A tangle I wasn't going to bother with......

.... but my husband liked it.

I'd intended to tangle all the areas inside the knotwork using Tagh but decided that my grid was so uneven that I'd fill them completely with black instead. The tile was lying unfinished when my husband saw it & suggested I not do anything more, except post it to my blog. That really silenced the perfectionist imp chattering in my ear & all I added was my signature & date. The little creature is still sulking trying to fathom why the Triquetra points aren't equidistant from the tile's edges when the compass point started off at the tile's centre (I measured it).

tangles: Peaks Border tangleation

Margaret Bremner (see her blog for some very informative posts about knotwork & illustrations of how she incorporates tangles with them) & Judy West's recent knotwork patterns have rekindled a rather dormant liking for Celtic knotwork, particularly Margaret's post making connections with Runestones. I remember seeing Runestones as a child in Sweden but it's only now that I'm realizing that knotwork features in my own Scandinavian roots. I ended up watching a number of YouTube tutorials* & when I had to spend some time in bed this week worked with a compass to draw the above Triquetra knot with a circle. I actually set out to to tangle the knotwork with the Peaks Border pattern but that morphed into a tangleation.

*YouTube Tutorial Links
How to Draw the Ancient Celtic Symbol TRIQUETRA freehand drawing based upon a triangle suggested to me by Margaret Bremner
Brendan Hollandsworth - Triquetra (Trinity Knot) using a compass to give the knotwork design I used above
Jason Bellchamber - Celtic Triskele freehand drawing based upon a triangle
Jason Bellchamber - Perfect Triskele (positive) using a compass

Celtic Knot Anniversary Card

An anniversary card made using Judy West's Celtic Knot instructions for the focal image. I drew a small heart motif & repeated this for the "rope."

easel card standing

close-up of knotwork panel

close-up of wet embossed initial "D"

close-up of wet embossed initial "J"

close-up showing red textured paper & inked edges of rose

inside of card (click to see sentiment)

Recipe
Stamps Chocolate Baroque UA6SP077 Rose Stem Script (sentiment), UDLGW0093 Ornate Alphabet (initials) & UA5SP0292 Romantica (swirls).
Inks VersaFine Satin Red (swirls & sentiment); Aged Mahogany Distress Ink (inking various cardstock edges); VersaMark Watermark Stamp Pad with Stampendous Detail White Embossing Powder (initials).
Pencils, Markers etc... Sakura Pigma Micron Pen with Derwent Inktense Pencils for drawing & watercolouring knotwork image.
Cardstock An assortment of whites & reds from stash.
Paper Winsor & Newton Cotman 190gsm Cold Pressed/NOT Grain Fin watercolour paper & textured red from stash. 
Dies Sizzix Bigz Die - Tattered Florals, Spellbinders Nestabilities Large Deckled Rectangles.
Punches Woodware (corner rounder, scalloped hearts & small hearts).
The gems are from stash.

Earth, Wind & Fire Knot

When I saw the pattern of the Celtic Knot Challenge that Judy West set for this week I could see a knot garden in my mind or a garden maze with various different plants & wildlife. As I've also been wanting to try a coloured Nature themed tile for the Chocolate Baroque Zentangle Group, depicting the plants & wildlife using tangles was a quite logical progression. What I'd not expected was that my brain would take hold of the Pan Pastel Challenge to depict Earth, Wind & Fire! Since Earth can be represented by nature & I still had some spaces to tangle plus the colouring left to do I decided to see if there was a tangle to depict movement or wind & to include fiery colours in the colouring.

I have Linda Farmer's TanglePatterns.com Tangle Guide in which I found the tangle Hurakan listed. Looking at it I certainly thought it fitted the idea of depicting movement & even more so when I read Carole Ohl's explanation that "Hurakan was the Mayan god of wind & storms."

tangles: Hurakan, Oke, Peacock Tail, Plum Leaf

In each corner of my fantasy knot garden the enclosures contain peacocks (purple coloured Peacock Tail tangles) which strut about. The other enclosures contain plum orchards (pale green coloured Plum Leaf tangles) through which the wind (Hurakan tangles) rustles. In the centre is a majestic oak tree (Oke tangle) & the whole is bathed with the warmth of the rays from a fiery sun (the red orange colouring). The pathways (grey & black) are paved with grey & black cobbles using the black to delineate the knot pattern.

I used Judy's instructions to draw the knot pattern onto a 3½ inch square tile & coloured using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils.

Challenges Entered

Celtic Knot Challenge 2

Chocolate Baroque Zentangle Group Challenge 3 - Nature

Pan Pastel Challenge 33 - Earth Wind & Fire

Leafy Mooka & Assunta

The Diva's challenge this week is to use the two tangles Assunta & Mooka ONLY. It's the first time I've tried either of these & I've been fiddling about with both all week. Assunta came together quite easily but Mooka & I, for some reason, didn't quite gel until I saw Daniele O'Brien's post using her leafy Mooka (a Mooka tangleation). That then became the catalyst for my tile as I realised that Mooka's ends didn't have to be round & it was their roundness that was troubling me. Mooka suddenly opened up for me & I could see Assunta fitting into the leafy ended Mooka very nicely. 

tangles: Assunta, Mooka

I'm particularly fond of stylized plant designs & am quite excited by the Nature theme of the current Chocolate Baroque Zentangle Group Challenge. I'm hoping to explore this further but for the moment I am submitting my leafy Mooka tile. I did wonder if it has enough of a nature theme but concluded that it does after an observer remarked:

 "That's an onion, or a triffid*......or a triffid masquerading as an onion!"

*according to The Chambers Dictionary a triffid is:

  "a monstrous (fictional) stinging plant...."

Challenges Entered

I am the diva Weekly Challenge 83 - DuoTangle v. V: Assunta/Mooka

Chocolate Baroque Zentangle Group Challenge 3 - Nature

Duck-billed Brayd

The Diva's Challenge this week is a regular monthly feature called "Use My Tangle!!" where a tangle submitted to a Linky List is picked at random to form the basis for the challenge. This week the tangle featured is Brayd created by Shelly Beauch.

My husband saw me experimenting with the tangle on a rough piece of paper & thought it was a snake  - whereupon I gave my swirly scrawl a head which rather put me in mind of a duck-billed platypus. This is what evolved when I worked on the idea in my notebook & although my husband settled for it being a python, I think this creature looks far too benign for that so I'm naming it a "duck-billed brayd."

tangles: Brayd, Cross Stitch, Networking (variation), Zig Zag Border

The border started off as Networking from Suzanne McNeill's Zentangle 2 book but, not having practised it, I ended up with something else - I'll call it a variation. That's the beauty of Zentangle - nothing is a mistake - so I didn't have to start again.

Challenges Entered
I am the diva Weekly Challenge 82: UMT v. VII "Brayd"
Inspiration Avenue's Weekly Challenge: Zentangles

Perfectly Pink Inspiration

Perfectly Pink is the theme that Cindy of Cottage Remnant set for this week's Inspiration Avenue Challenge. I hope that I have enough pink in my composition for it to qualify for the theme, but even if I do not, it was seeing the challenge that provided me with the prompt to experiment with the stencil (Dreamweaver) I recently purchased after Glenda featured it in the weekly Chocolate Baroque email & on her blog.

tangles: Barberpole, Chevron, Cross Stitch, Loops,  Waves

I used Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils for outlining & colouring the various sections & then blended using paper stumps with Sansodor. I actually allowed the page to dry/settle over a couple of days as I wasn't sure how the Pigma Micron pen would react to the moisture of Sansodor & then outlined & tangled the various patterns. I'm rather pleased that it's in my little Rhodia Notebook since it is the first time I have attempted anything like this. I'm rather enjoying the freedom of not matting or making the inside of a card.

Challenge Entered
Inspiration Avenue's Weekly Challenge: Perfectly Pink

A Tile Project

I am part of a Zentangle Group on the Chocolate Baroque Ning Forum where we have a periodic challenge or task. Our first was to use a "Z" string as the basis for the tangle & the current one is to make a traditional Zentangle sized tile using the TanglePatterns String 010 from Linda Farmer's TanglePatterns.com.

One of the good things about making blog posts is that you can see how you develop as time goes by - at least when it comes to artwork you can - sometimes it will take months, sometimes a matter of weeks or even days. As I wrote about the possibility of preferring the creamy colour of watercolour paper to the white of the W H Smith 220gsm White Card when used with the black pen I had no idea it would actually occur within a  fortnight. Since that is where I find myself now I've made some 3½ inch square tiles from the Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolour Paper 190gsm Cold Pressed/NOT Grain Fin rounding the corners with a Woodware corner rounder punch (the traditional Zentangle Tiles have rounded corners) as I find this adds to the finish.

tangles: Cadent, Frond, Twilight Zone

I initially thought that using a black Polychromos pencil for shading might be a good idea but soon discovered that the effect was too dark. I found this post mentioned using a 2B pencil & managing to buy a 2B Lakeland Graphite locally I used that with a paper stump for the shading on this tile. The whole 'feel' of the watercolour paper with the smoothness of the graphite is quite delightful & hard to describe, just a joy.

My three background tangles are all Cadent with slight variations & the strings within the triangular shape became part of the Twilight Zone tangle.