I appreciate all the wonderful comments last week. You all are so kind! After reading the comments, I went searching for how to make the pens last longest and confirmed that they should be stored laying down rather than in an upright position. If stored upright on the tip, you can end up with a puddle of ink in the cap when you remove it.
When I looked at the Sakura website, I found that the nib can become damaged and you can replace a damaged nib from an old pen with the broken nib and they tell you how to do it here. I checked the Zentangle website but could not find it in the short time I searched. But I did find another CZT that wrote about it and included pictures too.
If I decide to try it out, I’ll take some pictures and let you know how it turns out. 
Now, on to this week’s tile. Yes . . . I’m busy this week getting ready for a vacation, so I’m not going to kid myself and even suggest that I might get other tiles done any time before this weekend.
This week’s Diva Challenge is a new experience for me. I love the look of white on black but had not yet attempted it. I got some black tiles for Christmas and had a white gel pen and a white pencil kind of thing (pictured below but not a great picture).
I found that my white gel pen had a few issues when it came to starting a line . . . sometimes it wouldn’t put down any ink at all and then sometimes it came out jagged, for lack of a better description.
Without further ado, here’s my tile.
I usually have a tendency to crowd too many tangles together on a tile, so I decided that I’d just use the big center part of the string I drew and make a big Drupe. I thought I might put meer in the section to the right but was afraid of my usual overcrowding problem so I opted to just add a bit more shading to the right, trying to give it some depth, and then add a few little shapes in the corners and outer line.
I did a little ‘shading’ on the tile but because it was the first time using this white pencil thing, I decided to keep it minimal. Overall, it isn’t bad for my first experience using these materials.
Now it has me wondering what the best white tools are. I really like using my tortillion to blend my pencil shading on regular tiles but don’t really know what to use with white. (My gel pen is a Y&C Gel Xtreme 0.7.)
I appreciate your comments; thank you for visiting my blog.
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
I think this looks really good. Shading doesn’t work the same way with white, I find. You can’t blend with a tortillon but white pencil and/or Zenstone work well, using a dry finger to rub them into each other. Like you, I’m still learning, but it sure is fun!
Lovely tile!
I love your use of the single Drupe image in the center. It is very effective on the black tile. Yes, using the white pens is a challenge, and like you, I am still learning. You will find the more you work at it, the more tricks you discover and the better you get. Your shading gives a nice glow to the tile. Very nice!
I will have to try the white shading tool. Is it a white pencil or more like a zenstone? Your tile is nice…I know what you mean about the white pens …they are challenging.
Lynell, thanks for commenting. I’ve never seen a zenstone but what I used was not a pencil so I’d have to say it was more like a zenstone.
I like your tile and I agree that less seems to be the way to go with black tiles. It is a different mindset to draw with the white, I think. You did a nice job with your tile, and yes, the white pens are very difficult. I used a Sakura Gelly Roll and took double the time to draw a line and that seemed to help. Nice work!