Tiffany and I are trying something new this year that we are both pretty excited about. We are have five activity focuses each week. Of course we are doing our necessary duties each day but then focus on art, reading, baking, writing, and errands.

It was fun to have a day to play my new art supplies I got for Christmas. I started by trying out my glass dip pen that I got from Wish. It was about $5 total including shipping. I’d seen some gold glitter ink samples there for only $2, I think it was $3 total. I thought I’d ordered orange but when I used it today, it was brown and I could sense no glitter after writing with it.

Then I decided to play with my spray stains. I started by wetting the watercolor paper but felt it was too wet because it curled up a bit. So I laid up down to flatten out a bit and worked on my tile for the Diva Challenge. By the time I finished it, the paper had dried a bit too much, so I used a sprayer and spritzed it with water and then spritzed it with some of my stains.

See that black bit? The colors had pooled together and muddied up so I dabbed out some of it with a tissue and I like how it turned out. One of my stains is tarnished brass, which is glittery. I sprayed it in three of the corners. I’m excited to see what I can do with this next week.

I’d seen Ratoon drawn quite a bit and have loved it but couldn’t find the step-out. So I asked a few places and before I knew it someone had posted a video tutorial on how to draw it. It seems to be the tangle I want to draw all the time now. I’m really loving it.

I drew my first one on a tan tile and then put the stripes for the Diva Challenge behind it but changed my mind and opted to start a new white tile. Started with the dots and border and then added large stripes diagonally across the tile.

I started the tile by adding another line across the center stripe and added a zigzag line. I remembered seeing a tangle that started this way but I could not remember the name or how to proceed. I finally found it by a google search and the image tab. It turned out to be Rain, an official Zentangle pattern. I then added Zander, 123 O’Leary, and Betweed.

I’m surprised, once again, that Betweed has shown up again AND how easily I’m able to use it when I struggled so much in the past.

Here is the tile before shading.

I do still have a bit of a hard time with the little triangular bits of betweed and I just can’t seem to do the sparkle on zander either. I tried but it looked odd, so I solidified the line.

Here it is after shading.

Here is a picture of it, although it isn’t in natural light.

Funny, I thought I’d shaded it a bit more but oh well.

I also played with some lettering but I’m still in the beginning stages of learning this art form, so I’m not sharing any of that today. So, I’m going to run for now. I hope you have a great week.

Once again, thank you for stopping by and for leaving comments; they are so encouraging.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº