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!

Sign of Life

Dear all,

it’s been some time since my last post. Unfortunately, work has had me in a firm grip since the start of the year and February & March were especially intense, thus the long time without any post. I did tangle a bit here and there but mostly I was simply too tired to work on the Diva Challenges or even publish some posts that I had already written in January (and which are still waiting to be published). However, I think that these extreme times are over and that there’ll be more life in the near future.

Here are a few works I tangled since the last post that I like a lot:

Tangles used: Ruutz, Black Pearlz, Printemps, Fassett, Hamail, Wheelz

Tangles used: Ginili, Shattuck

These ATCs I tangled for a swap with a friend over at the German ATC website kakao-karten.de. Actually, only the first ATC was for our swap, the second one was a birthday gift and the first work I used my Finetec colours with. You see the shiny golden Ginili there? The gold was done with one of my Finetecs which are about the same as the Kuretake Gansai Tambi many tanglers are already using. I bought a set at the beginning of the year and I LOVE them! Here’s a picture where you can see their shininess a little better:

Tangling on top is a little hard sometimes since the colour seems to clutter the tip of the Micron a bit, but with a little patience it works just fine. I also think that it’s a perfect match with my latest favourite pattern, Ginili. Isn’t it a wonderful pattern?

Tangles used: Ansu, Fescu, Garlic Cloves, Ginili, Onamato, Pozer, Tipple, Zinger

This next piece I did for my mother’s birthday. My sister and I gave her a trip to Berlin this year since the International Garden Exhibition will be in Berlin this year. The picture is part of our gift certificate (that’s why there’s a lot of empty space at the top). I like the picture overall, although Zinger looks a little blocky here. But I guess it’s ok since I was a little under time pressure and finished it at 3am on the morning I had to send it over to my sister to finish it. 😀 I really like Garlic Cloves here, it’s a great pattern to use for “gardening textures”. The background was done with watercolours. I then tangled on that background and shaded with Polychromos coloured pencils. Shading was a lot of fun here!

Tangles used: Auraknot, Ginili, Hollibaugh, Printemps, Zedbra

My latest piece is a traditional tile and I really love how it turned out! It all started with Auraknot, then Ginili joined in and the challenge was to connect both of them. But Hollibaugh (here with dark and bright “strands”), some smaller Auraknots and Printemps did a good job here, I think. Shading the small Auraknots was a challenge though. But if it’s larger, it doesn’t get any easier, too, and I guess I tend to “overshade” it. I’ll have to do some research how everyone else is shading it! It’s always great to see how others are shading or tangling a particular tangle.

You might have noticed that I didn’t scan the tile as I usually do and post a cropped picture. The reason is that I bought a roll cutter which creates a lovely deckle edge. I SO, SO love it! My scanner, however, is not nearly as thrilled as I am and crops the picture as it thinks is best – without the deckle edges.. That’s why I bought a small easel (like many other tangles already did before me) and will have to post the tiles like this in the future if I want to keep the edges. But maybe you think that’s an improvement? Let me know what you think, I’d love to know! 🙂

That’s it for today, I hope to see you here again soon!