there I advanced to my kit.  Then zentangle kept growing and growing and in 2009 I attended the first CZT training.  There I received my CZT "bible" and I was super excited to have an organization system already made for me.  But the tangles didn't stop there.  Right there in that first CZT seminar we were asked to go out and create our own tangle pattern.  That is when I came up with Koryl and so I needed to figure out how to add all the wonderful new patterns that were appearing on blogs, the Zentangle Newsletter, the web and of course TANGLEPATTERNS.COM!!  How the heck was I going to keep track of all of these?  I won't drag you through the years, but it took many trials, reading about what others were doing and eventually creating my own system.  I am happy to report that after about a year of using this system, I am still using it and it really seems to work for me.  I needed to create a system where I could categorize the tangles and be able to easily see them.  I am pretty sure that my Virgo nature played a role in my need for categories.  So here is what I came up with, I have created four categories that I break out tangles into:

• Grid Patterns
• Border Patterns
• Filler Patterns
• Shapes Patterns

I find that I am able to fit every new tangle I encounter into one of these categories.  It doesn't mean I have to use a border pattern only as a border, but I know where to look....and with all the tangles displayed on baseball card size cards there is easy viewing for the next tangle I want to try.  On the back you can draw the step outs for the patterns.  

If this sounds like a system that might work for you, visit my Etsy shop where you can download the PDF files for the cards.  Then you can choose your own colors of cardstock and print as many as you like!  I have also added a 5th category as a separate download via request for an Original Zentangle Card that can also be downloaded.

There are lots of other ideas about organization out there.  A great resource is this post by Margaret Bremner, CZT where she includes her systems and links to others.  

Keep Tangling!