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 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 #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!

Diva Challenge #334

Very busy and very tired at the moment, that’s why this’ll be a very short post. Inspired by this week’s Diva Challenge I modestly present:

Tangles used: N’Zeppel (“crazy” shading variation), Printemps, Paradox, Tipple

I like this shading variation of N’Zeppel and will definitely use it again! I’d also like to try another piece with several different shading variations mixed together. I’m sure that this would look very cool!
I didn’t shade the whole because of various reasons. The most important one is that I’m extremely tired right now but have to post now if I want to have a post for September. The other reason ist that I thought that in this way crazy N’Zeppel would “pop” more from the tile. It didn’t really happen but it’s still good looking.

The next two months will be a bit harder to post because we are going to move. ❤ I'm still planning to post at least once per month. However, moving is also the "death" of Inktober this year for me. If you're participating I wish you lots of fun and a lot of stamina so you'll be able to complete the challenge. I'll definitely be folloing Inktober activities an Twitter and I'm looking forward to enjoying all this great rt that'll be posted then.

"See" you soon!

Diva Challenge #262: UMT: Fassett by Lynn Mead and upcoming Zentangle weekend

In the last few months I haven’t really posted anything about my plans for completing 1 year of Diva challenges – so it’s more than about time I post this tile! Which is already 5 months old (you can tell from the straight edges of the tile ;-D) and which I never got around to post here… But I still love it very, very much, especially the contrast between the curvy and rather straight lines.

Tangles used: Fassett, Printemps

Challenge #262 was to use Lynn Mead’s beautiful tangle Fassett. I thought it would be nice to keep the number of tangles small this time and to leave some space empty for a change – and the frame really works well in my opinion.

This challenge REALLY got me hooked on Fassett and I’ve been using it a lot ever since I completed this challenge. Just like Paradox, Trelina, Ginili and – the most revent addition to the team – Pepper it has become one of my favourite tangles and is probably my foremost “go-to-tangle” at the moment. All thanks to you, Lynn and Laura! 🙂

If everything goes as planned, there’ll be a HUGE change on the blog in the months to come. I don’t think I can reveal anything yet but it’s something that I’ve been looking forward to do very much for a very long time. Although you won’t be seeing anything new in the next months to come rest assured that there’s an east wind coming… (yes, I do love BBC Sherlock a lot ;-D )

Next weekend will be a very special one: Via Facebook a Zentangle weekend has been organized for a few lucky souls who were at the right place at the right time to register – places filled very quickly and I myself only got in by the skin of my teeth. Since I’m having a very busy time at work, I’m really looking forward to tangling a whole weekend and meeting new, kind people! I’m especially looking forward to meeting Arva from W wie Windspiel who is also an active member of the German ATC website kakao-karten.de. As far as I know, no CZTs are coming, so it’ll just be tangling, talking, eating and of course more tangling. Maybe I can catch up on more Diva challenges that weekend. Or have the time to work on another project… who knows. I don’t really want to make any plans – although I do guess that our host will keep us very busy (I hope not too busy! 😉 ). Since I’ll be arriving the day before, I hope to get in some urban sketching as well. On Friday I bought a very nice book abouth sketching architecture by Liz Steel called “5-Minute Sketching Architecture” and I’m looking forward very much to trying out some of her useful tipps. I’ll try to post a few pictures next weekend as we’re tangling along and of course I’ll be writing a blogpost with lots of pictures and the artwork we created afterwards.

Have a great week!

Yvonne

Diva Challenge #318: Diptych

It’s been so long since my last Diva challenge but I had wanted to join it for quite some time. Since the slump is (more or less) over (for now), I sat down this evening and this is the result:

Tangles used: Barberpole, CO2, Fescu, Hollibaugh, Hypnotic, ‘Nzeppel, Pepper, Trelina, Zedbra

I’m really curious to see what tanglers from all over the world will do with this challenge! If you’re curious, too, then be sure check out what’s been linked to the Divas blogpost!

A short post tonight if you want to read some rambling you can check out my last post about the urge to create.

Have fun tangling and see you soon!

Diva Challenge #283: UMT Centre Square

Another post I wrote back in January 2017 which I didn’t get around to post.

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Another year has come but the Diva is still taking her well-deserved break. Time to catch up on some of the challenges of 2016 that I didn’t have time for, the big goal (for this year) is to finish them all so I have a complete mosaic for 1 whole year of Diva challenges. Yeah, another challenge for myself since I already failed like… 1.000. But it doesn’t matter, I’ll get there some day eventually!

The tile for challenge #283 below actually has a long history. Some would say it’s full of misunderstandings, others would say it’s.. giving up too early on a promising opportunity. I was really motivated when the challenge was up and I wanted to incorporate tangleations and all kinds of fancy stuff into this tile. The challenge was to use the tangle Centre Square by Aleesha Sattva and was really eager to try something new since I had just recently gotten myself the wonderful ebook Overlapping Zentangle by Eni Oken and experimented with going over and under. Centre Square looked like a great opportunity to play with this concept. However, after the centre grid was finished, I was absolutely not satisfied with the outcome, it looked not at all like how I imagined it to be. And I put it away. In the months to come I looked at it again and again but it didn’t speak to me until late December 2016 when I finally finished it. I’m quite satisfied with it now (although it is too full AGAIN.. will I ever learn? X’D) but it was a real struggle. Here’s the result of the fight:

Tangles used: Centre Square, Demi, Marasu (not coiled up – or maybe only very loosely coiled up?), Printemps, Tipple (in a looooong string)

One thing I really like is the combination of Centre Square and Demi in this tile. And how Printemps is such a good contrast to all the straight lines in this tile. Ok, I have to admit it: The tile is not that bad, ok… 🙂 Centre Square is a really nice tangle and I think I’ll use it now and then in the future. Thanks for sharing, Aleesha!

If you want to see all the other tiles everybody did for this challenge, click >>here<< to go to the Diva’s blog entry.

Diva Challenge #276: Space truckin’ – Moving tangles

The Diva took a well-deserved Christmas break, so I felt I had a chance to catch up a little on the 2016 challenges. I’d really love to finish a complete year but I still have a long way to go there: There were 48 challenges in 2016 and I only managed to finish 15 so far (including this one and not counting the tiles for the first year of Diva Challenges), that’s almost one third of the challenges.. I’m happy that I was able to do so many in my first year, but… way to go if I ever want to have a complete mosaic! So let’s take this next step.

That’s what I wrote in JANUARY and never got to actually publish here on the blog. Until today. Better late than never! PLease enjoy!

Challenge #276 was issued by the Diva in July 2016 in the middle of summer and summer vacations. Click >>here<< to check out everybody’s contributions.

When the challenge was up, I was not happy because I like my steady, quiet drawing underground and there’s hardly another thing more annoying for me than an underground that’s moving and shaking in an uncontrollable and not foreseeable way while I’m drawing or tangling. Oh, those wonky lines! I don’t care if it’s ok with Zentangle to draw wonky lines, I’m a perfectionist and I dislike wonkyness in my work. ;-P Oh, and yes, I had no vacations during summer, either, because of the wedding preparations. Since I had no opportunity to tangle travelling, it was hard to do this challenge, too (no, I won’t start tangling on my way to work, this is even MORE bumby that express trains to the other side of the country and too little time at a time, too). However, on January 1st, when we rode the train back to our home from celebrating Christmas and the new year with the family, I remembered the challenge and decided to pick up my Micron and try it anyway. It was bumpy and a bit annoying to tangle in the train, but in the end I have to admit it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be and I like the result far more than I expected. I'm glad I took up the challenge and pulled through! Here’s my tile:

Tangles used: Ahh, Fassett, Jawz, Knightsbridge (shattered by a meddlesome Printemps-coil into black and white squares), Paradox, Printemps, Tipple, Trelina

Most conveniently, the tile took the whole train ride to complete, about 4 hours (including some leisure breaks), so I was pleasantly busy the whole time without being pressed for time (kind of magical, huh? 🙂 ). The tangles came easily, too, and if I only had a feeling what I needed, like some “drama” in the end, I quickly found what I needed on the internet (provided for free on all ICE trains in Germany since January 1st, which was extremely convenient). And there was the surprise element in the end, too, so all in all I’d say that everything was just as perfect a Zentangle experience as one could hope for. Thank you very much, Laura, for helping me to leave my comfort zone and for letting me have such an enjoyable time! 🙂

Diva Challenge #301: Kitchen Table Tangles with Paradox & Diva Dance

What a start of the year! Work kept me extremely busy for several weeks and I didn’t get to post anything here in the blog – although I did tangle a little bit since my last post. You’ll see the result soon. 🙂

However, today I’d like to post my tiles (yes, there’s more than one!) for this week’s challenge, which was a special one. Zentangle HQ released the first video of a series called “Kitchen Table Tangles” where they’ll share tipps and tricks while tangling a tile. While the videos will usully only be available through the Zentangle Mosaic app, they shared this first video on their YouTube channel for everyone to see. Click >> here << to watch it (and be sure to come back afterwards 😉 ). The video is about twelve minutes long.

This first video was very interesting since it had to do with overlapping, my favourite subject, and he even used two of my favourite tangles! Rick showed there how you can “weave” Diva Dance into Paradox, a very neat trick. The Diva let us play with this idea this week and I thought it’d be the perfect opportunity to finally use my Paradox tangleation again. Here’s the first result:

Tangles used: Diva Dance, Paradox

I wasn’t overly happy with the first tile because AGAIN I had drawn too small and it looked more chaotic than cool and the weaving doesn’t really show well. So if you haven’t tried it before but are set on trying it now after you watched the video: Draw Paradox bigger. That’s what I did for the second tile and I like the result much better:

Tangles used: Diva Dance, Paradox

I guess now you’re asking: “Didn’t she say something about a Paradox tangleation before? What about that?” Well, it’s there, but it doesn’t show that well. Here’s a monotangle of my tangleation of Paradox – it’s pretty much a combination of that tangle and Hollibaugh.

Tangles used: Paradox-variation (I like to call it “Escaping Paradox” ^^)
[Tile ist from March 2016]

I already came up with it almost a year ago, but never came around to post it.. ^^; It’s no ground-breaking new stuff, you actually only apply the concept of drawing over and under from Hollibaugh on Paradox to give it an almst “woven” look. The start of it is a little tricky so f you’d like a step-out, just let me know! Oh, and if someone already came up with this before me, please leave me a note here!

Be sure to check out all the great contributions tanglers from all over the world made for this week’s Diva Challenge!

Have a great Sunday und see you next time!

Diva Challenge #298: UMT Orbs-la-Dee by Anneke van Dam

Happy New Year to you!* Let’s hope that we’ve entered a creative, happy and healthy new year. 🙂

Last year certainly was a very busy year – both Zentangle-wise and in other parts of my life. However, at the moment it feels like 2016 was just a warm-up for what hit me this week, work is really crazy at the moment… and I mean REALLY crazy. I mean we all saw it coming but even the most experienced of us underestimated what hit us in the middle of last week. This will probably not change over the next few weeks, too. Fortunately, at least the Diva is back and she and you, dear reader (I’m sure of it), will at least keep me drooling over gorgeous Zentangle artwork which is a little comfort (although not much, since I probably won’t be able to play, too). I started this week’s Diva Challenge before hell broke loose (actually as a warm-up for drawing ATCs) and I wanted to upload the tile before, too, but shading took AGES.

Tangles used: Barberpole, IX, Orbs-la-Dee, Printemps, Tipple

The intention was to play with going over and under with Orbs-la-Dee and I like a lot how it turned out. This overlapping really caught me since I got Eni Okens book on that subject, it really helped and is an interesting read.

Around Christmas I tangled a few other tiles for Challenges in 2016. I’ll upload them as soon as I have a little time to breathe. In the meantime please do not forget to check out all the great artwork tanglers from all over the world contributed for this challenge.

Hope to be back soon!

*The initial will eventually come. At the moment I’m really pressed for time, so.. please imagine a deliciously tangled inital H, ok? ;’)

Diva Challenge #287: Use My Tangle – Dreamcatcher

o way it’s already this late?! Today Yesterday was a national holiday in Germany (celebrating the united Germany) so I was able to start right away with the Diva Challenge this week. It’s already past midnight which is a fitting time to post my piece for this week’s Diva Challenge (and which is no problem at all since Monday was a national holiday in Germany and another two days of free time are yet to come). It is the first challenge of the month and therefore it’s time for a UMT (use my tangle)-challenge. The Diva’s random number generator was hard at work (ok, maybe not so much) and chose Daniel Lamothe’s tangle Dreamcatcher for us.

I don’t know if I had chosen this tangle if I had discovered it on the internet but after trying it must say Dreamcatcher is really cool and a lot of fun to do! The optical effect is really very interesting, thanks a lot for sharing, Daniel! At first I had some trouble to draw the arcs symmetrically, so I played a little dot first where I thought the arc would peak before drawing a line and this really helped me a lot to get a more appealing result. And I’m really very happy with this one:

Tangles used: Barberpole (with happy mistake in it *g*), Cruffle, Dreamcatcher, Flux, Hypnotic, ‘Nzeppel, Printemps, Trelina, Wheelz

I’m sure there’ll be tons of great contributions this week, so don’t forget to check them all out on the Diva’s blog! Preferrably after leaving me a comment here if you feel like it. 🙂

Have fun with Dreamcatcher and if you’re participating, too, with Inktober! I guess the next post will be on Wednesday. Hope you’ll be back then.

Diva Challenge #286: Straight to it

t’s another week and another Diva Challenge. My third week in a row, yeah! This week the Diva Laura Harms asked us to only use tangles with straight lines for our contribution. Since the Diva herself had a few black spaces in her tile, I thought it would be ok to imitate that so I had an easier time to get some darker values into the piece. Since I love many tangles with straight lines like Paradox, Fassett, Cubine, ING, Zedbra, Palrevo or Baton, I thought this would be THE chance to combine them all into 1 picture (well, nearly all of them). I don’t know why I hadn’t thought earlier of that, it was a really great challenge and I really would have loved to tangle more for this challenge. However, I had some time issues this week. Well, at least I managed to to tangle something, here it is:

Tangles used: Baton, CO2, DL Sunray, Fassett, ING, Paradox

I tried to overlap but I still need some practice – or maybe the shading is the reason why the parts don’t really “pop”? I don’t know, but I still like the result.

Be sure to check out all the other wonderful pieces of art tanglers from all over the world have tangled for this challenge!

The next initial for Inktober is almost finished, too. I’ll upload a few in the next days again!