Merry Oopsmas

I was having so much fun celebrating Christmas with my family that I completely forgot to share my cute little tangled tree with you.  Oops!  I hope I won't get coal in my stocking this year.  Since there are no mistakes with Zentangle®, maybe you'll give me a pass on this one.  Teehee.

This little tree was created on one of the fun new 3Z tiles with black, green, and red Microns and some gold and clear sparkle Gelly Rolls.  The tree was inspired by the stunning work of CZT Ann Clapper.

I hope you had a lovely holiday season and that your only tangles were art.  

Up for the Challenge

With my crazy year, I realized that it's been ages since I've enjoyed a Diva Challenge and figured that I just have to jump back in.  Sometimes I panic when I've been away from something for too long and feel like I have to pick up where I left off.  Fortunately, tangling isn't like reading a book.  I can start in the middle without getting lost in the story.  The characters are tangles, and while new ones might be added to the mix, I can always find comfort in familiar friends.  The plot may thicken, round, highlight, or even get colored in, but it's still of the choose-your-own variety.  I can start on page one, the middle, or the end and still get wrapped up in a good tangle.

I dove in to Diva Challenge 296 using the tangle Moowa by CZT Anya Ipsen.  I had seen beautiful work created with this tangle but hadn't tried it.  I was surprised because I am a huge fan of Mooka, and this looked like a flowing, wave version of the tangle.  

I picked up my 2014 Tangle-A-Day Calendar (yes, you read that date correctly) and started to practice this new-to-me tangle.  I filled a week with different attempts until I felt like I had the flow.  Why 2014?  I have several uncompleted calendars and have decided that that's okay.  In an effort to Untangle My Life, when I want to play or experiment with tangles, I pick up a calendar and use the pages as an art journal.  I add the current date and have come to accept that it's fine that it wasn't completed in chronological order.  Like my book analogy above, it's freeing to be able to start anywhere.  In the past, I would get derailed by life and not be able to keep up with the calendar and found that frustrating.  Now, I'm jumping in and finding a random page to embrace like this one from 2014:

Next I took my tangling to a tile.  I just received my first box of the new 3Z tiles and thought that Moowa looked really cool done in a spiral.  I loved how this tile came out but thought it needed something in the middle.  

I love creating zen gems and thought an onyx would look great in the center to balance out the black Tipple segments.  If only I could figure out how to create onyx.  I create a lot of gems and figured I needed a lot of black colored pencil and some highlights and went to work.  Here was one of my practice gems I created in a sketchbook.  Then it was off to fill the center of my tile!

Here's my final Moowa challenge tile: