New tangle - LilyMay!

I'm very excited because I've just deconstructed my first tangle! We spent the weekend at my in-laws, and I couldn't help noticing this border on one of their decorative plates:

I wondered if I could turn it into a tangle, so I drew it out a few times in my sketchbook, modifying it to make sure it just uses the elemental strokes, and working out the best stepout. 

So here goes - I'd like to introduce 'LilyMay', named after my father-in-law's mother, who owned the plate that inspire the tangle:

In step 6, the pattern repeats the other way up - I find it easiest to rotate the tile for each alternate 'frond'. 

I don't think it needs much shading, but I quite like a little bit under the 'fescu' branches. 

Here it is in quite a large format on a square tile:

 With an aura and perfs it can be a ribbon tangle:

It can also be drawn quite small - think this would make a nice border:

Here it is as a border on a Zendala, along with LucyB's new tangle Essence (and Scrawlz by Jane Dickinson)

I'd love to know what you think - is this acceptable as a tangle?! 

Please let me know if this design already exists, or if this name has already been used. 

Diva's Weekly Challenge #360: Shattuck vs Tripoli

When I saw that this week's Diva Challenge #360 was a duotangle of Shattuck and Tripoli I had to get stuck in! Shattuck is one of my all time favourites, but I don't often use Tripoli. I quickly decided I wanted to use Shattuck as a string, or reticula, and fill the sections with more Shattuck and Tripoli. I started the tile on Monday, but didn't get very far, then work got in the way mid-week! Finally had time to finish it on Thursday evening. I think I was avoiding it slightly, as I wasn't too keen on how it was looking, but I trusted the process and once the shading was added I was much happier - as always! I've been avoiding looking at all the other challenge entries until now, as I didn't want to be influenced by anyone else, so I'm looking forward to catching up now! No doubt I'll pick up some great ideas for future tangling :-)

Square One focus: Zoya

This week's Square One Focus is Zoya, by Celia Norman. It's a fairly straightforward fragment-type tangle, which can be combined and embellished in a number of ways, so it's very versatile. After playing with it in my sketchbook for a while I decided to arrange it as three sets of four squares, diagonally the tile. I also wanted to extend the edges of Zoya beyond the squares, so Mooka seemed the obvious choice.

Having completed it, I couldn't help imagining it with ZenGems embedded in those dark spaces, so I did something I don't normally do and virtually copied the design onto a tan tile, with a couple of variations (I wasn't keen on the Paradox in the black and white version, so that got simplified). The gems are Prismacolour pencils with white gelly roll highlights, and the centre squares are gold gelly roll with Printemps in black micron over the top (not advisable with a nice new pen as it picks up a lot of the gold ink!)

Diva's Weekly Challenge #358: PickPocket

This week's Diva's Weekly Challenge ~358 is to use the lovely new tangle Pickpocket, by Tomas Padros. As Tomas himself says, it's a bit difficult to start with, and it's true that it does take a bit more concentration than some other tangles, but it's definitely worth persevering! It reminds me of a grid-based Elven in looks, but also has a bit of Huggins about it's construction. After a few practice attempts in my sketchbook I 'splashed out' on an official Zentangle tile, pairing it with this week's 'Square One: Purely Zentangle' focus, Shard (by Carole Ohl). The triangles that are part of Pickpocket reminded me of the starting point for Shard, so I figured it would make a good border. I started to go a bit 'wrong' at the interface between Pickpocket and the Shard border, so I had to quickly remind myself that there are no mistakes in Zentangle, and to just go with the flow. If it doesn't quite look like a 'ribbon' wrapped around something then that's just fine - it is non-representational, after all! So I ended up with something I'm happy with - and it may just be because we've just finished watching the films again, but I keep thinking 'Lord of the Rings' when I look at this tile!

Diva Challenge #357: Paradox monotangle

When I saw the subject for Laura Harms' weekly challenge (#357) I just had to give it a go - Paradox has to be one of my favourites! I decided to keep it simple - blue micron on a pre-strung Zendala tile, shaded with blue prismacolour pencil, and some rounding. I left a few areas unfilled, but thought it looked unfinished so filled them in with black for a striking look. Too striking unfortunately! So I coloured over the black with silver gelly roll, but that didn't work either. Finally managed to colour over that with midnight blue gelly roll, which I was happy with! Finished off with white perfs in the blue filled areas, and gold perfs around the edge. I find it amazing that a series of slightly curved lines can end up as such a complex pattern - probably why I love Paradox so much! 

More randomness

Here are another couple of goes with using dice to select four official tangles, and using random strings from the Tangle Patterns website.

In this set I think I got quite a good selection - a mixture of 'big' tangles, ribbon tangles and background fills. I've never been fond of Ambler, but I used it here to follow the string line. I started with three curved sections, then drew Rumpus 'underneath' those. Then I alternated the second (top) two Ambler sections with a bit more of Rumpus so it appears to weave in and out. Weighting the Ambler pattern made it a bit more interesting. Then I added Indyrella, and finally Florz as a background. Shading gave the patterns more depth.

The next set of four random tangles were a bit more tricky. I was happy with Noom as a ribbon, and Drawings as a big shape underneath, but Waybop made it a bit too fussy in my opinion (and I don't think the aura-ing worked very well) and again, Vitruvius (nested squares and circles) was too fussy as a background. Not a disaster, but not my favourite tile, and a good exercise in persisting and sticking to the 'rules of the game'!

Random tile

As I now have 125 of the official tangles on Bijou-sized tile stored in A4 plastic sheets, I thought it would be good to try a tile with randomly chosen tangles for once. So I used a dice app to pick four tangles from the six sheets, using a six-sized die to choose the page, then a 20-sided die to choose the tangle on that page. Here's what it chose: Ellish, IX, Jonqual and Printemps. The first three I've never used in a tile before, so it was a good experiment!

Official tangle project

I often find that my mind goes blank when I start a new tile, and I fall back on old favourites like Flux and Mooka. So I thought I'd start a project to create Bijou-sized tiles (2"x2"), each with a simple example of a tangle to use as a quick reference. To start with I wanted to do all the 'official' Zentangle tangles, as there are quite a few I haven't tried yet. Then I'll move on to unofficial ones I've tried and particularly liked.

It's only taken about a week, and I've done 125 official tangles! There are online stepouts for 107 (listed on Linda Farmer's Tangle Patterns website) and the remainder are in my 'One Zentangle a Day' book. There are 167 official tangles currently, but there are quite a few that don't have online instructions. Anyway, here are the first 107 I completed. I'll post a better picture when I've organised them properly. It looks like they'll fit nicely into the plastic wallets used for coin collections and photographic transparencies!

UPDATE: I've added a page to the blog with better photos.

ONE Focus: Elven

Another 'linking' tangle for this week's focus - Elven, by Elena Hadzijaneva. For some reason I found this slightly more difficult than Skye. There are several ways to construct it, and I think I kept switching between them, and losing track of the threads. I love how it looks though, so I'd like to try it again and get into a better rhythm. It was particularly difficult making each thread appear underneath the others, so I'll avoid that next time! 

Had another couple of goes with Elven, using the 'Wholly Hollibaugh' technique of 'cutting holes' in parts of the tangle to reveal the tangles underneath. 

Elven (with Wholly Hollibaugh technique), Shattuck, Ambler and Tipple. Tan tile, renaissance colour

Elven (with Wholly Hollibaugh technique) with Hibred, Shattuck and Therefore on a white tile. 

ONE Focus: Skye

For more about this tangle, visit Margaret Bremner's blog, with stepouts and the inspiration for this Celtic knot tangle.
I had fun with this one, as celtic knotwork was very much my 'thing' when I was younger. I practiced it a few times in my sketchbook before deciding that it would look good 'big' (rather than as a border), filled with Adalpha and Marasu to highlight the different threads. Footlights went on one side, and Florz on the other.

ValenTangle Day 13: Dewd

The prompt today is a tangelation of Dewd using a heart instead of the normal round end. I used flux-hearts and mooka corners, and added some background shading in red pencil.