Category Archives: Wonder Wednesday

Because wonder means to be filled with adoration, amazement, or awe and I’m always amazed at the things I create

Zen-Untangled Catch-Up Week 2

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle, , , , , ,

Alice provided us with about five strings including a zenbutton template. I drew them all out but only got two done. But hey, I got two done this week, instead of my usual one tile. :) She said to use any of the tangles we have already covered or any we want to include. I stuck with ones we’ve done so far in the 8 weeks of this project.

I did intend to try my hand at a zenbutton but the week got away from me before I got around to doing it. So, maybe I’ll do that in a future week. :) I currently have three webpages open in my browser with fragments and reticula to use on one.

I’m looking forward to putting my new routine into practice this week. I’ve glance at the tangles for week nine but have since forgotten them. ;) I’ll get organized later today and do a step-out for one new-to-me tangle.

Any way, here is a scan of the first tile I did. I used Nipa, Echoism, Florz, and Cubine.

I forgot to take a picture of the string. So I marked the string in red on this one.

As you can see,  I carried Nipa and Florz over into a second section of the string and opted to leave four sections empty. I didn’t want it to get too busy. Here is the picture in beautiful sunshine. :) (It’s nice to have sunshine again.)

Here is the other tile I did: scan, string, and then natural light. I used Xircus (or the idea of Xircus), Hollibaugh, and Festune.

The borders on this one were really different. I liked it. Then the string was loopy, which I also liked.I know it isn’t exactly Xircus and there is probably a tangle that it is more like but Xircus is what inspired me. I don’t think it is important to have a specific name to each piece of my tile. :)

Here are the finished tiles, first the scans and then the ones taken outside in the sunshine . . . I’m so thankful for shading.

Zen-Untangled Week 8

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle, , ,

This weekend I sat down and worked out a schedule to do these step-outs and tiles throughout the week instead of at the last minute the day before this post is up. Since my post comes out on Wednesdays, I’ll use that as my first day. My plan looks something like this:

  • Wednesday: organize (if I didn’t do so on Saturday when the new week’s tangles and string were posted), seeing for which I already have step-outs made up, and do the step-out for 1 tangle.
  • Thursday-Saturday: draw 2 tangle step-outs each of these days for tangles that I don’t have step-outs made.
  • Sunday-Monday: Do the tile and the dare or tangleations, if desired.
  • Tuesday: write up blog post. :)

This week’s tangles were Amaze (aka Stiritup), Bucky, Cyme, Dewd, Evoke, Floo, and Gust. Amaze is one that I learned years ago and really enjoy it. However Bucky and I are not very good friends. ;) Cyme is nice but there’s a point that I don’t know exactly where to put the next round of ‘petals’.

There there is Dewd, Evoke, Floo, and Gust. I do not care for Dewd at all. Evoke and Floo seem to be variations/tangleations of Dewd or vice versa. And since I don’t like Dewd, I don’t care for these either.

I never even knew Gust existed. It’s is kind of nice because it is kind of shaped like a bracket with a loop in the middle. I’m not very good at auraing so that is probably one reason why I don’t care for these tangles.

So, here is the string.

Since I enjoy Amaze, I knew I wanted to include it in this tile. Cyme seemed like a good fill for the bottom section. And of the remaining ones, Gust is my favorite, so it will be used too. I decided that I didn’t need to fill all the sections.

Here’s the scan of the tile after the lineart.

Here is the picture I took outside, although it was overcast, so not much sunlight at all. ;)Then I went to shading it.

That white section kept nagging at me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to blacken it, shade it, or leave it alone. I finally decided to blacken it. And it didn’t look quite right, so I flared it out to the edge of the tile.

That is the scan and next is the picture I took outside.

Well, I thought it looked a bit odd and maybe even regretted filling it in. So, I blackened the rest of the border. Here’s the scan of the finished tile.

And here it is in natural but overcast light.

So, which way do you like it best? I think I prefer the end result with the black border even though it seems that Gust lost something after blackening the border.

Next week will be another catch-up week where Alice provided several strings to play with. I don’t know if I’ll do more than one or not yet. We’ll just have to see.

Until next time, Thanks for stopping by,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Week 8

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle

It’s funny; when I looked at the tangles for this week in the Zen-Untangled project I thought I was going to have to do the step-outs for most of them. But then when I went to start tangling them, I realized I had all but one of them. :) And I hadn’t even heard of it before.

Enyshou is that tangle. I struggled with it from the step-out. So, I did a search for it and found a couple of youtube videos featuring it. I really liked the look of it from their videos, especially the one by Melinda. Hers are quite pretty. :)

To say that I’m not friends with Enyshou yet, is an understatement. ;) But Melinda’s video gives me hope that I can actually make something pretty with it one day. Although I have to admit that I think it looks best upside down. ;)

This week’s tile is to be done on a Bijou tile. I’ve never done a Bijou tile before. The only difference in a Bijou tile and a regular tile is the size. The standard tile is a 3.5″ square tile with rounded corners and a Bijou tile is a compact little 2″ square with rounded corners.

When I went to Pamela Newman’s Zentangle gathering at the library in Tulsa, she gave me a Bijou tile. Then I found a 2″ square punch that I requested for a gift and received. :) But I still haven’t used it. :D

I really liked having a much smaller drawing surface for this one. With the string provided, I decided to go with some tangles I’m familiar with. I almost went with Knightsbridge because it is one I use frequently but I decided that the shape of the string lended itself to a basket like shape, so I went with Huggins for part the string. Hibred is another tangle I’ve used some and thought it would look nice on the side. Then I thought Festune looked like it could be an item in a goodie basket. But Festune and I are not very good friends, so it didn’t turn out as good as I had hoped. ;)

Here is my bijou tile  before shading.

Here is the picture I took of it before shading and in natural light. :)

I added some shading and some blackening around those orbs of hibred (is it Hybred or Hibred?).

Here is the scan, followed by the picture in natural (but overcast) light, of the finished tile.

I definitely need to practice with Festune, not to mention Enyshou. But I will another day.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope this encourages you to try your hand at some Zentangle. Have you tried Enyshou? Check out that video above. Let me know if you give a try.

Until next time,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Week (Catch Up week 4b)

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle, , ,

Last week I mentioned that I was probably going to do one of the strings from the catch up week after week 4 so that I could work on tangling every day rather than a lot in one day. ;) Well, I decided that was a really good idea.

Alice did provide seven strings. I think the intention was to ensure that those that were already caught up would have something to do each day. ;) I looked through the seven strings provided and picked one. I wish that I’d have scanned it before I began tangling but atlas, I did not. :) But here is the scan of my tangled tile marked with the string.Here is the scanned tile without the string marked.

I used Pepper, Hurry, Echoism, and Ynix and I still don’t know how to pronounce that last one. ;)

We actually had a bit of sunshine yesterday and I got the tangling done while it was out, so I was able to get a picture in natural light.

The cats were quite interested in what I was doing.

I then took it back inside to do some shading. Here is the scan of the shaded tile.

It always looks so much better smaller, so that you can see fewer of the imperfections.

Here are the pictures I took outside. I had to wait a bit for some clouds to pass and of course, the cats were still interested.

I really liked running Ynix up the right side border. It looks a bit more shaded in person. :) I’m really pleased with how this one turned out. Echoism was a bit small in the bottom section, so the inner aura didn’t turn out very good, but I think it contrasted nicely with the opposite blackening on the other part.

At first I thought the upper loop on the tile was too big to use for the center of Pepper but I think it turned out quite nicely. I’m not sure what I think of the middle loop with Hurry in it. I tried to do some under shadow with it. Overall, I like how this one turned out.

I just realized that the Echoism and Ynix sections kind of resemble a cat. :D With Ynix being the tail. =))

Next week I’ll be back with week 7 of the Zen-Untangled Project. :) I’m familiar with most of the tangles for week 7 but I’m not sure how many of them I already have stepouts made for.

Well, I’m going to run for now. Thanks for stopping by. I hope these inspired you in some way.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Drupe and Its Look-Alikes

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle, , , , , ,

I think I should have used the catch-up week strings  last week. This week’s tangles, although some are very similar which I will get to in a moment, were mostly ones for which I didn’t have step-outs done already. Alice puts up the new week’s tangles and string on Saturday, so even if I did one every day, I wouldn’t have all of them done by Tuesday night to write up my blog post.

So I think next week I may do the string catch-up week and share that here next week, so that I just get in the habit of tangling every day. We shall see. ;)

This week’s tangles are Tagh, Ibex, Facade, Drupe, Dyon, Xircus, and Fracas. I’ve tangled Tagh before but didn’t make a step-out for it.

Here’s a tile I did last year using Tagh. Oh! I think a local CZT, Pam Newman, taught me this one while she still had monthly gatherings. I should probably set up a time to visit her again. :)

Facade looks like a blend of Nipa and Hollibaugh to me. I really like it even though I don’t do it real well.

On my tile, I used wider Hollibaugh lines and I have to admit that the thinner lines are easier to put the orbs behind.

I didn’t shade Ibex on my stepout, as I was getting a bit tired of all my tangling in one day but I had to press on, so shading got shorted. :)

Then comes Drupe. This is the one that I did have drawn already and I haven’t scanned it or taken a picture of it though . . . sorry about that. But here is a link to the step-out online.

Then there is Dyon which is so similar to Drupe. It seems that the only difference is the lack of some straight lines in each section between the arched lines.Then there is Fracas which uses the same combined x and + as the base that both Drupe and Dyon uses. The lines on each section for this one are arced the opposite way from the previous tangles and then blacken every other band.

I like this one . . . it kind of reminds me of a spider web. I think this is my favorite.

Then the last one is Xircus which I’d never heard of before but I really like it. Because it has a lot of repetitive lines.

I think Drupe, Dyon, and Fracas are just tangleations of each other but they were probably named before they came up with the word tangleation and before there were SOOOO many tangles.

Here’s my tile before I did the shading.

Here is the same unshaded tile but the picture was taken outside on a very overcast day. And then here it is again shaded; first the scan and then the outside picture.

I chose to put one section of each of those four similar tangles on the bottom left. I also did some extra shading on the spirals of Ibex. I like how the tile ended up. I think I enjoy Xircus more than the other similar tangles.

Thanks for stopping by. Let me know which is your favorite of the four (Drupe, Dyon, Fracas, or Xircus) tangles, down in the comments.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Week 5

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle, , , , ,

So this is week five of the Zen-Untangled project. This week’s tangles were Mooka, Fescu, Doodah, Moonpie, Zinger, Springkle, and Hollis. Of these I have drawn Fescu and Mooka several times. I’ve learned Doodah last year and used it that once. I’ve used Zinger before, or at least what I knew to be Zinger.

Hollis and Moonpie are new to me. I do believe they are fairly new tangles, so I don’t feel too bad. ;) I have seen Hollis but I have never seen anyone label Moonpie before. I had no idea it existed. It is very easy to do and I love the contrasts built into it.

That leaves Springkle. I have to tell you that this tangle looks so much like Zinger that I really don’t quite know the difference between them, except for the “stem” part. It really seems to me that one is a tangleation of the other or simply a variation and that both are tangleations of Fescu. The start of both seem very similar to Fescu. But . . . they have their own names straight from “Zentangle headquarters” so I guess they are their own things. :)

The basic Springkle reminds me of Cupcake from pattern-collections, which is a favorite of mine. :) I love the flow of the top, but  I digress.

Stardust pens Cupcake Flower ~ Lifeofjoy.meI decided to look online for some more samples of Springkle and found one done by Linda over on Time for Tangling. I really loved the variation on the blue tile, although hers is a little bit different from the official stepout (but I did watch the video she linked to where she learned how to tangle it).

The string for the week is basically an X. She drew hers without dot and border but I wanted the boundary of the borders, so I included them. :)

Here is the scan of my tile before shading.

I forgot to take a picture of it before shading. Here is the scan after shading, which shows the imperfects more.. I didn’t get very aggressive with the shading this week as I was running low on time with so many stepouts to do. (I had to do 5 of them this week. :p .)

This is truly one of those times when I’m not sure which way I like it best. I like it corner to corner so Fescu and Springkle are standing but then Mooka is upside-down. I guess this is my preferred view. ;)

I did take a few pictures but the flash isn’t very nice to it either. ;) What are your thoughts on Springkle, Zinger, and Fescu?

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Locar, Pepper, and Nipa

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle

This is catch-up week on the Zen-Untangled 2020 project over on Tangle All Around facebook group. She did offer up seven new strings to play with any of the tangles so far. I however, am just finishing up with week four. I’m having to do most of the stepouts this week even though I am familiar with most of the tangles.

Well, Nipa and Pepper are two I love and actually have stepouts already done for them. Verdigogh is one that I have printed out from my beginnings of Zentangle and Molygon is not a favorite of mine but I know its steps. Ellish is one I’m familiar with but don’t prefer either but have made a stepout for it because I did start tangling with it in church one week and realized that I didn’t exactly know the steps from memory. ;) So Bumper and Locar, which are very similar to each other, are the others that I needed to do the stepouts for. I did get those two drawn but not shaded yet.

I only did the stepout for Locar but not the sample on the front of my ATC card. Thus I have not shared it here.

I used the week four string that Alice provided. Here is the scan of my unshaded tile.

Then I added some graphite shading.

Here is the picture of the finished tile. It was after dark, so I had to take it inside. It is kinder than the scan. ;)

It amazes me how the tile can look so different from different angles.

Actually Locar and Bumper are very similar to Verdigogh to me and Verdigogh is one that I always have had trouble with.

Well, I gotta run . . . thanks for stopping by.

Until next time,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Week 3

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle, , , , , ,

Officially this is week 4 of Zen-Untangled on the facebook group Tangle All Around but I’m just finishing up week 3. ;) Between this and Show Me Your Skills lettering class, I’m behind on one or the other each week. I guess I should show some of that here too. Well, maybe I’ll do that next week. It is the final week of the beginning lettering class. I have decided to continue on though, so between the two, I’ve got a daily activity for the next several months. :)

This week’s tangles are Flux (both Rick and Maria’s versions), Cubine, Frondous, Ynix, Ixorus, Hollibaugh, and Echoism. I already have ATC stepouts for both versions of Flux, Cubine, Ixorus, Echoism, and Hollibagh. Consequently I only had to make stepout ATC for Frondous and Ynix (I sure would like to know how to pronounce those . . . I pronounced Printemps like it looks until I heard Rick pronounce it on a project pack video. :) )

Here are the fronts of my ATC for the two new-to-me tangles.

This one is Frondous.

And this one is Ynix. (Please tell me how to pronounce it!)

This week’s string was a diagonal line from one corner to the opposite corner through a medium circle in the middle and once again, I forgot to scan it before I started.

I did “cheat” a little bid and used my helix to make the circle in the middle. ;) I decided that Ixorus would work great in the circle. I actually thought that Frondous, Ynix, and Flux would all be a bit larger but when I drew them, they came out on the small side. It worked out though because I was able to get all seven tangles plus the variation of Flux on this one tile. Echoism isn’t very visible though. I really like that tangle because it flows so well.

At any rate, here is the scanned tile before shading.

In hindsight, I probably should have started Ynix a little further inside the border instead of centered on the border. But, I think it balanced out okay. Here it is in natural light.

I started to do some curvy Hollibaugh (actually did two lines) and decided I wanted the rest to be straight lines.

Here is the finished tile scanned.

The natural light had set by the time I finished shading the tile, so I took it inside with the best lighting (and unfortunately a flash) I could get inside.

I’m still learning how to shade Frondous and Ynix. Have you seen these tangles before? How do you shade them?

Well, I’ll run for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Until next time,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Week 2: Centipede and Snail

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle, , , , , ,

This week the new-to-me tangles in the second week of the Zen-Untangled 2020 project were Snail and Centipede. Since I’ve been around the Zentangle community online since October 2009, I was already familiar with Hurry, Dex, Ahh (with Therefore) and Tipple. Although I have to say that Dex worked better for me this time around than ever before.

I had a major hiccup with snail. It looks like such a simple tangle and really it is simple but when I started to tangle it I drew it from inside and spiral out but it ended up looking more like Printemps. Thus I figured it was supposed to be drawn from outside and spiraled in, which was later confirmed on the group. :)

That little spiral down in the bottom right corner is the one where I started in and spiraled out.

The string for this week is a simple one with a pair of lines diagonally from corner to corner. I forgot to get a picture before I started tangling it though.

Here is the scan of my tile.

I made a couple tangle variations ;). I didn’t et the auras around Snail right. I initially thought I’d use the straight line variation but . . . didn’t end up doing that. :o The other mistake “variation” I did was with Hurry. I should have known better but I forgot that I was supposed to do 3 lines on each side of my initial 3 lines, whereas I only did one line on each side. :(

The seven tangles used in this tile are Ahh, Therefore, Centepede, Snail, Tipple, Hurry, and Dex. Here is a picture the tile before shading. (It was already dark so there was no way to take a picture out in natural light. :( )

And here it is after shading (first the scan and then the picture).

And this is the picture.

Yes, I had to add some eyes on my centipede. :)

One more view of the finished tile.

I love shading. It makes a world of difference. :)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Florz, Eye-Wa, IX, and Avreal Tile

Wonder Wednesday, Zentangle, , ,

I’m participating in the Zen-Untangled project and thought I’d share the tile I did for week one which was a partial week. I haven’t started on week two yet but I’m looking forward to it.

Week one’s tangles are Florz, Eye-Wa, IX, and Avreal. We were to use a “z” string for our tile this week.

I tried to do something different from what I would normally do and not what I’d seen others do. I started with Avreal down the long diagonal. Then I went with IX along the bottom and filled Florz in behind all that I’d already drawn. I finished it off with a very small Eye-Wa in the last section.

Here’s my tile before shading.

I didn’t remember to take a picture after I finished tangling but before shading though. So here is my tile after I shaded it.

Once again, I think it looks better a bit smaller. ;)

Here’s the picture I took. Of course, it was after dark when I decided to take the picture, so I took it inside.

I appreciate you stopping by. I hope I’ve inspired you.

Until next time,

Michele ºÜº