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.

Today i decided to create a zentangle and put my frog ontop.  I used the frog stencil to trace a frog onto my tangles.  There is a really great zentangle tutorial here .  Basically what you do is start off drawing two tangles or grids – two squiggly lines from end to end (the lines have a parallel line next to them).  The idea behind it is to fill up the page with these “tangles” and then fill in the parts in between with a variety of doodles. The process is quite meditative and should not be rushed…….hence the reason why my frog zentangle is incomplete – I’m in a hurry – have a meeting shortly and wanted to get this post up.  I started getting stressed out and began screwing up my lines so i decided to finish it later.  I used micron pens for this exercise – 05 and 08 points.  I find these pens are great for detailed work but also because the ink is so intense.  Back in the old days when i used to do political and gag cartoons i used to use a Rapidograph pen which i had to fill with ink – the tiny tip kept getting clogged up and i had to keep buying new nibs which were very costly.

Tomorrow i will be posting an image of a “textured frog” – i’ll bet you’re curious eh?  Stay tuned……..

Another contest for Bohemian Bliss!

If you didn’t win the contest Wendy over at Craft Dinner initiated for my online class Journal Bliss and book don’t despair – Wendy has another contest for my class Bohemian Bliss - if you entered the Journal Bliss contest and did not win you are automatically entered into this contest. Yay!  Thank you so much Wendy for coming up with this awesome idea.

Gypsy Wagon Zine

Krystin came over to interview me yesterday for her new zine called Gypsy Wagon.  We had fun talking about art and life and finding out how we were so connected in so many ways – same last name CLARK, lived in the same area, Krystin went to school across the street from my childhood home, we both are interested in mindmapping, EFT, NLP and other healing modalities.

The Gypsy Wagon is going to be a 5″ x 7″ black and white mixed media zine focusing on creative arts and liberated living.  Krystin was accepting submissions for her zine but the deadline has passed – i’m sure though that Krystin will be creating many more zines so if you are interested in submitting please contact her.

Krystin’s story was featured at Crescendoh - do check out all of the incredibly inspiring stories of how art has saved these artist’s lives.