Weekly Challenge #178: "Duotangle by the Letter!"

Initials!

Using our initials we are to create a tile. I am involved in a swap going on now which I can't really talk about until the news is released but, it involves using only certain letters of the alphabet for tangles. I found this very liberating because it narrowed the field in which you could work. Too many choices for me sometimes makes my brain hurt. I have a terrible time gong into large department stores to shop for clothes for this same reason. Give me two or three pairs of pants to choose from and I am happy. If you haven't noticed there are so many "named" tangles these days it is sometimes stressful to pick a couple to work with.

So I found this very relaxing. I did two tiles, one for my first and last name DC,

Dyon, Changing

And since I sign my tiles with my middle initial I did a tile that was DMC,

Demi, Maryhill, Chemystery

I really like how Maryhill came out looking like an M (no my middle name is not Mary!). I didn't see it until after I signed it as you can see my initials are in the top left corner!

Less for me is more relaxing.

Challenge #177 "Truffle"

The challenge come to us this week from Carolin Broady the youngest CZT so far! She has come up with a tangle called Truffle which you can see HERE. I commend her on designing a tangle, it is much more difficult then it may seem, at least for some of us (me). I struggled with this one all week to come up with some thing I liked and then just decided to draw. Well, I have not had the drawing bug for a while, I guess I am on the wane right now in the drawing sector so what I ended up with is a weird sort of an underwater, way underwater, creature. A challenge is a challenge, so here it is.

I used a yellow micron on the tan tile this week as an experiment.Not sure I love it but, it was worth the try. Truffle, Verve, Black Pearlz and Zinger

Weekly Challenge #176: "B.Y.O.B"

I really like to use stains on tiles. Maria has been doing it for some time using tea or wine for shading. Amy Broady CZT challenges us this week to "Bring Your Own Beverage" to stain a tile or tangle with the beverage of choice, or simply sit in a beverage house and create a tile. I used many different staining mediums but settled on this tile that was stained with coffee and turmeric.

Mooka in black micron, Verve in blue micron

Tomorrow would have been my son's 28th birthday and of course, he has been heavy on my mind. His ashes were set free off the coast of Maine "so he could travel the world." I always feel that he is around us in Maine especially but, we are also surrounded by water in Boston too. I didn't see this while tangling but upon reflection I see the three of us, myself, my husband and my son, Dylan in the Mookas, surrounded by the swirling ocean (Verve) that is Austin and then by the shining world. Somethings just come out on their own without a conscious thought.

Weekly Challenge #175: Crux

It took me a while to get to this challenge and I don't like to see any of the other entries before I complete my tiles so that I will not be influenced in my drawing but, Henrike Bratz has done a lovely job of illustrating this tangle and the many variations possible that it is hard to know if I was influenced or not.  I figured this would be a mono - tangle since the space is not that big, so I experimented with all of those tools that I complained about last week.

This tile was started with a Zenstone "wash" followed by drawing the pattern with a black glaze Gelly Roll pen. Once the first layer was dry I went over the lines of the flower to make it a bit more raised. Then I used both black and white Prismacolor pencils to lighten and darken certain areas.

This tile was simply brown and black micron and black Prismacolor pencil.