Ok…I have to be honest. I wasn’t going to do this weeks Diva Challenge. I started it once on a tan tile, and ended up ripping it up. I just didn’t like it. I wasn’t me. But then I pulled out an ATC at school today and tried it again. Kept it a little simpler, and that worked out ok. Put in a little Shattuck, Printemps, and Meer.

First off, I would like to thank everyone for their kind words last week.

Second, keep the well wishes coming, because school started today. Six classes, 17 semester hours, five days a week. So far, so good, as my Monday classes are Chemistry (which I really enjoy.)

I have two entries for this week’s Diva Challenge of Stripes. The first one I actually did last week while I was at the Tangled Expressions Group meeting up in Anaheim with Sharla Hicks. She has been doing a lot of black on tan tiles, and I thought I would like to play with them.

ok, I am a bit behind. Admittedly, it has been a rough last couple of weeks. Another trip to Florida to see my sister-in-law, Marie, as she continues her brave battle with cancer. Dealing with the suicide of Robin Williams. And to top it all off, one of my Army buddies and her husband (also a veteran) were killed in a freak motorcycle accident, leaving behind 2 small children.

This would be enough to get anyone down, but dealing with, and living with, depression is a tough roads sometimes. It can greatly interfere with your desire to do anything, much less anything creative. But, I have found that if I can get started, especially on a tile, I can get out of it a little. That’s where the prompts from the Diva, Adele Bruno, and Square One (on FaceBook) have been a godsend. I don’t have to think about what to start (the hard part) and can get into the mindfulness.

So with that being said, I’ve made a lot of effort on a few projects that required minimal mental effort. I am almost done “up cycling” our dart board case (icky old Miller Lite thing,)  which, of course, I had to add some tangles to. I’ll post the finished product next week.

I got out this week’s Diva Challenge #181, with the theme of Water. I went to the beach yesterday, and it was rather soothing listening to the sound of the waves crashing. I hope you can see some watery-ness in my Mooka.  Signo UM-153 pen in blue, Signo Angellic in light blue, and General’s Chalk Pastels (white, light blue and indigo) on Renaissance Tan tile.

Ok…highs and lows of this week aside, I finally set myself down to attend to my initials!

This weeks Diva Challenge was to create a Duo Tangle (2 patterns only) that start with your initials. I rarely use CC, as I have adopted CK for all things, so I set out do CharKat-ize. I picked Cadent and Kathy’s Dilemma (one I had not tried before!)

Oh my goodness this has turned into a busy summer! We just got home from the 2nd trip (This one was only 8 days, and included our annual sojourn to Wisconsin for Rock Fest.)

I was without internet access for a week, and it was almost rather pleasant. On the other hand, I didn’t get as much tangling done as I had hoped. I did leave a few random tangles as autographs…this was on a tent that was shaped like a VW van.

I did finish one of my two planned out tiles for Diva’s guest challenge #176, which was entitled BYOB. The object was to paint/stain your tiles with whatever you were drinking. I hit a white tile with coffee, and tangled it in sepia pen. I did stain a 2nd tile with red wine, but I haven’t had a chance to do anything with it yet.

These are my “before” tiles…

Ok…so I made it through a week with my mother, and I’m not in jail for killing her (at least until they find the body.)

After dropping her at the airport in San Diego, I went to one of my happy places, Dick Blick Art Supply in Little Italy. Ah…paper…ah….ink…ah….zen….

So I did stock up on some cool papers (more to come on what I’m doing with that to come) and got a fountain pen, and some ink for my dip pen I found in one of my drawers. On Sunday, I picked up a really cool journal at the Hotel Del Coronado gift shop. It’s a Jane Austen Novel Journal, with blank pages and Jane Austen quotes sprinkled throughout. I am going to use it to practice writing with the fountain pen, and the pages feel to be of sufficient weight to add some tangles to as well. (yeah…rough and tumble me is a HUGE Jane Austen fan. I had to make a trip to Bath when I was in the UK, and I watch the original BBC mini series of Pride and Prejudice at least once a year.)

I’ve notices some of my friends and relatives (including me) having some difficulties this week, so when I saw the heart cut outs leftover from some dies I had cut earlier in the week, I thought they needed to be a string. I guess I took that as an omen. And since I had bought new ink for my dip pen, I thought I would pull out the 15 year old acrylic ink that has been in the drawer and in storage and well travelled, only to find that it would not work with the pen. So…I painted in the gold with a tiny, tiny paint brush.  Oh, and I also worked on a Zendala tile, which was a first for me.

So here is the final piece. Black Micron, Red Gelly Roll, Gold Acrylic Ink. Tangles are Hurry, Fracas,  and Crux. oh, and some Derwent Inktense in Chili Red and blended with a Niji water brush. (Just got the Derwent’s in the mail yesterday, had to try them out.)

Now I’m off to do my Spanish homework, and play with a couple things I have started on my workbench.

¡Hasta Luego!

Ok…lets start out by saying…I am simply not myself this week. My mother is visiting from Arizona, and we have a rather…tumultuous…relationship. She is 70…I am 52. We have never been close, and have absolutely nothing in common. So tangling this week for me has been a bit difficult. She makes me…tense. I actually had to put my pen down a few times because I was gripping it too tightly.

But…I am trying to get into my “state of Zen.”

For this week’s challenge, we were instructed to double our string. Two strings instead of one. Interesting concept for me, when I don’t use a string much at all. I often let my tangles just grow organically. That, added to my increased tension level, made for a daunting challenge. So….

I handed a tile, a pencil, and my book of tangles to my precious Tuna (better known as Mike to most people.) I instructed him (the engineer dude) to place the dots in the corner…connect the dots for a border…then draw a string…then another string. I also had him write the names of 4 tangles he liked on the back of the tile. And I used those 4 (Fescue, Frondous, XYP, and N’zepple.) This has to be my weirdest tile to date…but I don’t dislike it. I did go old school, with just black and white.

Whew!

It has been a busy week. Since coming back from Providence, I have been cleaning and purging the studio, and OCD’ing on some YouTube Videos for Faux Leather Journals I have so man ideas and things swimming around in my head, its been difficult to wrap my brain around any one thing for very long, making it *VERY* difficult to sit down and tangle.

This week’s challenge from the Diva came from guest poster, Sharla Hicks. This initially struck fear in me, as Sharla is my mentor, my idol, and such a wonderful artist. Her tasking was to take your “go-to” tangle and rethink it. Re-imagine it. Use it some way you have not.

I have a couple favorites that do intimate themselves in a few things. When I am pressed and just want to color, I squiggle a line and Stripe away at it. I’ve only used Stripes as a focal, usually a monotangle. So here, I used it as a border. It came out…interesting. For the inside, I did a bit of a study in ING, Hollibaugh Style. While working that out, I found that if you start both sides from the same end, it makes a completely different pattern than starting from opposite ends.

For a different angle on tan, I worked on the Strathmore Toned Tan, but instead of brown, I used blue, and the Indigo chalk pastel. The N’zepple pearls that kind of glow? pencil shaded then colored in with Zenstone. Neat shading technique…makes it shiny.

Oh…and lastly, I always work pretty small…even on bigger paper (this is 9 x 6 isn) so I went big here…Bigified it!

Here is the Stripes I did while I was recently in the San Antonio Airport for 8 hours (gotta love flying standby.)

Still working on re-doing my blog page. I guess I’m going to have to go in and edit it by hand to get what I really want.

Stay Crazy my Friends!

Argh!

We got home from Providence late last night, and I had to meet with my Quilts of Valor group this morning since I missed the last meeting while I was on holiday. That being said, I still need to do my Spanish homework and decompress a little before I can get much on the blog.

While I was at the CZT course, we learned Auraknot, so I tossed some Mooka’s on it and called it a Diva!

I promise to post much more about CZT next week. It was such an overwhelming experience, and I met a plethora of totally cool people (and even got help with my Spanish from Anna and Maria!)

Here’s a little tidbit…Flyboy went with me, so we got our picture with Rick and Maria in the ultra cool Zentangle Frame.

So…this post finds me in Central Florida (Sarasota) visiting my sister-in-law, Marie, on my way to CZT on Sunday.

Laura’s challenge this week was almost fortuitous. Marie is dealing with a serious illness, and she is the strongest person I have ever met. Her attitude is so good. For everything she has been through, and is going through, she is always upbeat and positive. She loves her Red Sox (I’ll forgive her for that) and recently got to meet David Ortiz when they were here for Spring Training.

So this week, I dedicate my “Beads of Courage” to Marie.