I walk the line

I love this song so much and found myself humming along to it :) Here are my attempts for Laura's challenge

Red nose day

I sat down to do some example tangles last night for tangles I have spotted on the internet and not had time to complete. I started with Track lighting by Suzanne Mcneil. I guess watching Comic relief affected me because all of a sudden it was this!

The Next was U-vee by Sandra Strait.

and finally Queen of Hearts

Lots of fun :)

Lefty!

Well funny how so many of the blogs I have read are saying so many of the things I am thinking - firstly - HOW DOES LAURA KNOW!!!!! Laura has come up with a corker again! I teach right and left brain theory in school all the time, and I tell them all the tim

e about Einstein's brain and how it wasn't bigger or heavier but rather

had more connections between right and left. If we can foster more non dominant activiti

es we make more connections and we become more intelligent! But do I practice what I preach? Not often enough so here we have 2 left handed attempts!

It's tough to work with your non dominant hand, you have to actively ask your hand to relax and then try not to get annoyed when it doesn't listen!!!!

I did this way back a good few years ago on a visit with my kids in school to the Uni in Carmarthen who have a fashion course. This was done with my left hand and as you can see from the following one what the college were trying to teach us was that when we use our non dominant hand we look more - we appreciate proportion more and you can see in my examples this is true....

See short stumpy body in my dominant hand!

In the words of Miranda Hart - such fun!!!!

and another :)

Found this lovely ink blot and went to town with pen and white pencil to highlight! Have to say i love this one.

Blue challenge

Funny that Laura asked us to work with blue this week, as I had been in a meeting a few weeks ago and had to change biro's part way through :) and this is what I got.

You can see I took little information down in the meeting, you can see the word bilingualism at the top and I am fluent in welsh so was little for me to do before you think how rubbish I must be at work!

I then started playing with envelopes, the security ones you get with the windows from the bank and that, I am doing a workshop on the second of april for a local group and so envelopes are in my psyche at the moment. This was a bue roller ball pen over collaged strips.
This one has just a square of envelope paper
This one I took the idea from the zentangle bog and used a was of blue ink at the back and tried to be influenced by the shapes the ink made.
Lurved this challenge, as I do so love blue :)

More tangles

Mouse ears by Sande Lefaut - did this in like a monotangle again

Love this one is called Hainah by Ildiko - this is a lovely rhythmic tangle pattern, and added feathers to
This one is called banana Leaf and is by Suzanne Mcneil. I enjoyed them all

Got a bit over excited monotangling

Not sure if this is an official pattern so not sure who to credit
same here
In a pod - Carol Ohl, love this one and look at he subconscious E ( my daughter is Ellie)
Fishnet By Mariet Dronten
Double Florz by Margaret Bremner

Joyo doing these

Tangling and technology

Last week the lovely Julie wrote to me knowing my love of pattern and my joy at finding new tangle patterns particularly - especially after recent rants! (Am calming down about it and not taking it personally athough I still really think this is a minefield). Anyway

Julie

told me about this gorgeous work she had done for her C&G. I can tell y

ou this is making it onto my school syllabus - look out year 10! So I decided to play - I found this Arabic logo the one on the top left, and I started playing around with it -cropping sections out and rotating and over lapping etc, I used publisher as I find it a great package for moving things around in - in fact I use it for all my worksheets at school - I have yet to know how to capture from publisher and upload here so had to print off and scan. Here is what I did.....

So I loved doing this - I warn you it is BLOODY ADDICTIVE!!!!! so then I set about making it into a tangle - there will be more using this series I promise you that as the shapes appeal to me so much. I worked out steps that are below, and called it Swalls - combo or swirls and balls :)

Then after working it out I was itching to play and Laura's challenge was just released her monotangle challenge11 - I think that I this was a great challenge and will be playing more with conventional patterns :) So here is my Swalls monotangle :)

When I was done drawing I suddenly realised how drawn I am to similar shapes, I realised that this bears a close resemblance to my tattoo that I have on my back - designed by me. Weird how we are drawn to the same sort of shapes, I'd love to hear the things that keep recurring in your work? Hope you have a play with Swalls of your own - please let me know if you do :) Can't wait to see

Here is the tat about an hour after :)

Some tangles I have been playing with

First of all I am a bit annoyed tat tanging seems to have an edge. This whole thing about "who" they belong to. I am aware that people spend time making these patterns up - but everything is derivative and we are often influenced by similar things - even at a subconscious level - but surely by sharing them the aim is for others to use them in their work and develop and grow. I am new ish to tangling and I posted the steps I had copied to learn the patterns - not out of malice or to steal - but to show working through the design - the process. Like I say new to this and I corrected my actions - not thinking about how this might stop traffic to others sites I removed the images and apologised publicly.

Now, I want to credit the people who have created these patterns and when I am learning something new as these images below will show I credit the thing I am learning - there is no time to look back and link to every last pattern - life is too bloody short! I just want to share what I have done with people on here, I don't want anyone to think I created them ( athough it is my hand that drew them and put them together in this way)

So Weequash by Mollossus
Purk by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas
and Bullet holz by Cookie

It has left a sour taste, and I feel like I can no longer share maybe.I really thought tanging was about zen and enjoyment and sharing what you put together. Not feeling the vibe

Hearts and flowers

Here is a better version my the pattern I made up - based on inspiration from a Pre-war Iraqi bank note, brought back by a friend in the army.

Here are my exampes:

Thanks to Sandra for featuring me here

Thanks

Just wanted to pop in and say thanks to everyone who has commented of late. I always try to get back to people for taking the time to say such lovely things, but lots of people ately have the no reply thing set. So sorry for the non personal thank you but know that every comment is truely valued :)

Challenge number 10 - the space between

this is my final piece for Laura's - The space between challenge, I really enjoyed making this work. I couldn't leave the spaces completely blank, made them feel like bubbles squeezing through I hope! It features shiney stripes by Jo in NZ

This is my practice piece for finny's florets by Liz Selkirk it also features shiney stripes and lampie by Jane Monk

I had a go at 2 new patterns

I had a go at 2 new patterns this week, the first is spinning by Mariel Drotten and I really enjoyed the shading example I did on my step by step guide so did this in pencil and colour pencil. I was thinking about Laura's spaces, challenge 10, and so left a space but I don't think this is my challenge piece! Doesn't feel like a best example of spaces.

The second pattern is actually 2 Fern and it's little brother Nerfy by Jane Monk. Really love this one :) LURVE spirals and this combined with Jo in NZ's shaded stripes is really pleasing I enjoyed this one.

Trentwith

When I saw the pattern Trentwith by Terri Greenberg posted about on Molossus blog I thought Rennie Macintosh straight away, so I had a glance atgoogle images, just one glance I promise, then shut it and came up with this. Thanks Terri and Sandra :)

Tangle steps

I have just been editing my blog as I made a huge mistake in posting the steps to others patterns, was just showing my process but didn't realise that this was not the done thing, while I did credit the designer, sorry for any offence, was a genuine mistake. Thanks to the person who alerted me.

Doodles a plenty

have been really enjoying zentangling lately, was just philosophizing about why on another blog.... I have often said that zentangling saves my sanity! but I decided on "focused freedom" I never feel constrained while drawing these designs, never think things are going wrong! they are marginally planned but mainly not to be honest. They focus the whole of my mind and allow me to escape the crap that pervades my life (a lot - work, hub's illness) and by focusing I get to be free! see :) I have been using my yoga breathing of late while I do them, and that is really making a difference too, funny how two seemingly different parts of my life have found kinship.

So this one adding colour.

Tangle using Laura's artoo, Suzanne Mcneil's pyramid.

Practicing Cookie's Florez, and Carole Ohl's lava juice.

This one is Molossus' Caviar :)

This one is for Laura's last challenge, she designed this while her littly was in hospital and named it for him, I LURVE it, has such lovely flow and really appeals to my naturalistic style.
So here is my tile :)

Funny Laura's new challenge is using space, and weird how I have been thinking about that already in this piece. Looking forward to this next challenge.

Drawing from inspiration - pardon the pun

Starting to think about the workshop I am giving in April and design sources and decided to give Karen's idea of gathering inspiration sources around you. So I made this collage and started with a collage of shapes.

I then drew with pencil in my right (strongest) hand.

I then drew with my left hand and used colour pencils to fill in some shapes.

I am not happy with this work at all but the collage as good inspiration and so will try again tomorrow :)

My first original tangle pattern

Here are the instructions to my first original tangle pattern :) Hope you like it, some one told me it looks like blackwork but was inspired by an iraqi bank note

Challenge number 8

Challenge number 8 set by Laura is a very special one for her little baby boy. We had to create a heart using 2 of the challenges from before. Go read Laura's story she is having a devil of a time and I wish her lots of luck. I chose a 2 pencil string as I just can not seem to get to grips with using them and producing nice shape (still haven't fathomed it properly - any advice welcome) and stary eyed surprise as I din't do that challenge. I used Laura's cookie cutter idea for the 3 main stars and then improvised the rest. I wanted to use red as it is coming so close to valentines. I used, hollibough, striping, beaded, zedbra and tipple. I have to say I am well pleased with it

Tangly fun

I have seriously got in to tangles of late, knowing how to draw the patterns has really intruiged me for a while so at christmas I started keeping a sketchbook - like a vocabulary of patterns, with steps and then a sampler, like this ....

Then I found this blog, and started fiddling with the challenges. This one is tangle my name...

Orbs....

Ixorus, turned into a heart :)....

This is just a sampler of patterns I have been researching...

and finally I started tinkering with patterns of my own creation, I looked around my stuff in the room and came up with these, no idea if they are "original" but they were made up by ooking at my room.