First Zentangle Card

The criteria for the June swap at Paper Wishes is to make a card with only one layer, minimal embellishments, only two colors and at least two stamps.  I was stumped at first and then I decided this would be a perfect opportunity to practice Tangling.  What I came up with is really a hybrid, since it's not entirely hand drawn.  I did, after all, need to use stamps.

All of the plants and the greeting are stamped.  Everything else is drawn.  I used my 15 Butterflies and Dragonflies and my 15 Lovely Labels templates to draw the butterfly and label outlines.   I definitely need to work on my shading technique, but I do like the way the butterfly pops off the card, so I must’ve done something right. This was a really fun card to make, but was also very time consuming.

Zentangle

Huh?  What’s that?  It’s doodling on steroids, that’s what it is, and I think I'm hooked.  I saw some Zentangles on a Paper Wishes webisode a while back and the technique looked like fun, so I bought a book on it called Totally Tangled.  After reading the first couple of pages and looking at some examples, I could hardly wait to give it a try.  Typically, you’d start out with black and white, but not wanting to be typical, I went straight to coloring mine with Copic markers.

This is the first one I’ve finished and it’s based on one of the designs in the book.  I have another half done one on my desk that’s black and white and will probably stay that way.  Oh, and there are a few more that I did while sitting through one of our ever-so-interesting staff meetings last week, but they were just for practice and are on lined paper, so they don’t count.

It’s really much easier to do than it looks.  My main challenge is my lousy eyesight.  I drew most of this with my nose about six inches from the paper.  That makes for a very stiff neck!  I guess it’s time for some new glasses.