Life signs near the full moon

Yes, I’m still alive! I’ve been busy with tons of other things that were quite important but I’ve always been watching what’s happening in the zentangle world. Since the stress around the start of the year is slowly going back to a more normal level, I thought it was high time to join in again!
This is my first ever take on the monthly challenge you can find as #fullmoonmosaic on Instagram. It was started by Hanny Nura CZT, the originator of Zenjoy. I really liked both the original idea behind this challenge as well as the beautiful results that came from it so far. I’m glad I’m finally part of it, too!

The finished Zendala

The challenge for February 2019 was to take a Zendala tile, divide it into eighths and then place Buster by Irina Wins in the center. For the rest of the tile, you should use the fragment Tatu and – if you like – other tangles, too.

Ready to go! This was the first time that I was able to use my new selfmade zendala stencil. It really helped A LOT to quickly set the string up without folding the poor tile, too. 😅 Am looking forward to playing some more with it! I actually had 3 goes at this challenge with 3 different strings each and I see so much potential for this stencil to create many more fun strings both on a Zendala tile and on a regular Zentangle tile.

While Bluster by Irina Wins was a lot of fun to tangle, Tatu and I decided to leave it at this short collaboration… Especially the “step” around the center circle drove me mad until I found a good workaround for me: I placed four dots around it marking the edge of the each step. Still, no real love sparked between us. Well, at least we tried!

Snaking Pokeleaf round and round – and putting Tatu off until the very end ^^;

All linework done so far, save for the lower level of Pokeleafs

I added colour because after shading (no picture here, sorry) everything lacked contrast, even though I already rounded and added thick outlines around Pokeleaf. So I glazed very lightly with some #watercolour over the organic parts of the tile, Pokeleaf and Buster. It has a little spring feeling to it, don’t you think?

See you next time! 🙂

Inktober 2018

Hi everybody,

this is just a quick post to tell you all that I’m not dead – only really busy with other things at the moment… But the time will come again for lots of tangling. Unfortunately, it will very likely not be in October, the month of the famous Inktober challenge (I wrote about that here). There are so many things going to keep me busy that I doubt very much that I could take the time to tackle this challenge. But maybe I can squeeze in

However, I wanted to point you to Stephanie Jennifer’s blog where she released this year’s Zentangle Inktober prompts, a list of tangles (one for each day) to use as an inspiration. I guess there are many more Zentangle-related Inktober challenges out there, especially in all those Facebook groups, but maybe you want to give this one a try – or even mix it with somebody else’s list of prompts? Whatever you chose to do I hope you have lots of fun and share your creativity für everyone to enjoy! Feel free to share a link to your Inktober art in the comments. 🙂

Hope to be back soon with some new art myself. See you and have fun tangling!

The Diva is Back in the House! Diva Challenge #365: Back to Basics

After a well-deserved rest over the summer, the Diva Laura Harms CZT is back with her weekly challenges! It’s great to finally hear from her again and see that she looks better again, too. I must say I really missed her challenges, they’re usually a wonderful inspiration to sit down and just tangle a bit – something that all too often is forgotten during a busy week.

These busy weeks have been frequent in my life as of late. Not only work has started again after my two week vacation (which because of my luggage gone missing for more than half of the trip to Italy wasn’t nearly as relaxing as I would have wished it to be), I also recently picked up playing and studying the game of Go again. Since the German Female Go Championship will be held in a few weeks time, I’m happy to say that my motivation to play and study the game again has increased a lot since going to the European Go Congress in Pisa, Italy. I’ve been spending the evenings recently doing more Go-related stuff (when I’m not working on a few ATC drawings for a swap I’m currently participating in) and I even signed up for lessons again with the wonderful In-Seong Hwan – he’s such a great teacher! Studying is a lot of fun at the moment and I hope a can reach my goal of NOT being last in the German Female Go Championship again. Since I’m still pretty weak (only 1 rank above the required minimum) and for now among the weakest players pre-registered, that’s not such a lousy goal as it might sound.

Go and the ATC swap have been mainly responsible for my lack of updates here on the blog, so, as I said above, the return of the Diva was a very welcome kick in the.. uhm.. behind to sit down and get some tangling done again, too. To warm up a bit again, the challenge was to tangle a traditional black and white tile with a few simple tangles. Since “simple” is always a relative term, I picked three tangles that I just wanted to use again and that are among my favourites (and, therefore, much used and easy for me). That’s the result:

Tangles used: Hollibaugh, Paradox, Trelina
(I have a new mobile phone and I’m not so sure I like the pictures it makes of my tiles yet. Might have to fight with the options for a bit longer.. )

I’ve never been really good in keeping up different hobbies at the same time and/or for a longer period of time, but I hope that this time I can succeed. After lots of tangling during the past year I’m much faster now than I used to be which is an important factor. And since it’s a great way to relief some stress I strongly believe that my play will be positively affected, too. Unfortunately, due to some bad habits in the past, playing Go has become rather stressful for me under certain circumstances. I hope that Zentangle can help me to calm my nerves while I’m going for some attitude adjustment to enjoy this wonderful game more and more in the future.

Hope to see you next time!

The Endless Zentangle Project – Part 2

The weekend before last I went to a big Zentangle meetup here in Germany and – like last year – it was a lot of fun! As I mentioned before, Christina from W wie Windspiel made a leporello for me so I could participate in the endless Zentangle challenge by Natalie Plechkova (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, please >>click here<<). She gave it to me just before the meeting and it turned out magnificiently! ❤ Here it is (it's the dark one):

The picture was taken by Christina from W wie Windspiel and is used with her kind permission. You can find this picture and more beautiful art on her Instagram account

The paper inside is Fabriano Tiepolo, the same paper as the official Zentangle tiles are made of, and has 10 pages total (so I have a chance of finishing it in a not too distant future).

Here are two little updates for the endless Zentangle project. The first picture is from about ten days ago when I first started:

Tangles used so far: Stella

And this is how it looked about one week later:

Tangles used so far: Stella, Mooka (It stealthyly sneaks in everywhere, it’s like weed! Very pretty weed indeed! :-D), Diva Dance, Huggins, MySwing, Crescent Moon

I haven’t shaded yet and probably wont shade it until it is finished – don’t want to smudge anything here… As you can see, I’m not following any of the suggestions by Natalie. I can’t read them and although everybody’s art looks beautiful, it simply feels really good to just tangle as I want. And I’m more than happy with the result so far! So the motivation to continue is definitely there and I’ll keep you up to date in (more or less) regular intervals how the project grows. Many thanks again to Christina who made it possible! 🙂

It’s a String Thing #249 – One for the Diva

First time to enter Adele Bruno’s It’s a String Thing challenge! I’ve never managed to squeeze the tile in, but this time it worked. When I read that this challenge is (kinda) one for the Diva, Laura Harms, I immediately sat down and finished the tile in one go. Laura and Adele both are a huge inspiration by giving out (almost) weekly challenges which are a lot of fun. It’s a great commitment that takes a lot of time so it’s a real blessing to have them both!

Abeko was new to me (I had seen it many times but never used it), but Diva Dance, of course, is one of my go-to tangles.

Tangles used: Abeko, Diva Dance

Challenge #249 runs until Saturday evening, so if you want to enter, you still can! >>Here’s the link<< to Adele’s blog post with the challenge.

If you’re going to enter: Have fun!

Oh, and while we’re at it: This weekend will be LOTS of fun since I’ll be going to a big Zentangle meetup here in Germany! And I’m really looking forward to meeting Christina from Windspiel.art again. 🙂 So I guess there’ll be a lot to post about next week and lots of new artwork – quite likely including the beginning of my endless Zentangle project.

Hope to see you next week then!

The Endless Zentangle Project

A few weeks ago, one of my favourite Tanglers, Anica Grabovec, started a project called “The Endless Zentangle” and posted about it on Facebook. Its basically a little book with Zentangle tile size pages made of one veeeeeery long strip of paper folded like an accordion. Each week, you are to complete one “page” of it, always overlapping a little onto the next page. It looked like a lot of fun! But since I always start on projects but somehow almost never get to finish them, I discarded the idea of participating and forgot about it.

However, yesterday on Instagram I came across the project again and WOW… there was such amazing artwork there! I immediately got hooked and started to dig out information about the project. I soon found out that the challenge for this project seems to have come from a super-talented Russian tangler I had never heard of before, Natalie Plechkova. Unfortunately that means that pretty much all information on this project are in Russian. Google translate does help – but only when you’ve found an entry or a post about it… Let me help you here. 🙂

• The best starting point if you want to participate would be Natalie Plechkova’s blog post about the challenge. There she also links to the weekly posts about the challenge.

• For some inspiration you can go to her Instagram account or search for #the_endless_zentangle or the Russian counterpart.

It feels like this project opens up a whole new part of the Zentangle community that I haven’t been aware of yet. So much new, gorgeous artwork to find, that’s really cool! However it’s a little sad that there’s this language barrier.. So.. If you’re participating or have found a cool post about it: Please leave a comment here! I’d love to check out what you found.

Maybe one day I’ll start such an accordion folded book, too! The project is definitely intriguing! But until then there’s still so much to finish first, hehe. Ooooops… XD

P.S.: The lovely Christina from W wie Windspiel was so sweet to craft me a ten page leporello from Fabriano tiepolo today! She made one for herself, too, and next week when we FINALLY meet again she’ll bring it along. She posted both hers and mine (the dark one) on Instagram – haven’t they turned out BEAUTIFULLY?! I’m really motivated to try to match the content of the book with its beautiful outside. THANK YOU so much, Christina! ❤

Diva Challenge #359: Finger Stringer (or something like that)

Back in April, the Zentangle Diva Laura Harms issued a challenge called “Finger Stringer”. The task was use our fingers in an “interesting” (thats what she said) way to create a string for us to tangle in.

Well, I tried to tackle that challenge. However, I’m not 100% sure if the two tiles I do qualify since I only tangled AROUND my hand. But almost as soon as she wrote the word “interesting” my mind was set to do something that would incorporate my other big hobby next to tangling/drawing: the game of Go (or 囲碁 (jap. igo), 圍棋 (chin. wéiqi) or 바둑 (kor. baduk).

+++ Little note abot Go, if you know it already or are not interested, please feel free to skip it +++

Probably you’ve heard from it, there has been QUITE a bit of a ruckus the last two years because AlphaGo revolutioned computer Go and the wayartificial intelligence work. Go basically is a 4,000 year old game originally from China. It’s played by two people alternately playing black and white round pieces on the intersections of a grid of 19×19 lines (other sizes are used, too, especially by beginners). To win you have to surround more free intersections than the other player. To check out the basic rules, click here. It’s such a deep, challenging and interesting game! And, just like in Zentangle, it sometimes allows me to zone out completely as I only focus on the board and the moves being played to find the best possible counter to an opponent’s move (within the range of my poor abilities XD). I’ve been playing for.. almost 15 years now, I think, and it is the only game so far that never gets boring.

+++ End of Go-related infos +++

Well, anyway.. this is my response to the Diva’s challenge:

Tangles used: Diva Dance, Button

Tangles used: Diva Dance

Especially the second tile is among my all time favourite tiles, I’m really happy how both of them turned out! It’s such a simple and obvious thing to do, but without the Diva I’d never have thought to do it. So, THANKS a lot for the inspiration, Laura!

Please also check out the wonderful artwork the Diva and everyone else did for this challenge by going to the Diva’s blog post!

This challenge inspired me to “go bigger” and tangle a mosaic of a whole board one day. I already laid it out on one of our Go boards: I’d have to tangle 25 or (rather, to have some kind of border going round) 30 tiles fo that. Wow.. that surely feels like a daunting task! But one step at a time… it might work out. I already picked the game, too, it’ll be Honinbo Shusaku’s famous ear-reddening-game from 1846. Hmm… or maybe an interesting game from my most favourite today’s professional player, Iyama Yuta? Hmmm….. You see, I still have to work out a few things until I can get started! Anyways, I’d just LOVE to hang it in our flat (which since we moved in definitely lacks some pictures on the wall). As soon as I start I’ll keep you up to date with my progress. Giving updates and seeing how I progress here will definitely motivate me to keep going.

Have a nice weekend!

Still waters run deep

A short post for a little something I did today:

Tangles used: Crescent Moon (like it a lot for the first time ever woohooo!), Diva Dance & Tipple

I really like it a lot, it even looks a liiiiiiiiitle bit like something one of my favourite tanglers, Margaret Bremner, could have done. Just a little bit.

My unconscience played me a neat trick here because only a few hours before I first put pen to paper on this tile I started watching Avatar – The last Airbender (the cartoon series) and the first part is all about waterbending (that is controlling the element of water so it can be manipulated at the Avatar’s / waterbender’s will). So… I guess I might have to do a tile for earth, wind and fire, too, as the series progresses.. We’ll see! It’s a lovely series and it would be cool to have a little element set for myself.

The downside is that the tile literally took half the day to tangle and colour in.. Hope to get faster here soon! For this tile I sued some watercolour base (Schmincke Horadam) and then my trusty Faber-Castell Polychromos. It somehow felt right to use them here and not my new love, the Caran d’Ache Luminance (there’s always next time!).

Have a nice week!

Just for fun

Cause that’s what it’s all about. 🙂

Tangles used: Button, Pokeleaf, Printemps, Shattuck, Tipple, Tripoli

I took up the Earth Day Challenge that was recently issued by the Diva Laura Harms and cut a tile from a supermarket tomato packaging that was lying around. Really lovely paper I must say! Won’t be the last project on that paper (more tomatoes have been bought already ^^).

This is also the first project I did using the set of 20 Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils a friend gave me for my birthday a few months back. They’re at least as lovely as they are pricey! One of those supercreamy-soft pencils costs at least 3€, so… you can imagine how very nice they must be then. All of them are extremely lightfast (something which can by no means be taken for granted) and the colours are brilliant and absolutely magnificent! I’m definitely in love and already bought a few additions. ❤ And well… I guess I can't rest until one day I caught oh… I mean until I bought them all.. ;-D

My new tangle: Ann

We’re back online!!! To celebrate this I want to publish a post I have already written quite some time ago and I hope you’ll enjoy it!

I’ve waited quite a bit for this moment and now the time’s come to present to you my new tangle: Ann! Since I discovered Zentangle back in August 2011 I always wanted to invent or deconstruct my own tangle that I’m proud of because I think no one has thought of that idea before**. However, I’m not that inventive. I always need a point to start from and seeing that huge mass of already deconstructed patterns is always quite intimidating, too. So.. where to start? Some day in Spring 2017 I remembered IX, a tangle, that is based on a letter – I thought that might be something that I could try. Quite fast I settled on the letter N and the first four steps from the step-out below came to me pretty fast, too. But something was missing. I couldn’t point a finger at it, but it just wasn’t finished yet. However, I was at a loss for the last step.

The final form of Ann was found back in June 2017 (yep, I’m quite slow posting about it XD) when I sat down with my friend and fellow tangler Christina from W wie Windspiel to tangle in an Asian restaurant after a Zentangle meeting. I showed her what I had come up with and after discussing a few ideas she suggested adding a Cubine-like “window” between the N-starting-shapes. It immediately felt perfectly right and the final step from the following step-out was added. I was really happy that finally I had found what I was looking for. Now it was perfect! Still, there was one issue left: the name. But here my friend was a great help again. Due to the tangle being based on the letter N, she suggested the name this tangle has today. It was just perfect! I had never seen a tangle like this before* and I’m still very happy with it.

I already have deconstructed the tangle Sweaf, but like Printemps, we never came to develop some kind of long-term relationship. It’s nice but… actually not my kind of favourite tangle. It’s different with Ann, though. I love it and it has become one of my go-to tangles since it’s deconstruction a few months ago.

I won’t bore you any more with details, here are the step-outs to tangling Ann:

 

Here are a few tips for tangling Ann:
1. To make the tangle more lively, try tangling the N-shapes in different sizes, draw curved lines instead of straight ones and vary the spacing between the Ns.

2. You can draw the two “teeth” (they do look a bit like a vampire’s cuspid, don’t you think?) in step 3 either as one line (going back and forth) or as two lines. I  prefer 2 lines and to turn my tile in a way that the “tip” of the two “teeth” is pointing to me so that I can pull the pen towards me.

3. You CAN start drawing the inner line of the out “tooth” in the center (step 3). However, I think it looks more interesting if you don’t start in the middle but a little off – you can vary the look here very nicely, too.

4. You can either fill in the inner “tooth” or the outer one (like in the deconstruction above) of Ann – or maybe you even come up with another variation?

5. For the Cubine-like “window” first draw the diagonal lines from two or three corners towards the center, then connect them by drawing a line that’s parallel to the shape it’s drawn in. Or maybe drawing the diagonal lines from all for corners is interesting, too? (is this a window/hole then, or a lifted area? You decide by shading it accordingly!) Or changing the corners from where the diagonal lines are drawn towards the center?

And here are a few tiles I tangled with Ann:

Some colour involved 🙂
Tangles used: Ann, Fengle

My first try on Margaret Bremner’s rope string.
Tangles used: Ann, ING, Paradox, Tipple, Tripoli, Zedbra

Ann as a border on a 3Z
Tangles used: Ann, ‘nzeppel

Ann as a border on a Zendala
Tangles used: Ann, Fife

A little black & white Bijou
Tangles used: Ann, Crescent Moon

Now, this is really exciting for me, I cannot wait to see what tanglers from all over the world will do with Ann! If you tried it and published a tile with Ann, I’d really love to see it! Please link to it in the comments or drop me a message on Twitter and I’ll come and pay a visit.

Happy tangling and hope to see you soon!

Yvonne

** As I said, I’m not aware of any pattern that is just like Ann and at this point I’m quite certain that it is unique. However, it’s impossible to know all patterns and tangles in the world. If you’ve already seen this pattern somewhere before, I’d appreciate it if you’d drop me a message with a link to it.

Diva Challenge #361: Amanda Day / Earth Day Year 7

Oh what a week that was.. Lot’s of work and other things on my mind – but the tile for this week’s Diva Challenge still fit in. I’m getting fast and faster and recently I think I took another step forward, I really like almost all of my results! For someone as self-critical as me that’s a HUGE step forward. 🙂 Since I cannot post everything at the moment (see P.S. for the reason), I hope you will believe my word only that this is the 5th week in a row that I can finish the tile in time! This is a new record for me and I hope to keep going and going this year!! Let’s hope that this roll continues and that by the end of the year I can look back on the Diva Challenges of 2018 with an (almost) complete collection! That’s been my goal for several years now but I never came even close to that. Maybe 2018 will be the year!

This week the Diva Laura Harms issued a recurring challenge, it’s Earth Day time again! That means that we’re challenged to recycle something for the challenge. For her tile she used brown paper cut from a pizza cardboard box and the usual pens. I decided to do something similar and as if my mind had unconsciously grabbed the idea, I had on that day – after a long time again – bought a pack of my favourite cookies that I coud use. I wanted to cut as many tiles as possible from that:

After the most economic cutting possible…

… I got two tiles, two ATCs and three Bijous – not bad!

The Diva also used a special string that resembled a sun (or, a quarter sun 😉 ). Again, I decided to mimic her:

My string

Finally, here’s the result:

Tangles used: Agua, Mooka, Opus, Pokeroot, Tripoli, Verdigogh, Zinger

Zen got me there, I honestly wasn’t striving to get such a botanical result but.. it’s so fitting and I really like it! The paper.. I didn’t like nearly as much but in the end – and in true Earth Day spirit – I’ll try to tangle on all tiles/ATCs/Bijous that I got out of the cardboard box. Results will of course be posted here on the blog when I’m finished.

Thanks for stopping by! Don’t forget to take a look at the Diva’s own tile and at what everybody else came up with >>here<<!

P.S.: I still have many more things to post, among them a few Diva Challenges and I hope to finally post them soon. It looks like our internet problems will FINALLY get fixed in less than two weeks and after that I’ll be catching up with a lot of stuff from the last 6 (!!) months including project packs and other stuff, too. Keeping your fingers crossed, too, will help a lot, though! You never know of the Telekom tech will actually show up or not..

Diva Challenge #358: Pickpocket again!

The challenge was just so much fun, so I sat down with another tile featuring Pickpocket (for the first one click >>here<<) and the result after many hours of tangling, colouring and fun is this:

Tangles used: Diva Dance, Pickpocket, Printemps, Verdigogh

I baptised this tangle Pickpocketii PriVerDiDa and it was such fun to tangle, colour (must be the lack of spring) and finally name this tree, too! I hope I’ll get to do more plants of all kinds in the future and have the joy to name them, too.

Be sure to check out the Diva’s tiles and the other wonderful contributions from tanglers all over the world >>here<<.

Have a wonderful sunny Sunday!

Diva Challenge #358: UMT Pickpocket by Tomàs Padrós

Thank you for all the sympathetic and encouraging comments for last week’s post! Each of them really brightened my day. 🙂 This is going to be a short post since the situation hasn’t changed one bit since last week… Let’s hope there’ll be a more positive development soon. However, since Pickpocket by Tomàs Padrós is such a great tangle, I simply couldn’t keep from tangling and posting this week’s response to the Diva’s challenge! Tomàs really has contributed quite a few wonderful patterns already, so I decided to mix Pickpocket with another tangle of Tomàs’s that I really like a lot, Irradial:

Tangles used: Irradial, Pickpocket

I recently saw this “‘nzeppeled/jewel-ised version of Irradial and wanted to use it before I forget about it. Pickpocket did take a little time to practice but it’s really worth it, I love the weaving effect a lot! And yes, I confess: I did use a ruler to place the dots this time. O:-) I like it tidy as it is here – although the Diva’s wavy interpretation is really cool, too. Do check it out if yiou haven’t already seen it and of course all the other great contributions to this week’s challenge! Click here to go to the Diva’s post to see it all.

Have a great week and lots of fun with Pickpocket!

Diva Challenge #357 (and the internet) Paradox

Long time no see! I haven’t been able to post for a few months now due to internet issues. If the story is not of interest for you, feel free to skip the seperated text and scroll down to the pictures for this week’s challenge.

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Since we moved flat at the beginning of December, the telephone companies involved (yes, it’s more than one by now which makes everything even more complicated) haven’t been able to re-connect us to the internet. It’ss a long story by now and one which usually brings my temper up so I won’t say no more about itnow. The whole situation will continue for at least another 4 weeks now so we’ll be left with no internet at home for half a year.Incredible in times like these in a country like Germany – but I’m sure that anybody from Germany can confirm the horror stories from companies like Telekom. They are true indeed. 😦

Since we fully depend on very limitted data budgets from our mobile phones, I haven’t posted at all here since the blogging does take a lot of data from my budget. However, we’re now sitting in a train heading home and I intend to fully use up my 200MB you can get for free here. And since I’ve been busy tangling I can show you at least what I tangled for thhis week’s challenge – which is very little of all the tangling I’ve been doing in the laast few months. As soon as we’re back online, you can expect tons of updates here.

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But without further ado: Here are the two monotangle tiles I did for the Diva Challenge #357:

Unshaded (I finally remembered to take apicture before shading!:-))

After shading

Tangles used on all tiles: Paradox
(All pictures were taken on board of the train so they’re not as good as usual.. sorry!)

Hope to be posting again soon and to have you back here then again, too!
Happy tangling and hapy Easter for you all!

Time’s moving fast…

It’s unbelievable how fast time’s moving these days! I want to thank everybody who left a comment for the last post and I’m sorry I’m so very late to thank you. Lots of small things distracted me from coming back to you earlier (and doing other blog-related stuff I’ alluded to in the past) and it’s not only been the move, which will take place a little later than we had hoped at first. However, it still looks like we’re moving before next year begins and we do keep our fingers crossed that there’ll be no more changes. It already worked for the new kitchen! It was supposed to be delivered in January next year, but last week we got a note that it’ll be in the nick of time before Christmas! But I’m bothering you all with boring stuff, sorry. 😉

Again my monthly post comes at the last of the month. I guess I just need that deadline… But better have a post late than never! Here’s the latest tile, no challenge, just tangling:

Tangles used: Barberpole, CO2, Fassett, Pepper, Printemps, Verdigogh

I really like the Printemps-“snails” with the Verdigogh-“tentacles”! And I cant’t help it but this one hast a winter feeling… even though it’s not even winter yet! Or maybe it is because it’s been getting much cold as of late? I don’t know but I hope you’re warm and comfy and have an enjoyable time tangling whereever you are!

Thanks a lot for stopping by and see you next month, too!

Yvonne