Feather Spiral Zentangle

This Zentangle was inspired from a picture of a wholecloth quilt I saw that was quilted in a spiral design. I love the use of feathers in quilting.  So I combined a spiral with a feather quilting design for this Zentangle.

Feather Spiral.  6"x 6" mixed-media paper with pencil and Sakura 0.1 micron black pen.
I had trouble with shadowswhen I photographed this drawing. The one corner looks
pretty light and the other dark, when they really are not. This was a fun doodle
to create, making the wavy spine and deciding how to draw the feathers. 

Week 1 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

I've joined Deb Prewitt of Blue Twig Studio for her 365 Days of Art Challenge. She is doing an inchies or twinchies everyday and a sketch or drawing for a weekly challenge. I'm doing the drawing or sketch weekly.  I finished my first sketch yesterday with a new Zentangle drawing.



Swirly Doodles. 6"x6" mixed media paper with pencil and Sakura 0.1 micron black pen.

 I enjoy drawing Zentangles, as they are very relaxing and just fun to do. They get my creativity flowing. I also enjoy being abstract with the doodling. I've been working hard at loosening up and Zentangles is great for that.

Deb's challenge will also help me be better at keeping up with my blog. I've been off line the last few months, as first my laptop dies, then my tablet died, and finally my husband's desktop computer's monitor went on the fritz. It worked, but you could barely see anything on it. So it was too hard to see what I was doing to use his computer. For Christmas, my son fixed my tablet, a friend installed a new hard drive on my laptop and we were able to get a new monitor for my husband's computer. Whoo-hoo! I'm back in business!! Thank you for being patient with me.

Sedona, AZ

Traveled to Sedona, AZ to pick up donations for the Arizona Quilter's Guild annual fall meeting. Our chapter, Prickly Piecers, is hosting the meeting this year, along with the members-at-large. One of our jobs is creating raffle baskets to raise money to help pay to bring in national quilt teachers to AZ for workshops for guild members. I had an individual and a couple shops that said they had donations if they could be picked them up. My husband was game, so we made a mini-vacation out of the trip. Sedona is one of the most beautiful places in God's creation. The red rock mountains just glow in the sun. We were treated to a rain storm our first night and got some gorgeous photos with storm clouds against the red rock glowing in the sunshine!  We stayed in Cottonwood, a small town about 15 miles from Sedona. It's not as expensive as Sedona is.

Driving along the road from Cottonwood into Sedona. 

Storm clouds made a beautiful sky.

Heading into Sedona. Photo taken from the side of the road.

Pillar backlit with stormy clouds close to sunset.

Golden sunlight striking the mountains.Taken from a pull off at a trail head 

north of town.

As the sun set, the red rocks just glowed orange as they were hit by the sun.

 It was beautiful to watch  as section after section  of rock formations lit up 

and glowed. What a way to spend the evening.

Closer view of the rock pillars (from photo above), also showing the clouds from

the stormy evening.  I enjoyed the contrast of colors between the yellow, orange,

and red rocks to the dark blues, turquoises, and grays of the sky and clouds. 

Heading back to Cottonwood to our hotel. The sun hit the mountains in the

distance making them glow. 

Zentangles from Seashells

I was looking at Michele Beauchamp's tutorial on spirals for Zentangles on the Tangle Pattern website. Spirals reminded me of nautilus shells, so I started making a few sea creature zentangles. The first couple,  a nautilus and a scallop, are shown on July 2, 2013's blog. I've created a couple more sea creatures.

Fish Zentangle. 6"x6" on mixed media paper with a pencil and a Sakura 0.1 micron pen.
I used a new tangle, that I call Barscroll, on the front part of the body. Instructions
will be posted in another blog.

With the beginning of fall, I was thinking back to last year when I went to Ohio during the height of the fall colors. I brought back with me a couple of hedge apples, hoping to use them to dye fabric, after finding out that they can be used for that purpose. However, the hedge apples didn't hold up well enough in Arizona's warmer weather and had to be thrown away. But I had made some sketches of their skin, as the texture intrigued me. They were so rough, similar to an orange (another name for a hedge apple is Osage orange), but with greater dimpling. I created a tangle called HedgeApple. Following are the instructions. I apologized for the writing not being blurry. I'm not sure why the red pen isn't showing much contrast from the black one.  I'll try to get a better photo and re-post it.

HedgeApple tangle instructions. This can be made to fit any shape.

Jellyfish. 6"x6" mixed-media paper using pencil and Sakura 0.1

micron pen.  I used the HedgeApple tangle for the tentacles in the

front and several other tangles for the rest of the tentacles.

The umbrella of the jellyfish is done with the Angle Fish tangle.  

Sun Rays in the Evening

As my husband and I took a walk last evening, the sun was just beginning to set. It was such a beautiful view that I had to share.



The sun was very bright with a brilliant yellow horizon under the vivid
blue sky. Sunbeams radiated outwards. I like the trees in silhouette in
the foreground.



This view was taken with a wider angle. I didn't get the yellow horizon, as I
 wanted to capture the sunbeams radiating out into space. It was a rare sight here
 in the city. I wasn't sure they would turn out as well as they did in the photos.



I edited my photo with Pixlr Express and played around with various overlays.
 I liked this one adding a nebula to the background. It fits so well, that one could
almost believe this was the actual photograph, instead of an altered photo.

ATC Cards for Sept - Vintage School Days

The ATC groups challenge this month is Vintage School Days or Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes. I chose vintage school days. At my last guild meeting, I won the fat quarter exchange. The theme was "Back to School".  All the fabrics, but one, go together. The one that is mismatched is vintage school days! It was perfect to use for my ATC cards.

Vintage School Days fabric

I made up my 16 cards, with only a few duplicates, thanks to the material. I fused the fabric onto a 140lb mixed-media paper. I like the different school scenes with the children, mixed with writing from school books. After cutting the scenes out, I added some of the writing to be sure all cards had both a scene and writing. Then I used sepia watercolor paint to darken the edges to give them an aged look.

The various ATC cards created out of the fabric. (I had four duplicates that are not shown) The last photo shows the back of the ATC cards. We also had a sand dollar challenge. One of the members gave everyone one or two sand dollars at the August get together to decorate. Unfortunately, I did not get mine done, as I've been sick the last couple of weeks. I'm not even making the meeting tonight. My DH took my cards over for me. 

Zen Doodle: Tons of Tangles

Whoo-hoo!!! It's out! The book from F&W Media (North Light Books) that accepted 4 of my Zentangle designs for publication is out!!  (See post dated March 13, 2013).  I received an email from F&W Media today that the book is being listed for pre-orders.  The book can be pre-ordered at the North-Light website. It's on sale for 25% off right now. I'm not sure how long this sale will last.

Cover of the book.

I can't wait to receive my copy of the book!! They said it should be here by the end of September!! Whoo-hoo!!  (Am I allowed to toot my own horn??).