Sketchbook Work - September 2024+

I don't have a regular sketchbook practice but every once and awhile I get on a roll.  These are some of the things that I worked on in September and I think a few of them were actually earlier than that but I'm just catching up now.  

This first is a tangle I had seen called Skalla by Theresa Fessler CZT.  In the true Zentangle method you are not supposed to use an eraser, but an eraser was very necessary when I did this.  Also, you are encouraged to do it in ink from the beginning but I did this in pencil first.  The basic tangle/shapes were done in Micron and then I added the glitter marker.   It's much prettier in real life.

Some things come up in my Pinterest feed and I usually just pin them to the specific category I have set up.  This time I decided to grab an index card and give this a try.

The same creator did something like this also which I chose to try in my sketchbook.

This tangle in the middle is called Stikz by Preeti Gupta which I did on another index card.  The framing is ad libbed similar to what I had seen her do.

I did it again in a smaller sketch pad I had at the condo one night and added my "maze" around it.

I got these owl stickers at the $Tree and kept forgetting to give them to GS2 and they were getting a little beat up in my travel art bag, so before they started flying off their page on their own I made a little owl mandala using some of them.

This was one of those neurographic art pages where you make the "scribbles" and then, using your ink pen, round the corners of the shapes.  I then went in with the glitter markers and filled in some of the spaces leaving a small portion of the white paper as a frame.  

It was a choice not to fill in everything hopefully adding to the design.

This was from the Sanntangle FB group page.  It's Tile #477.   It just looked very Halloweeny to me so i had to do it.  I had a 4" square of bristol paper that was perfect for it.  

The next 4 index cards where done on the fly.

This mandala was inspired by, believe it or not, a crocheted doily that I had seen somewhere online.  It is completely hand-drawn and colored using my own choices.  I have another one started but I'm also doing a couple of other challenges this month and haven't been able to quite complete that one yet.

I've been able to keep up with the Birdtober challenge (post coming soon) but I am behind on Inktober tangles.  Hopefully I'll get to catching up with that in the next couple of days - I finally found the paper for it that I wanted to use and will tell that story when I post the tangles.

Fall Into Fall 2024 - Tangles

A FaceBook group that I follow - Tangle All Around - facilitated an event during the month of September called "Fall Into Fall".  They provided a list and a pdf of the daily tangles.  This was much like some of the other tangle events that I've participated in and once again I decided to take part in this one.  I used another keyring tag booklet for these that was orange and measured about 3" long.  On the front of the tag I indicated the name of the tangle and it's creator along with a sample of the completed tangle.  On the back I drew six boxes and used two colors to show the step-outs of the tangles.  In the past I've just done the tangle on the front of some smaller tags, or in the case of the previous years' Inktober challenges, just the finished tangle which is good, but having the step-outs on the tag itself helps to not have to search out the steps again, and believe me, sometimes you really need the steps.  There is an example of the back at the end of this.  

Here is the complete keyring - there are about 20 extra tags that I can use to add to this.

And here is a sample of the back.  You can see that I have used a dark pink marker to indicate what is added in each consecutive step.  The arrows between the boxes show the progression of the steps.  This is what the official Zentagle creators have used in the past.  This is pretty small - having to fit 6 boxes on a 3" surface is challenging.  

Inktober will be starting on October 1st and I'm going to take part in that also but I haven't figured out what substrate to use yet.  If you recall, last year I used a sheet of black paper and put the tangles in a segmented pumpkin.  I'm kind of leaning towards doing a large leaf on kraft colored paper if I can find something large enough.  Maybe later this weekend I will see if brown kraft wrapping paper would be suitable.  If not, there's always the thought of another pumpkin.  We shall see.

Frogs, Fish, Little Boys and More - Ending August and Beginning September

I had a really cute video of GS3 with this little tree frog he found on one of the toys at his daycare, but I can't seem to get it to upload.  So I did a screenshot.  He played with it back and forth for a while and did try to pick it up.  Then the frog jumped to the ground next to him and hopped under the equipment at which point GS3 lost interest.  We were all wondering if he had managed to keep in it his hand before it hopped away if he would have tried to eat it, but we'll never know.

Meanwhile, "back at the ranch" this is our "newish" frog planter that got knocked over by a hungry deer trying to munch on the plant.  You can see that there was some damage, but we were able to find the pieces and I was able to perform some repair to the lip. 

I was glad that I was able to fix it as it was an impulse purchase that cost a little more than I would have liked to have paid.  

I followed along with a YouTube video by etuko_works of this Cherry Blossom Blooming.

And here is another sketchbook page inspired by something I saw on IG and forgot to write down the source.  

After a recent trip to Costco, I put together a personal charcuterie platter of some summer treats.  A mediterranean pasta salad, some spinach artichoke dip with pretzel sticks (should have had the dipping sticks a size larger), a new to me apple I've been wanting to try - Honeybee which was sweet, and some Babybel cheese rounds which paired with the apple quite nicely.  I had this while sitting on the balcony at the condo and listening to the concert a couple of weeks ago.

This is the new post/bird station that I designed and HWNSNBP created for our backyard update.  It stands about 9-10' high.  Currently it has the planters at the top and on the next level down are the suet and seed feeders.   How many birds can you see waiting to take their turn at the suet cake?  BTW, next year the hanging planters will match.  We got the one on the left and put together the one on the right kind of later in the season.  We've already changed out the terra cotta pots to fall pansies also, and may add more.  I''ll post more pictures of the whole project soon.

Speaking of pictures, Rachel reminded us how cute this shirt has been for all three of our grandsons now.  All pictured a few months after their first birthday.

We had GS2 and GS3 and their parents with us this past weekend and had some fun in the pool and fishing on the dock.  GS2 will be starting Kindergarten this year and is very much looking forward to it.

Maverick at Meet The Teacher Night

Goofing around on the dock.

We let him reel in every fish that was caught (there were four).

I knew he couldn't fit between the bars, but just in case...........

Listening to "Miss Rachel" and doing the motions.

He doesn't sit still long, but when this show is on he is mesmerized.

- 

I've got some projects in the works and a few more to get started soon.  Fortunately, I'm getting more in the mood to return to card making.  HWNSNBP helped me clear up some space in the stamp cave and with a little more organization, I think I won't be as reluctant to go up there.  I've got some anniversaries coming up and of course, I'm very behind on Christmas cards.  So this month will hopefully be productive on that front.

100DayProject 2024 and 100 Days of Tangles Updates

I'm so glad that I took the time before my surgery to grid out the placement of all the stickers on the black poster board that HWNSNBP was so thoughtful to pick up for me because bending at the waist is not allowed during my recovery and it would have been a real chore to try to do it without the bending.  As it is, there will be a lot of erasing to do after all the stickers are placed, but I'm pretty sure that it won't be that noticeable.  Also, photographing such a wide piece of paper is a bit challenging while trying to stand up straight and not move so I apologize for the wobbliness of this video I did of the first 30 days worth of stickers.

I found myself running low on the tails so I grabbed some more strips and made some more wishing stars and had to get a bigger jar to put them in.  

These little projects are fitting in pretty good right now because between the muscle relaxant drug and the inabilitiy to sleep through the night because of lingering nerve pain I'm very tired during the day and can't focus on bigger things right now.  That and the fact that I shouldn't be sitting still for long lengths of time which is what I tend to do when I start working on bigger projects.  I can do little by little and still get my laps in.

I was a little overconfident in thinking that I could use some of the time in the hospital to work on some zentangles and actually packed a little bag with some tiles and tools.  What made it even more of a challenge was that when I woke from the 4 hour surgical procedure, my left hand hurt and was totally numb.  I could grasp and squeeze with it, but there was no feeling. They gave me something for the pain and said that the numbness was probably due to the position that I was in during the surgery and that it could take several days (or longer) for the feeling to return.  This kind of set off a firestorm with the attending staff and they felt that they had to do a CT scan to rule out a possible stroke.   I was not happy about that and there's more to that story but I won't go to length here.  I had mentioned several times that I was glad that it was my left hand and not my right as I was an artist - something that I don't think I've ever made claim to be out loud.  One of the nurses asked what I did and I mentioned painting and tangling and was able to show her the ring of 100 days of tangles that I had brought as reference in case I was to work on any tiles.  (I did attempt one, but the drugs weren't helping my eyes focus well enough so I tucked it away.)    But I have been working to keep up with the 100 Days of Tangles and here they are........all of February.........

....and most of March so far.

I haven't done much of the shading on most of these and will have to go back to that when I get near the end.  It will be nice to try to do some tiles with strings in the future too so I can see some of these patterns put together.

Still sleeping downstairs for now, but I did manage to get up the stairs and did a little bit of work in the stamp cave to prepare for Easter that I'll share in a bit. But for now, I'm fading fast and have to say good night and to apologize to my blogging buddies for not visiting as regularly and commenting - I will catch up with you soon I hope.

Wear Red Day - Finished Projects - Tangles - And a Treat

I know it's Groundhog Day but it's also Wear Red Day for Heart Health Month and we're wearing red for this little Heart Warrior who will be 9 mos. old in a couple of weeks.  He's pretty much always in motion these days as you can see it was hard to get him to stay still for his photo.  He had his 6 mo. heart check-up and is holding his own on that front.  He is a little joy!

And it was a joy to receive as a gift from my friend Sabrina this needle felting kit to make these little blue tits last Christmas (2022).  I was half-way through with them last spring and then misplaced the box for a while.  Luckily I was able to put my hands on it earlier in January and got them done.  I've never done needle felting but it really was fun.  You really have to be careful with those needles though.  I might have to do a little more work on those masks and eyes.

Sabrina sent me this beautiful little wooden puzzle this year.  I love the birds - we share that love.  The pieces to this puzzle are very distinctively shaped making it a little more challenging than it may look, but I totally enjoyed the challenge.  It was fun to do during this gray month.

I gave myself two other challenges to participate in.  One lasting just for the month, and the second one is going to go on for 100 days (but it's not the 100 Day Project - that will be starting on 2/18 this year and I'm still trying to come up with a plan for that). 

Last year I had done the 7F5R Fragment of Your Imagination Challenge with similar substrate in pink.  I used the blue tags this time.  

It's good to have these handy when doing original tiles to get some ideas for patterns.

This 100 Days of Tangles is run by a FB group and involves a different tangle for each day.  What's the difference you might ask?  Fragments are the little pieces of tangles that when put together create a larger form.  So you may see, in the small tiles below, fragments that come together in a grid to make a larger tangle.  In any case, I'm doing these on a slightly larger square base of 2 3/4".  I have purchased these tags on the rings through Temu.  I know some people have had bad experiences with them, but so far, I have not, but I have mostly ordered craft-related items and little gadget type things.  I also only use my laptop for ordering things from online sources and only use Paypal for payments hoping that there won't be any issues.  

I have bought a couple of their Lego-like kits, both for GS1 and myself.  This is one that I put together during January - a little cockatiel with wings that move.  Let me tell you that they are a bit challenging with all those little pieces, but fun nonetheless.

And one last thing to share tonight - there's a place nearby called Paris Bistro that has baked goods as well as sandwiches and salads.  Each season they have some specialties and I had to try this one - the Cookie Butter Latte Creme Filled Donut.  It was delicious!

So tomorrow - February 3rd - is Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day and we'll be visiting the little ice cream shop we did last year but it will be for the last time as they're retiring soon.  I'm looking forward to the apple crisp again!