MomZenArtist

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Season for Leaves

I love autumn! It's my favorite time of the year. In addition to celebrating my wedding anniversary and my daughter's birthday, it's also time for stunning color-changing leaves. I love the way the orange, red, and yellow tones look against the brown trunks and cloudy, gray-blue fall sky. It's like the leaves are going out in a final blaze of glory before succumbing to the bleak grayness of winter.

What do the changing and falling leaves make you think or feel?

One of my favorite tangled pieces, and one that is most often discussed by others, is my autumn leaves piece using a Dreamweaver stencil. You can read more about my inspiration and creation of this piece on a past blog post.

As the weather grows colder, and the stores become disturbingly filled with Christmas decorations and gifts, I find it difficult not to think about the ever-approaching winter. I felt inspired to recreate my autumn trees with a wintery look to help ease into the idea of cold, snow, ice, skidding cars, slush, bulky coats, boots, slip-and-falls, and all the other things that come with my least favorite time of year. Sure, I love Christmas and the pretty look of a snow-covered yard, but after a few days, I'm ready for spring again. Here's my tangled tree version of winter trees:

This time I tangled all of the low branches since winter makes it much easier to see all the bony lines when the branches aren't not obscured by lovely leaves. I quite enjoy how skeletal and stark this piece came out. I hope you like it too!

If you love these trees, check out my upcoming craft fairs this fall.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

'Tis the Season for Pumpkins

Well it's my favorite time of the year! In addition to my daughter's birthday and my wedding anniversary, it's also time to celebrate crisp mornings, changing leaves, witches, and pumpkins! I love Autumn and pretty much everything that goes along with it.

When my daughter and I recently went pumpkin picking, I was very tempted by the interesting white pumpkins in the field. I so wanted to tangle one. Unfortunately, they were quite large and were a bit heavy to lug home for tangling.

My little pumpkin selector found a small pumpkin for herself as well as a nice smooth pumpkin for her daddy. When we got home, the smooth pumpkin called out for tangles. Often when tangling a pumpkin, I'll follow the ridges or ribs on the outside filling with bands of patterns. This pumpkin was so smooth, I treated it like a blank canvas tangling all around. I used some of my favorite garden patterns and threw in a few regular patterns too. I used a fine point Sharpie. This was fun to do!

Have some seasonal fun with your tangling too.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Thanks for Tangling

I had a great time tangling with a new group of people at the Center at Punchard in Andover. The enthusiastic group included twelve beginner tanglers, a few with some previous art experience. It was wonderful to share the Zentangle Method® with everyone.

I think everyone did a fantastic job!

I love how each person makes the patterns his or her own. Check out how different each version of Crescent Moon is. Some are very bold and dark, and some have many delicate lines. I showed some variations for playing with Bales, and each person used different shading and fillers to further make the tiles individual art.

During this class, I learned an interesting lesson about white noise. I love playing the beautiful flute music by Rick Roberts during my classes to add to the relaxing atmosphere. Our tangling space had a different "musical" option--that of the compressor of a yogurt machine turning on and off intermittently throughout the night.

Sometimes our environment might not be the most relaxing--due to visual clutter, phones or people asking for us, or external noises--but we can achieve a focused sense of relaxation thanks to the Zentangle Method®. With each step or stroke, we can let those distractions melt away along with any stress we might be feeling too. Give it a try!

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

A Day to Tangle

I love spending the day with fellow tanglers. This weekend I taught the My Tangled Garden class to a couple of my return students. Since they've tangled with me on many occasions and have taken my original garden class, I gave them a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure style class and let them opt for the white garden on black paper. We played with white Gelly Roll pens, white charcoal and colored pencils, and the new Zenstones from Zentangle.

It's breathtaking to watch the ghostly gardens appear on the black background. We explored a variety of new patterns too. Didn't they do a beautiful job?

Next the Tangle Club met and enjoyed a few hours of tangling, chatting, and sharing new ideas. I pulled out a fun project for everyone to try--scratch magic papers! We used some animal stencils to create a variety of fun and colorful critters. The different colors emerged before our eyes as we made our selections of patterns within or around our animal shapes.

It's getting close to Halloween, so I thought I should tangle a bat! I love him.

Friday, September 20, 2013

In the Night Garden

One of my daughter's favorite TV shows is In The Night Garden. It's a gentle, colorful, and dreamy show about a handful of doll-like characters having little adventures then drifting off to sleep. The show starts and ends with a boat under a starry sky along plinky yet pretty music.

While tangling for my Tangled Garden class for this weekend, I thought it would be fun to make a larger garden on a 9x12 inch sheet of paper. I often work on the beautiful toned papers, but when I reached for my paper pads, I accidentally grabbed the black paper. Well, that was certainly a happy accident!

I loved watching my night garden blossom in the moonlight. I explored about sixteen different patterns in this ZIA. After tangling and finding a few new favorite patterns, I shaded and added some color. I shaded with both a white charcoal pencil and the new Zenstone from Zentangle (yes, I have these in stock!). I enjoyed having two different levels of shading so to speak. The Zenstone provided a smooth, ghostly shade. The stone feels good to hold too. It's cool and has a nice weight.

Of course I needed some sparkle too to reflect the moonlight!

Welcome to my night garden....

Where do you tangle?

I carry a free cosmetic bag with me everywhere I go. It's a tune up bag rather than a touch up bag. Filled with tiles and Microns, my bag helps me focus and regain my calm no matter where I am located.

I pull out my tangling bag of tricks in waiting rooms, lunch spots, and the car (as a passenger!).

Recently I found a new place to tangle. It was time for me to renew my license--yes, the dreaded RMV. There seems to be a universal disgust for the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Even in line, I heard complaints from other people about the wait or the general fact of being there.

I had a great time at the RMV!

Am I weird? Maybe. For this visit, I chose to accept it for what it was--a necessary function to keep me driving. Instead of worrying about the time lost, I enjoyed having some quiet time to myself to tangle. I worked on three pieces of an ensemble set. I had a great time, felt relaxed, and turned what could be an unpleasant situation into positive me-time.

Surprising I only had to wait thirty minutes. I had expected to be there for two hours so I was a bit disappointed I couldn't sit longer. Yes, maybe I am weird.

We are all busy. There's never enough time. I wonder if life would be easier if we could accept things for what they are and tried to make the most of them.

Here is the finished nine-tile ensemble that I worked on at the RMV.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Tangle-A-Thon Thanks!

The Tangle-A-Thon fundraising event was a lot of fun last weekend. We had a wonderful group of tanglers and fellow CZTs enjoying a creative and relaxing day. People worked on a variety of their own projects in between mini lessons.

Even better, we raised $2,000 for TeamWalk for CancerCare at Lowell General Hospital.

It was a great day for a wonderful cause. I hope you can join us next year!