Where Does the Time Go

It's been mostly fun since my last post - just didn't realize it had been so long - again!

I've been hit and miss with the Diva Challenge but have a few to post and the big event was the 3rd Annual CZT Retreat - Viva Zentangle in early October.  What an amazing event -   you had to be there as I don't have enough words to adequately describe the the energy, fun and enthusiasm created by a gathering of 30 CZT's.  Unfortunately I was having too much fun to take many photos, but I'm guessing the folks on Facebook will have posted some by now.  Bette Abdu and Bette Beauregard did an amazing job organizing the retreat - thank you both for all your hard work.  And thanks to all in attendance - many fun connections were made - hope to meet up with you all again someday.

 click  image for a larger view

Challenge 141 - Duotangle - Fengle and Quandary

I don't use either of these tangles very much - I don't have a very good feel for them.  With Fengle, I love the light airy flow that I see in others work but mine always seem to come out heavy and rather pudgy.  Quandary, maintaining size and alignment - never been my strong suit.  I think with Quandary I'd probably have just as much luck if I tossed actual rice grains on the page and outlined them.  But hey, I'm always up for a challenge - try to post my first but that one - well, it looked like someone stomped on fengle so here's take 2.

Challenge 140 - Pointillism

I enjoy adding stippling to my tangles so I thought this would be a fun challenge and it was.  Since I was curious about the differences between stippling and pointillism, I spent some time with Ms Google to find out.  What I discovered is that this challenge was more about stippling than pointillism and had saved some of the information to include when I posted the image.  However before that happened Linda over on tanglepatterns.com wrote a post on this very topic - much better than I would have done - it's an interesting read so hop on over and read her post Going Dotty - Exploring a Stippled Zentangle she does an excellent job of explaining the differences.

Challenge 136 and 138

Colour Colour Everywhere  &  Fun with Borders

 For the CZT Retreat, everyone was to make 30 ATC's to swap on the first night.  Since this activity was added late in the game we had the option to make copies if we wanted or not.  My head hurt as I started reading the directions for getting a good copy made and cutting them out - decided that felt too complicated for me and making 30 would just take time - so I did.

It went well and I was pleasantly surprised (or maybe a bit shocked) with the way they turned out.  Why shocked? --  I don't really care for the ATC size and shape, I haven't worked a lot with black as I have a love/hate affair with white pens and I rarely work with color.  I did not have the white ATCs so black it would be.  I do like the look of the metallic gel pens on black so pulled those out and just started in. Somewhere along the line I decided having a border provided the structure I needed and I did decide to limit the tangles I used.  One of the suggestions in the retreat info was to use a theme if we were so inclined.  I didn't start with a theme in mind but after completing the first 4 or 5 I realized I'd created a theme anyway.  I was using metallic sparkly pens and enhancing them with the Wink of Stella Brush glitter pens.  If all that sparkle, bright colors and glitter doesn't say Las Vegas I don't know what does!

Challenge 138  Fun with Borders

Challenge 136  Colour Colour Everywhere

I used a few different borders on about half of the ATC, but a favorite of mine is a pattern my brother created - Tierso.  Visit his blog Tangles and More to see more of his work.

Here are two versions for creating Tierso - while his version works well, I find have better spacing by drawing it the opposite way he does.

Tierso by Donald Wilka