Day 22: 365 Daily Project - A Bridge

Tangles: Umble, Tipple

Today's suggestion to create a bridge instantly made me think of  the tangle Umble.  It is one I really love the look of but don't use very often. I chose a monotangle approach with some Tipple in the background and some simple lines as a border to  keep the focus on the Umble.  Pretty happy with this one so week 4 is starting off well.  See you tomorrow!

Day 21: 365 Daily Project - Love Poem

Tangles: Striping, Printemps, Fringe, Buttercup, Tipple

A poem? By me? Yikes! Today's suggestion to write a 10 word love poem had me stumped all day.  And then I looked down at my bracelet I wear every day and counted the words. TEN!  This is perfect.  I wear this bracelet because it is how I try to live my life and it helps me to remember to be a better person every day.  So thank you Gandhi for these words that sum it up so perfectly.

Well, that concludes week 3!  I am so excited to start week 4 tomorrow and finish up my first month of daily projects.  

See you tomorrow! 

Day 20: 365 Daily Project - I made it out of clay

Tangles: Baton, Printemps, Cyme, Mumsy variation, with Perfs

Tangling on clay?  Are you kidding!?!  I do it all the time!!  But I want it to be something new and I need to finish it today so....how about a heart?   Hearts seem to be growing on me and when  I saw a post from one of my favorite bloggers Alisa Burke today for new items in her store and she had some super awesome hanging hearts I knew I wanted to try to make my own. If you don't know who she is I suggest you head over to her blog/store and buy one, they sell out pretty fast!    Anyway, so while it's not totally my own original idea, I wanted to try to make my own out of Sculpey and see what happens.  Once I rolled out the clay and baked the heart I colored it with alcohol inks.  They are super awesome and an easy way to color something quickly with little drying time.  Plus it hides all the imperfections that I wasn't able to sand out with the limited time I have to get the project done.  Then using an Identipen, a gold leafing pen and a gold Gelly Roll pen I created my designs.  I still need to seal it and fashion a way to hang it but think its pretty nifty.  See you tomorrow which will rap up 3 weeks of daily projects!

Here's the Heart pre-tangled with just the Alcohol Ink 

Day 19: 365 Daily Project - It Floats

Tangles: Float Fest, Black Pearls

"Make something that floats"...what?  Out of paper?  At first I thought I would have to fashion some kind of boat out of tiles and cover them in packing tape. But then I had a minute to relax and the tangle Float Fest came to mind.  It has "float" in it.  Yes!  I just used a circle in the center (lotion top from my purse) and decided to do a mostly monotangle approach.  The center seemed pretty empty and we know I am not comfortable with blank spaces.  I tried out some black pearls which didn't quite turn out how I was wanting it to but I am okay with it.  See you tomorrow. 

Day 18: 365 Daily Project - In the car

Tangle Variations of: Flowtus, Tagh, Bubbles and Squid (arms)

Today's suggestion really had me stumped at first, "use something from the car."  I live downtown and if you know downtown neighborhoods, no matter what, you DO NOT leave anything in your car.  Granted I have a tissue box and an ice scraper, but that is it.  Those aren't very inspiring.  So it really took me all day until I came up with the idea to use my steering wheel as the string.  I left the solid parts of the steering wheel as the negative space and tangled in the holes.  I am not very good at leaving negative space so I was pretty pleased when I put down the pen and there was still negative space left.  I also took a lot of liberty with the tangles I chose and changed them up a bit.  Overall, I am going to call it a success.  See you back here tomorrow for day 19!

Here is the string before it was tangled if you want to try it  out yourself.

Day 17: 365 Daily Project - The Eyes

Tangles: Borbz, Ojo, Bubbles

What a fun day and a fun suggestion.  When I read the suggestion this morning I knew right away that I wanted to use tangles that reminded me of eyes.  My tangle, ojo means eye in Spanish so that was a shoo-in.  And I love the wobbly eyes of borbz.  In my quick search on tanglepatterns.com I also found bubbles and my tile was complete.  Pretty happy with this one.

Just a quick note about my BIG workshop today for 60 people at a staff retreat at Purdue.  It was awesome!  The group was amazing and so focused as they tangled away.  I just love teaching and spreading the joy zentangle brings to people who didn't think they were artists and helping people find a new way to feel good about themselves.  

See you back here tomorrow for day 18.

Day 16: 365 Daily Challenge - Make a Stamp

Tangles: Printemps and variations of Striping, Tagh,Fescu, Tipple

Today, we start week 3 of this daily art project and I am still super into it.  Yay! Having a new suggestion every day takes a lot of the weight off my shoulders in deciding what to create.  The hardest part is fitting the project into my schedule and trying to get everything else done in my day.  For example, tomorrow I am teaching a beginning zentangle class for 61 people. Yikes!  I have never done a class that big but I am excited!  Will tell you all about it tomorrow.

Onto our suggestion for today - create a stamp.  I have created bunches of my own stamps for jewelry and cards and other things and I hadn't used them in a while so I thought I would pull them out and see if any would work.  Here's the one I chose, a basic flower shape.  

 

 See you tomorrow.

Day 15: 365 Daily Project - A Dollar

Tangles: Phicops, Mooka, 'Nzeppel, Float Fest, Fringe

I have never really looked at all the patterns on the dollar, but there sure is a lot of amazing detail and patterns and a bunch of them reminded me of so many tangles I am familiar with already.  So as I was checking out the dollar I wrote down a list of tangles that I saw and here is the result.  I think this is one of my favorite so far. Yay!

Day 14: 365 daily Project - Microscopic

Tangles: Some Lotus Pods variations, Koryl, Hollibaugh, Tipple, Quabog

Today brings us under the microscope - I really didn't see how I could draw something microscopic like those people that write names on a grain of rice.  Even with my glasses I feel like I still have a hard time seeing so I decided to create a tile that looked like all the fun stuff you can see when you do look through a microscope.  I did pull out my Ernst Haeckel book Art Forms In Nature for some inspiration.  I LOVE this book - it  is so full of beautiful illustrations and if you haven't seen it you must check it out!

Day 13: 365 Daily Project - Tea

Tea String

Happy Friday!  I was looking up  today's suggestion as I was having my morning tea and there is was - use tea or tea leaves in your project today.  So I just plopped the bag from my tea around on a tile and left it to dry and do its thing.  I decided to use tangles that begin with the letter T, so I headed over to my trusty resource Tanglepatterns.com to find some and filled up most of the tile.  But I still had some blank spaces and I am not the most comfortable with blank spaces so I threw some Ahh! in there to finish it off.  A little brown colored pencil to shade and a teeny bit of white gelly roll.  I do think the Tipple in the upper right corner now looks like a many eyed alien - but what do you do.  See you tomorrow!

Tangles: Tipple, Tri-bee, Terrace, Tripoli, Trumpits, with some Ahh! 

Day 12: 365 Daily Challenge - Camouflage

Tangles: Printemps, Tipple, Keeko

A camouflage pattern string is what I decided to use for today's suggestion.  I don't think I have seen a camouflage string before so I have added a picture below of just the string.  I checked out some camouflage pics before I  drew this, but really it is just irregular shapes filling the space.  Then I used 3 different colors, each with a different tangle to fill  in each section.  It takes a little thought to make sure you are alternating the colors so you don't end up with the same colors in touching spaces.  A little shading with colored pencils and a camouflage zentangle.  Nothing spectacular but definitely different.  But perhaps it could be a more fashion forward camo.  

Camo string I drew this morning
(doesn't match above because I left this one at work)

Day 11: 365 Daily Project - Other Hand

Tangles: Printemps, Tipple, Bales, Viaduct, Shing

One thing that you learn quickly when posting a project a day based on a suggestion from a book is that you don't always get to post something that, let's say, is your best work.  Today is a good example of that - using my "other hand."  So today I completed the entire ATC tile with my left hand; string, tangles, shading and initials.  The first thing you realize is that you need to slooow down.  It really brings the deliberate strokes to mind as well to try to get the hand to draw what you want it to.  Picking the tangles was a challenge too, they all seemed overwhelming for an untrained hand.  It has been 11 years since I started tangling so that uncertainty was a feeling I was not used to - but I am still having fun.   Can't wait to see what tomorrow holds!  

Day 10: 365 Daily Project - Water

Tangles: Lamar, Sea Weed Border, Wavy Border, Scales

Water.  There are quite a few tangles based on water and I sure had fun trying them out.  First I started with a light blue watercolor wash.  I am really unfamiliar with watercolors and how to properly use them but love it when I see that other people have started with a wash so I gave it a go.  Kinda looks like everything has a blue haze to it but with the blue pen I think it works.  I used some of my blue colored pencils for shading and a white gelly roll for the swirls on the Lamar.

Day 9: 365 Daily Project - Breakfast Inspired

Tangles: Molygon, Tipple

It's a little weird and I know this doesn't make you think Yum! but it really is inspired by my breakfast.  I pretty much eat the same thing every day; 2 hard boiled eggs, cashews and fruit.  When I took a picture of my breakfast this morning the new tangle Molygon from the folks at zentangle immediately came to mind.  The orbs are reminiscent of my eggs and then I used tipple to decorate the Molygon shapes and represent my berries.    

Here's my breakfast

Day 8: 365 Daily Challenge - Transform a book

Tangles: Snaylz trayl

Day 8 and transform a book.  I love working with books and have been making Christmas ornaments for the past couple years from old books and already have a plan for the ornaments from books for next year.  I have never done any altered books or drawn on already printed pages so this was a first for me today.  I found this tangle as soon as I opened up TanglePatterns.com this morning and saw it in the feed at the top.  Very fun tangle if you haven't tried it before.  

Day 7: 365 Daily Project - Use a Stencil

Tangles: Variations on Tipple, Striping, Rick's Paradox, Crescent Moon

Day 7 and one week down!  I am really enjoying a new challenge every day and figuring out how to incorporate zentangle into it.  I have a lot of stencils among my many craft supplies but decided to use a pre-strung zendala tile as my stencil.  I also tried out gold and silver metallic gelly roll pens from Sakura.  I love these pens and the way they draw soooooo smoothly.  They are really fun to use.  If you haven't tried them I highly recommend it.  

Day 6: 365 Daily Project - Fruits & Vegetables

Tangles: Kuke, Garlic Cloves, Bronx Cheer

So this post is a little late, but the tile was really done on Day 6.  The suggestion was to look in your kitchen and work with fruits or vegetables.  I went through tanglepatterns.com and looked for all the tangles that seemed to be inspired by fruits or vegetables.  Onions seem to be a popular tangle by the way.  I was really rushed to get this done yesterday before I headed out to dinner at a friend's house so I am not thrilled with it and would maybe do something more around the edges with the Bronx Cheer - but I am posting everything whether I love it or not.  See you later today with the day 7 post.

Day 5: 365 Daily Project - Collection

Tangles: AA's, Fringe, Black Pearls, Cyme (petals around eyes) 

It's already day 5 and I am enjoying this more every day.  Today's suggestion is to create something around a collection you have.  I am a collector; snow globes, Day of the Dead, pop up books - to name a few.  The thought of a pop-up zentangle inspired me and then I added a skull to bring the Day of the Dead into it and there you have Day 5. To create the "pop-up" effect I used a double stick foam dot to attach the Bijou tile to the regular tile.  It's hard to see but if you look closely you can see the shadow cast by the Bijou tile at the bottom.  See you back here tomorrow for day 6.  

Day 4: 365 Daily Project - Take a walk

Tangles: Printemps, Opus, Flux, Purk, Poke Root, Tipple

Brrrr.  Well the suggestion today was to walk and find stuff and make art out of it.  It is cold here in Indy and not much of a day for walking, outside.  So today on my daily 10am walk I found a leaf that had blown into the building (On days like today we wander the halls instead of heading outside).  At first I thought I might draw on the leaf but it was too fragile so I traced it onto a blank, white zendala tile.  I don't think it looks as good in the photo as in person but happy to have found a way to use the suggestion and incorporate zentangle.  

Here's the happy leaf!

Day 3 365 Daily Project: Make something out of paper

Day 3 of the project had me back to the Bijou tiles and I created an ornament by first doing monotangles on 6 tiles and then bending them in half corner to corner and gluing them together.  Just grabbed some string and a couple beads I had hanging around and a lovely ornament is created.  Since you only get one view in this picture with Mooka and Striping I have a couple other views and the 6 tiles laid out before they were glued together below.

Tangles: Ansu, Drupe, Sindoo, Striping, Mooka, Squid

Day 2: 365 Daily Project - Favorite Animal

Day 2 of my 365 day project suggested using your favorite animal as inspiration. While I love hippos and I am a huge fan of Groundhog Day, my cat Hugo is my favoritist animal in the whole world. So I decided to just randomly draw a string to represent his wacky random dashes around the house and I used tangles that reminded me of his features and kitty habits. He was pretty cooperative for the photo shoot too. 

New Year, New Name, New Project

Hello again!!!  I think I am back from my blog sabbatical and ready to start a new year with a new name and a new project. I have been busy creating and teaching and sort of lost touch with the blog, you know how it is.  So here it is almost a whole year later.  Can you believe it?  

I did spend a lot of time over the past year thinking about what I want to do creatively as well as with my blog and what I want it to be.  The one thing I know for sure is that I want to stay connected to the zentangle world through my blog.  

The new name? I have been wanting to change the name of my blog for a while and had lots of ideas but this one seems to fit with all my endeavors so you can find me at the same address (not too savvy on the behind the scenes of the blogging world and how to get it to forward to a new one yet)  but will show up as Paper Rock Studio.  

And now I am sure you are wondering about the project I mentioned.  I have been very intrigued by Noah Scalin who has done 365 day projects and wrote a book 365: A Daily Creativity Journal about doing a daily art project for a year. At first it seemed overwhelming, all the possibilities - mediums, subjects...oh my!  But once I thought about it, what seemed so obvious was to use this to get back to a daily zentangle practice.  So I will be posting a different zentangle every day on one of the many wonderful paper products from zentangle using the daily suggestion from the 365: A Daily Creativity Journal to create my piece and sharing on this blog.   

So here is my first piece Day 1 - "something that fits in the palm of your hand"

Immediately a Bijou tile came to mind.  I have not used a Bijou tile before so what a great way to start off.  Yay!

Tangles: Printemps, Bales, 'Nzeppel, Yincut, Vega