Tangling the month away

I have been keeping up fairly well with my Art Every Day commitment, even if I don't post about it everyday.

Check out all the fun everyday this month at Creative Every Day

Some days it is sewing for 15 minutes, some days it is half a zentangle piece, some days it is more... but it IS happening!  The past few days it has taken the form of working on an entry for this week's zentangle challenge over at The Diva. She also has a fabulous giveaway going on until Nov 30th so be sure to check that out for all sorts of tangling goodies. I was really intrigued by this weeks' challenge which is to use three different geometric shapes as a string to fill in with new-to-you patterns. I had already been trying to incorporate at least one new tangle pattern into every piece and I am always stuck for string inspiration when starting a new work so it seemed perfect. It was harder than I thought! I guess there are reasons I gravitate toward certain tangles (I like the way they come out when I do them) and away from others (my results with them are horrible!) I was also having a couple of off days, even things that work pretty well usually were not coming out well. So here is my entry for the challenge, it is also Art-Every-Day-Month #15.

I like certain things about it... its regularity, its ballance, but it seems pretty constrained and the 'string' is still VERY obvious. There is no overlap in the pattern areas... for all of it's order and neatness, it is a little bland.  All the tangles are new to me, learned for this challenge: waves, claws, scrawlz, quiltz (my version), petunia, verdigogh. I did resort to using an aid to get nice circles since it was a big element. I hadn't been happy with my close-but-no-cigar attempts on other tiles. I do like some parts of the other attempts, AEDM13 and 14 respectively. New tangles include: knit, propell, floatfest, oke, whirlz (LOVE this one!), pokeroot, phud, verdigogh, misst, waves, flez, claws, petunia (can't you tell I've been visiting Helena's flickr stream!) and Fricle.

See, lumpy circles, odd shapes, wavy lines that are supposed to be straight... just 'off' for me. I almost think it would be better to do the shapes 'wonky' on purpose and not try to get them super regular and miss. I think I will try that next because this type of string is sort of an interesting challenge.



The final piece was one done on Friday and Saturday (previous to the posting of the new week's challenge) and inspired by the cave formations I saw on a field trip with my middle son on Friday morning. Three of those patterns are new to me and I am not even sure if two of them are patterns I saw somewhere, or something that morphed into being from my own head (the far left filler and the filler in the left hand 'drip'). I guess the left hand drip is sort of 'black pearls' in a grid and the other may be sort of a combination of archer and flukes. The others moving to the right are Sanibelle, marbles, tripoli and echoism. The other at the top left I really like and use all the time, but I can't recall the name right now. I suppose I should take the trouble to find out!

So that is what I am up to so far this week. The rest of the week will be devoted to getting ready for the holiday week coming up here in the US... and tangling and sewing when I get the chance of course!