All four 3.5 in. x 5.75 in. decks andboth 2 in. x 2 in. decks are back in stock! large 3.5 in. x 5.75 in. decks small 2 in. x 2 in. decks New to the Tangle Deck FamilyTangle Deck Fragments #1 In their book, Zentangle® Primer Volume 1, Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas, the founders of Zentangle, introduced the concept of Reticula and Fragments. Reticula is another name for a grid or other structure that holds fragments. Fragments are small patterns that you draw within the individual spaces of a reticula (grid). The possibilities are exciting and endless but sometimes hard to visualize in your ..read more

Recently I posted on Facebook about my Tangled Floor Cloth Project, and many people were interested in the materials I used and the process of making the floor cloth. The story is a little long for a Facebook post, so I’ve written a blog about it. I have been intrigued by floor cloths for some time. I spend a week each summer at an Art Camp where you bring your own projects, and each year I try to bring something I have never done before. This confluence of interests and events seemed the perfect opportunity to tackle creating a floor cloth. I currently don’t have the space to work on a projec ..read more

Recently I wanted to draw a freehand labyrinth. I like the quality of a simple freehand labyrinth and had used the “connect the dot” method in the past starting with a cross in the center. I tried to recreate that version but found that I couldn’t remember exactly how I had done it before. As I was trying to figure it out I stumbled on to this variation that turns out to be very similar, but starts out a little differently. To me it resembles a tree, so I have decided to call it the Tree of Life Labyrinth. Following is the step-out to create this labyrinth on a 3½ inch tile. As you will see ..read more

Something interesting happened to me recently. I was busy drawing when an image suddenly popped into my head. It had nothing to do with what I was drawing but it demanded to be put down on paper. This is what it was… It is a simple motif that is made up of three Zs. This little guy gave me such happy feelings that I did a quick step-out and called it ThreeZee. I didn’t have time to play with ThreeZee right then so I posted it to a CZT page to ask if anyone had seen anything like it or had used the name before. It was then that a wonderful thing happened. ThreeZee inspired several CZTs to do ..read more

Inktober was started in 2009 by Jake Robinson as a way to improve inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. The idea is to make a commitment to do an ink drawing every day in the month of October and then post it online. For the last couple of years the tangling community has embraced Inktober and this year I participated using the prompts by Stephanie Jennifer on the Square One Purely Zentangle Facebook page. Inktober is over but was a great fun. I found it a good exercise to go back and look at what I accomplished during the month and I’ve made a video of my Inktober tiles to share ..read more

Did you miss me? I know my tangler’s mind hasn’t shared much so far this year but all I can say is life happens and once you get out of the habit of posting it’s hard to start up again. Anyway, here I am and I’m excited to have something brilliant to share with you. Around the middle of June this year, Pilar Pulido a CZT from Madrid, Spain contacted me. She was developing a class that was to be presented at the European CZT Gathering in September and wanted to know if I’d like to collaborate with her. The class she proposed appealed to my tangler’s mind so of course, I said yes and our trans-A ..read more

This year I’ve been participating in the 12 days of Zentangle, a series of projects presented by Rick, Maria, Molly and Martha from Zentangle HQ. They have thoughtfully provided a project pack with all the supplies needed to follow along with the YouTube videos they have posted. Project Pack 02 can be purchased from their web site, however, you can also choose to use what supplies you have on hand, which is what I decided to do. The day 7 project makes use of a pre-strung Zendala so off I went in search of my pre-strung Zendalas. Well I couldn’t find them anywhere but I did run across a patter ..read more

I’ve been wanting to share the technique of TransluZENce and this week’s Square One Purely Zentangle focus, Membranart by Tomas Padros (step-outs found here), has given me the chance to do so. TransluZENce is a cousin to TranZENding, a technique recently introduced in a Kitchen Table Tangles (KTT) video by Rick and Maria on the Zentangle Mosaic app. While TranZENding is based on drawing one tangle on top of another and then using white to highlight and graphite to shade, TransluZENce is based on drawing behind and then using graphite to make it look like you are viewing the backgroun ..read more

I recently created this tile for the Square One Purely Zentangle Facebook page. The focus tangle was haKrall (deconstructed by Holly Atwater, stepouts here) and I paired it with Stoic (Zentangle®, AKA Twile, stepouts here) and B’Twined (deconstructed by Pegi Schargel, stepouts here). This tile was a real meditation for me and it turned out to be a sort of square zendala with a maze-like feel to it. I had several people ask if I had work-in-progress photos of this tile so they could see how the tile developed. I have to admit, I was so absorbed in the zen of this tile that I did not even think ..read more

I recently asked some of my fellow CZTs to send me photos of tiles they had set aside for one reason or another and not finished . I thought it would be fun to finish the tiles and do a blog post to explain why I finished them the way I did. I was hoping to be able to give some insight into some of the roadblocks tanglers face and ways to get past them. I don’t know if I’ve achieved this but many thanks to Certified Zentangle Teachers Jessica Davies, Nancy Domnauer, Tasha Millhouse, and Anoeska Waardenburg for allowing me to give this idea a chance. It was challenging. I’ll start with thi ..read more