Huge awesome news!!! I've been chosen! (plus a tangle, a letter to CBS, fun stuff)

I should say, my artwork has been chosen  ... for publication!!!!! Five pieces will appear in a book called "Zentangle: Oodles of Doodles", by North Lights Publishing, (which did several other Zentangle books).  I won't spoil it by showing them here. You'll just have to wait for the book to come out -- scheduled for December. I think I know what I am giving for Christmas this year! - lol
I just have to say how excited and honored I feel! This is my first time being published! It's been a long time goal of mine. I just needed to get around to actually submitting something to someone. ( Which is kind of like wishing to win the lottery, but not buying a ticket, right?) When I ran across an announcement that they were accepting submissions for this book I did it. Call it beginner's luck that my first attempt worked out so well! 

Along similar lines, I sent a letter to CBS Sunday Morning News in response to a writing campaign started by Rick and Maria, the original creators of the Zentangle Method. Here is the letter and the tile I sent with it, and the envelope:

The envelope I used was actually a cd/dvd square envelope with a round cellophane window. The actual address, stamp, etc is on the reverse, of course.

The End

Wood kit Whimsies

My creativity was on fire after seeing the article and cover of the Sommerset Studio Gallery Winter 2014 magazine, so bought a bunch of kits from Paperwhimsey.com. It took a while to get them, and I was afraid I might lose momentum by the time they arrived. But no! I was very excited to see and touch them and went right to it. The wood is high quality, and the smell - wow!- took me back to childhood creative play! Being laser cut, they smell like the woodburning I did as a kid (borrowed from my brother, cuz that's not a girl thing, dontchaknow). I've been having so much fun working with them, and my stash of images and embellishments.  The pics below show the first ones I finished, and I am getting close to finished on some of the "altered curiosities and ornaments".

I made these tiny fairy houses from a kit I bought from the Paper Whimsey website. They are just under 4 inches high. The boy is actually my father (r.i.p.) when he was a baby. I don't have the same of my mother, but this girl sure looks like she did. They represent 2 people who would grow up to meet, get married and produce 8 children! I added wood coffee stirrers to the girl-house roof since they resemble fairy "popsicle" sticks, to me. Remember those popsicle stick houses aand other projects from childhood?  I used wood matchsticks for the boy-house. I dipped the tips in matching paint so they can't accidently ignite!

Rosetanglezenmaling???!!! My twist on Zentangle and Rosemaling

When I became disabled about 13 years ago, and then started to experience being an artist, I began painting everything in sight. It became a running joke with my kids.

 "Oh no, I scuffed my new white tennis shoes!" 
 "I can paint it for you." 
 "N-o-o-o-o-o!!!!"  

They were terrified I meant it when I said I would paint leopard spots and paislies on our faded car. I painted quite a large design on our front door, a trompe l'oeil window on the living room wall, seasonal scenes on the 4 panels of a wood cabinet.... Some of my artistic exuberance included an old traditional Norwegian furniture painting style called Rosmaling (which means decorative flower painting), and other related forms, which I experimented with making into a style of my own.  A few examples remain, and are pictured below.  I called them  my fantasmagorical-florical designs.  (Can you tell I was a "flower child" of the 70's?)

When I recently spent hours and days doing Zentangle I noticed some similarities between the two, even though Rosemaling is brush-painted and Zentangle is pen-drawn.  So I experimented with combining the shared elements of them both. I enjoyed the process and resulting designs. I hope you will try it. Maybe you'll like it, too. I would love to see what you come up with!
And please tell me what you think it should be called!  Happy Zen-rose-fantasmagorical-florical-tangle-maling!!!

Zentangle officianatos will recognize many of the design elements seen here.

This is probably my favorite so far.

Over the top! - Maybe too much, eh?

Oops, a little fuzzy, but you get the idea.

THREE STARTED/ IN PROGRESS

PLATE IS NOT MY WORK, BUT JUST ONE OF A ZILLION BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLES OF ORIGINAL ROSEMALING

I'm A Tangle Wrangler, Plus more tangles and some Zentangle product info..

My last post showed the first few tangles I did, and told of an awesome deal I discovered at Walmart for the Zentangle classroom kit (which anyone can buy/use). I enjoy it so, and believe in the benefits so much that I will volunteer to teach the "Zentangle method" for some local classes.  It's too bad I cannot become a CZT (Certified Zentangle Teacher). Being disabled, I fear I cannot withstand the long classroom hours, nor can I afford the fee and travel expense on disability pay. (sigh)
Even though I started only 5 weeks ago, I have done so many tangles and zentangle inspired art tiles, and even come up with a few new tangles of my own, that I decided I am qualified to be called a Tangle Wrangler! (lol). I cut some circles and did some "Zendalas", and some heart shaped tiles I call my tangled hearts - most of which I handed out as valentines. I tried black paper with every gel pen imaginable, and other colored paper.  Here's what I recommend:  The Sakura Gelly roll metallics and newer "Moonlight" pens worked very well on the black paper, and the cheapo imitation ones worked ok. On white, off-white, and colored paper the Micron (Sakura Pigment) pens are worth the extra cost beacuse they seem to last endlessly, have the darkest pigment, and various tip sizes to choose from. I like the 01 for normal linework, 03 for stronger lines and larger fill-in areas, and the 005 superfine for delicate linework.  For shading, the darker pencils like the #6B (any brand) or the ebony pencil work ok, but graphite shines in certain light angles. I like charcoal pencils much better, and I didn't prefer one over another in terms of soft, medium, or hard. For shading, both need a "tortillon"  -- a fancy word for pencil-shmearer. I recommend spraying with a fixative when finished because that after a while of handling they get more smeared and gray all over.  Another good shading option is the gray alcohol ink marker. My favorite is 30 or 40% cool gray. (The warm gray is too tan for my taste.) The marker makes a defined shadow line rather than a gradually fading one, so for that effect one would need to use a succession of diminishing values of gray -way too much work!  For some of the designs I like the marker, but overall I favor the charcoal pencil. Next time I will share what I discovered when substrate (i.e. paper) shopping. Meanwhile, please enjoy my work, and leave comments! Thank you for visiting.

My first tangle from the video in the kit.

Shaded with the 40% cool gray marker.

"Zendala" - using brown Micron pen size 01

A Zendala -- I made up the peackock feather pattern

Can you believe how complex this looks for how easy and simple the Zentangle method is?

I learned 2 harder patterns and adore them both: "knyt" and "prestwood"

I made up the pyramid design, then found a similar one on the website.

I signed up for the newsletter which featured the new "aquafleur" tangle, which I immediately had to do!

Tangled up with Zentangles

Welcome to the first post! This one contains some good product info related to the practice of Zentangle and Z-inspired Art.  This blog will be about all kinds of musings, from the mundane to the magical, with much emphasis on art - my passion/advocation. It's good to know about all kinds of products -art, and otherwise- that are great, or to be avoided, and various art processes, because I have tried almost all! I have done lots of art stuff with the intention of "blogging it", but only now am I  finally getting around to the writing part of it. So I am starting with my latest inspiration - "tangling" - doing Zentangle. (From the official website I learned that it would be incorrect to say "zentangling"; the correct verb is "tangling")  Even before I was aware of Zentangle inspired art I had been do something like it in my art journals for a long time. Then I discovered the official Zentangle website:  http://www.zentangle.com, and the related Zentangle Patterns site: http://tanglepatterns.com and that's when I went tangle-crazy!  I couldn't stop! I didn't want to stop. And why should I? Unlike most people, I have more time on my hands than I know what to do with. So here are the first ones I did, following the exact guidelines from the offical site, over the course of only 3 days (I was even tangling in my sleep!):

My first official "Zentangle"

my 2nd one

the 3rd.

the 4th

 As I worked, I tried a lot of different pens and shading options. I was okay with the Sharpie pen (not marker) but I really do prefer the officially reconmmended Micron pen. . I have plenty of excellent bristol paper with vellum finish, like the official (i.e. expensive) tiles are made from, so I cut it to the correct official size of 3.5"x 3.5", but after all that tangling, I was worried my one-and-only, most-favoritest-of-all  Micron pen would soon run out of ink. Being disabled and car-less, thus having a difficult time getting to a store, I started looking all over the internet, (ebay, Zentagle store website, etc) for tangling supplies, I learned that the supplies can be spendy, but....

*** OKAY, YOU REALLY WANT TO READ THIS PART:  I found this awesome deal I am afraid to mention, because once the cat is out of the bag I am afraid the supplier will be forced to change their pricing. It is for the "Apprentice Pack" which is designed for the classroom --for beginning tanglers, and comes with a super helpful beginners DVD, and with a giant pack of the larger 4.5"x 4.5" Apprentice size tiles (which can easily be cut or torn smaller, or round or heart shaped, if so desired), plus pens (not the Micron, but still the good quality Sakura brand with dark black ink). Get this: it was --half-- yes, that's 1/2-- the standard price, as found on the official site and everwhere else I could find it. Of all places, (who'd a thunk it?) -- on Walmart.com!!! I have found excellent prices on the Sakura glaze, gelly, moonlight, and other pens there, so I was checking for the Microns there as well. In their search box I entered "zentangle" - thinking I might find the actual  Micron Zentangle pen pack, and guess what popped up? - the offficial Zentangle classroom pack: for only $63.00!  You would pay almost that much for the tiles alone on E-bay, or Michaels or anywhere else I looked - - so it is like getting the dvd, the shipping, the pencils, and pens for free PLUS, when you register your unique pack i.d.# on the official website you get access to additional exclusive website material!  Get 'em while you can. Who knows how long a deal like that can last, until the official people find out Walmart broke their pricing rules, and won't allow them to buy any more.
So, I have done much more tangling since I got my delivery, and I have plans to go to local classrooms as a volunteer to share it with others.
I have so much more to tell you, but that's enough for now. I am off to take my darling furr-kid out to do his "b'ness", then eat, shower, chiropracter, home to crash (as usual,) and then probably a couple more hours of art play..er...ahem, I mean work. Tee-hee.
 Later Gator! ---z--z-"<