Tangle Obsession

It's been 3 weeks of total immersion in zentangle and I have never enjoyed something so much.  It's easy, quick and you can be creative anywhere.  I was waiting for my daughter to meet me for lunch and took out my tangles, I can do it while waiting for a program or some photos to load on my computer and it's easy to sit with my feet up in front of the TV in the evening and do a little doodle.

I spent $12 on some nice card stock, $19 on a good enough paper cutter and bought a package of fine point Sharpies to practice with.  I already have a good set of Staedtler pigment liners but honestly the Sharpies work so well that I use them often.

Thanks to all the talented zentangle artists sharing their patterns and ideas I have found just about everything I needed to learn this art on line.  I did buy 3 zentangle books through Amazon though.  The first one is Zentangle Basics by Suzanne McNeill.  She is a certified zentangle teacher, who knew there was such a thing! This book is just like it said, Basic.  By the time the book got to me in the mail I had already learned the patterns in the book from all the information on line.  Calista, she is my niece, if you are reading this I think I will send this book to you to help you get started zentangling!  The next book was also by Suzanne McNeill and it is her fabric arts, quilting and embroidery book.  This whole journey started with me looking for an interesting quilt idea so I hope to put this book to good use.  The last book is Yoga for your Brain by Sandy Steen Bartholomew and by far the best of the three.  It has great patterns that I have never seen before, and exercises to teach you how to turn things you see everyday into more tangle patterns.  I love that!

Both Sandy Steen Bartholomew and Suzanne McNeiil have great blogs and Suzanne has a whole bunch of You Tube videos about zentangle.  You can see Sandy's blog at http://beezinthebelfry.blogspot.com. Her last blog was called Tangle Homework and she challenged her readers to take the zentangle original pattern Bales and see how many variations you could make.  I decided to take that challenge and this is what I came up with.

This is about 5.5 inches by 3.5 inches.  I have 8 variations of bales, but if I had started on a bigger piece of card stock I think I could have done many more.  Once your pen starts it's like there is no stopping it!

Try Zentangle and see if you like it as much as I do.