Good grief! Our poor Violette! Were you all as surprised as I was to hear about her mishap? But, of course I love the cast! lol What a perfectly Violette way of making the best of the situation! I can hear myself in the future saying “what would Violette do” when something unexpected comes up!

Another way to decorate a cast, or, hopefully something pleasanter, is with Zentangles! Violette talked about Zentangles in one of her 5 days of frogs post and I did something similar earlier this year, but with the stencil of a woman, rather than a frog. The pattern that I used is from the book, Creative Paper Dollmaking, by Rhonda Rainey, but Violette suggested to me that you could just cut out a person from a magazine and trace it on to your canvas or sheet of paper. BTW, I am really, really into Zentangling and have covered the surface of everything from a light switch cover to a wooden craft stick. But the way that I do it is a little different than shown on the original Zentangle site.

My favourite method of Zentangling is to divide the surface that I am going to decorate into many squares and then fill each one with a different pattern. The photo is of a 5″ x7″ gallery stretched canvas, divided freehand into 40 squares. First, I draw the patterns in with pencil and yes, I DO erase until I like how it looks. True Zentangling encourages you not to worry about it and just keep going, but that thought doesn’t relax me, so I erase quite wantonly! Sometimes I change my mind completely about which pattern I will use so the eraser really comes in handy then.

A Sharpie extra fine point black pen on this and a mechanical pencil and am very pleased with the results. Now I have a unique and contemporary piece of wall art and a great reference guide to 40 Zentangle patterns! And it is just the beginnning!

With the papier mache butterfly mask, I used the sampler method again, but without a stencil. It seemed unnecessary in light of the cool shape. Next I will be using this method to cover a white cotton fedora I bought expressly for the purpose. And I’ve been using individual Zentangle squares to make Scrabble tile pendants for necklaces and bracelets! With the same idea, last week I painted 12 4″ x 4″ canvasses black, leaving a white space in the middle. Then I used dimensional fabric paint to make one large Zentangle pattern in each centre! I love it and will be posting photos on my blog soon!

There are currently 4 wonderful books about Zentangling from Design Originals. While you are waiting for them to be delivered, you can start Zentangling right away with ideas from the original site and other cool sites like Tangle Patterns.

What will you Zentangle first?

Wendy Gibson of Craft Dinner

FYI – The Zentangle® art form and method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. Zentangle® is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.