My first Zentangle swap on Facebook!

One reason why it was so quiet here lately (apart from sickness and a busy private life) was that I was working on something big. Not big in the sense of dimensions – although this is on my bucket list, too – but big in numbers. In February, I was accepted into the “Square One: Swap One“-group on Facebook, a large and very active group of tanglers from all around the world. Each month one member hosts a swap and each swap has a special theme chosen by the host. After having seen so many great pictures and posts over the years in other tangler’s blogs proudly presenting their share of the great artwork everybody contributed, I was dying to participate, too. That’s why I jumped right into my first swap there which was the group’s 8th swap. The swap theme was “Hearts & Flowers” and the rules were to use either a heart or flower tangle (or both) on each card and tangle in traditional black & white plus red as a highlight colour (optional). I’m currently sweating a bit because I just re-read the rules for the first time in a few weeks and I think I confused the heart&flower theme – I thought a string in the shape of a heart was ok, too….. Please cross your fingers that my 2 cards without flowery tangles and without a heart-shaped tangle will be accepted…..

Although I was a bit scared of producing a (for me) whopping number of eight cards in 4 weeks, I signed up. Today, 1 day before the deadline, I was finally able to finish my cards and even tangle one for the host. Since the quality of the picture I put on Facebook was so bad, I decided to quickly post some better quality scans here. That’s what I came up with:

Tangles: Printemps

Tangles: Ahh, CO2, Cruffle, Cyme, Join, Printemps

Tangles: Amoeba, Diva Dance (Rock’n’Roll-Version), Hypnotic, Printemps

Tangles: Fission, Join, Meer (tangleation)

Tangles: Cracked, Luv-A, Zinger

Tangles: Join, ‘Nzeppel

Tangles: Flux, Pokeroot, Printemps, Tipple, Zedbra

Tangles: Hypnotic (mixed with Knightsbridge), Knightsbridge, Nekton, ‘Nzeppel (grid-based)

Tangles: Printemps, Tipple, Zenbuds, Zinger

Hope you like them! I’ll post my return cards as soon as they arrive from the USA. Can’t wait to see where my cards will be going to! 🙂

My new Toy: Zentangle Mosaic App

Dear all,

I’m so sorry that it’s been so quiet lately. A cold and an extremely busy private life laft hardly any time to tangle in the last few weeks, I wasn’t able to complete any Diva Challenges or even complete 1 tile in the last few weeks… This week and the one to come will definitely be very busy, too, but I have high hopes for the time after that.. Please bear with me.

I just wanted to leave a “quick” note (oh my, these quick notes really grow fast!) her so you know this blog isn’t dead and that there’ll be new stuff kinda soon. And to tell you that I have a new toy: The brand new Zentangle Mosaic app, an official app released by Zentangle HQ! It was released in the Google Play Store (and in the Apple iTunes App Store) only 4 days ago and I stumbled upon it today already, what a coincidence! I downloaded it right away and it looks very pretty indeed! You can do lots of things there and I haven’t tried out or figured out all of them yet. But for a first quick evaluation I’d say it is very similar to Instagram or Pinterest: You upload your own art or someone else’s art (you have to have this person’s permission), you can appreciate somebody’s art or the whole artist, leave comments, exchange private messanges. You can organise all the artwork by creating “mosaics” (similar to pinboards on Pinterest) and by using hashtags for tangles and other occasions (e.g. for a CZT’s course).

Here’s what the Zentangle HQ wrote about the app.

Here are a few screenshots I took from my smartphone to give you an idea of how it looks:

Here’s the menu – you get the idea of how much you can do here. Still have to try a few things out. 🙂

One example for the waterfall

Another example for the waterfall

This is the detailed view of the first tile I uploaded into the app

My first impression of this app is that it has a very nice user interface although all those options are a little overwhelming. You will need some time to really get used to it (I still haven’t worked out how to add my artwork to the waterfall ^^; ). The “waterfall” is especially nice as every X seconds a tile or artwork is replayed by another (you can choose how fast you want to have them changed). Of course, you cann also scroll down.
The tagging is very useful to find exactly what you need – however, this will only work well if everyone plays along so I’d advise you to check out the recommendations by Zentangle HQ.
The artwork in the app is absolutely gorgeous. What I have seen so far is original artwork from Zentangle HQ (haven’t seen any of it yet published before) and CZTs, I haven’t seen any non-CZT artwork yet but since this is a brand new app with 100-500 downloads yet (according to Google Play store). The private messaging function is great and I do hope very much that group messaging or some kind or forums will be added.

I’ll add a more thorough review when I had the time to play some more with this app.

If you are interested in purchasing a subscription and are as ignorant as to how a yearly subscription is paid for as I was, here are a few warning words: If you want to pay with a gift card, do NOT (!!) enter the code before you are asked to during the subscription process for this app. Do better than me. I first cashed the gift card then continued to buy the subscription which led to me having to pay the subscription in another way and having 35€ to spend on the Google Play Store. And I have no idea how to spend so much there… Well, but I’m happy if you don’t fall fo this. And I hope it helps, if you cannot pay with gift cards at all, please let me know!

What do YOU think about this nifty new app? Feel free to leave me a comment here or drop me a message in Mosaic if you’re active there!