Challenge 203: Athitzi

Hello?  Its me! It's been a while...had my computer crash way back in June and took a while to fix and well, here I am. I can't say I will be back for every challenge. I have been working at fixing up my Etsy shop and updating my tangle your own line of products. Any who, as soon as I saw the challenge this week it immediately reminded me of a fossil and I thought, tangle on a rock! I love tangling on rocks and it just so happened that I had one that was a perfect fit.  

Athitzi on a stone with white Sharpie paint pen

 

Challenge 149: 2014

I thought I would start off the New Year with the first challenge of the year and get back on board with my tangling and blog.  I needed a break...what was supposed to be fun was feeling like work and I have enough work from 9-5.  I am happy to be back and tangling again and hope to see you in another post real soon.

Tangles: variations on barber pole, calli, tipple, baton and 'nzeppel

Happy Tangling!

Challenge 130: UMT Henna Drum

Henna Drum is a tangle I have been using for a while and really love.  It was great fun to use it in a challenge.  I also used String #7 from tanglepatterns.com.  Love using my new string organizer to easily pick a string to use.  

Happy Tangling!

Challenge 129: String Theory XXV - String #4

So nice to have the day off and have time to do my weekly challenge.  After a very soggy weekend in Saugatuck, MI nice to be able to have a nice day to tangle with the windows open.  I decided to try a new way to choose tangles for this challenge and created a random selection using tanglepatterns.com.  By using my iPad I brought up the website and then randomly clicked on a letter A-Z at the top and then randomly chose one of the patterns that came up for the letter.  I sometimes have students ask me about how to choose tangles and do I balance them, etc.  Finding a random way to choose tangles is a great way to take away the pressure you can sometimes feel to choose "the right tangles"  Give it a try and see how it works for you.

Tangles: Loblolly, Queen's Crown, Dex, Japonica, Good Joss, Ninja Stars

Happy Tangling!

Challenge 123: Is it a zentangle?

This week's challenge was to get back to the zen of zentangle and not use any existing tangles or tangleations - really to get away from thinking about what tangle you are going to use next.  It was more difficult than I thought but once I got going with it I really did just take the next step and let it evolve.  Oh, I should also say that I used a pre-strung zendala to try help the process get started and take some of the thinking out of the equation from the get go.  It took a lot of time to complete over several different sessions and ended up being way more colorful than I ever would have imagined.  I started creating with a red micron, since I have been trying to use a little color lately, but once I started adding the colored pencil it really got lost.  That is when I just started going over all the red with white gelly roll pen.  It was an interesting experience and a nice change but I am ready to get back to my tangles.

Happy Tangling!

'Nzeppel Stones

I have seen a lot of stones on Etsy that have a crochet covering over them and look like they would make funky paperweights.  There is simply no hope that I would ever be able to create one of those for myself, crocheting and knitting are two skills that seem to completely elude me.  My mom tried to teach me once and she was on the floor laughing at me.  This was the first and only time I have ever seen my mom rolling on the floor laughing.  Luckily for me though there is a lovely pattern from Rick and Maria that can mimic the crochet covered stones, 'Nzeppel.  I created these for my office one white rock with black identipen and one gray rock with white Sharpie oil based paint pen.

Happy Tangling!

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!

Challenge 115: "Amanda Day" - Earth Day

This week's challenge is in honor of Earth Day and it immediately made me think of the elements that make up our wonderful Earth: Water, Fire, Air and Earth.  So I set out on my quest to find a tangle that represented each and here is what I came up with:

Tangles: Lamar (Water), Flying Geese (Air), Candle Glow (Fire), Sand Swirls (Earth)

Keep Tangling!!

Tangle Trials: Piza and Tangles by Margaret Bremner

I have been very lucky this week and have had the opportunity to tangle when I got home from work every day this week!  There are so many tangles I have wanted to try out and just haven't been able to find the time.  I did a frame of Piza for this week's challenge, but really liked the contrasting columns I saw on Linda Farmer's example on tanglepatterns.com and I remembered the Diva's challenge from last week of the box, in a box, in a box and so I wanted to try Piza with that in mind.  Here is what resulted:

Tangles: Piza

Then I received a wonderful comment from Sue Jacobs saying she had completed a tile with my tangles, you can check it out here.  I thought this was a great idea and I had a list of some tangles from Margaret Bremner I wanted to try out so here is that tile (with some Pearlz added around the border):

Tangles: Lily Pads, Chebucto, Oakling, Pia

Keep Tangling!

Progress - Jewelry Box

Well it has taken a while but the jewelry box is now decorated on all sides. I am really enjoying using the white pen on the mint background.  Now it just needs to be sealed.  It should be available in my Etsy store soon! 

Tangles: Barber Pole, Fescu, Ahh, Linq, Henna Drum, Tipple Variation, Fringe, Perfs

Keep Tangling!

New Tangle: Baraboo

Here is my newest tangle that I have recently shared in my newsletter (link to sign up is on the right side).  I never thought I would come up with a grid pattern...I figured they were so abundant that there weren't any possible new ones.  It goes to show that the world is an amazing place and new possibilities are always around the corner or in the next carpet pattern you happen to see. :-)

Keep Tangling!

Challenge 91: Beads of Courage

Where does the time go?  Two weeks and two challenges have completely passed me by but I jumped right in when I got home from work last night to complete the Beads of Courage challenge from the Diva.  I have been so super busy with work and it seems too many social obligations that I did find it was a little challenging trying to decide which tangles to use in the beads.  I tried some that I wasn't sure would work, but in the end feel pretty good about how it turned out.  For example, I never would have thought to try Betweed in a bead, but it worked!  I decided to repeat the same set of tangles and space them with some black beads as spacers like I would in a real piece of jewelry.  

Keep Tangling!

Tangled Jewelry: Jalouise Necklace

Here is a new necklace design I have come up with using the tangle Jalouise by Stephanie Kukla.  I have been creating domino jewelry for a while; bracelets, necklaces, hair pins (some pieces can be found in my Etsy Store). This is the first multi domino necklace.  I've had the dominoes completed for a while, but I wasn't sure how exactly I wanted to use them.  I am pretty happy with the results.  Has sort of an art deco meets tribal feel to it.

Keep Tangling!

New Tangle: Sparkool

Sparkool is my newest tangle and a labor of love.  I had been trying to come up with the steps to  this pattern for several months, but just couldn't get it quite right.  It always came out lopsided or it was WAY too many steps.  I would pick it up from time to time and give it a try - but it just wasn't working.  Oh well.  I decided it might be time to move on and so I started working on another pattern, that seemed totally unrelated at first and low and behold it gave me just what I needed to make Sparkool work!  Once I had it, it seemed like it was so easy.  That is the beauty of the tangles.  I thought that maybe this already existed and searched through Tanglepatterns.com to see if anyone else had already come up with it and couldn't find anything.   The first three steps are similar Sadelle Wilthshire's Bandola - the end result is very different.  So here it is.  It has so many variations that can be added to give your tile just what it may need.  

Sparkool

by Lara Williams, CZT

Keep Tangling!

Challenge 68: Duo Tangle Hybrid & Stircles

Another duo tangle challenge from the Diva and two tangles I haven't used (stircles) or used in a while (hybrid).  This was a fun challenge for me because I am really enjoying reconnecting with tangles I haven't used in a while which also helps me with my new project of creating an organizational system for my collection of tangles.  I have tried various different means of collecting and keeping them, but nothing has reached my expectations yet.  I think I am a very organized person (some people have some not so nice terms for my level of detail) but this did not really apply to my tangle collections.  I hate to admit it but I have a lot of tangles just stored on scraps of paper right now. Yikes!  Anyway - more on organization later when I have it worked out.  

Keep Tangling!

New Tangle - Ojo

I just recently went through some old tangling stuff and found sketches of patterns I found in some library books several years ago - way before my blog and the thought of putting my own patterns out there.  Here is the first which I call - OJO.  As I was coming up with the steps I first thought it looked like a bug and then I noticed that it looked like an eye with really long pretty eye lashes.  My long ago experience with Spanish immediately brought up the word for eye in Spanish and voila (that's all the french i know) we have OJO.  

OJO 

By Lara Williams, CZT

Keep Tangling!!