Oxford towers and Welsh landscapes

Before we drove to our holliday cottage in Wales (July 2015), we visited Oxford for two days.  What a marvelous city ! Colleges, Churches, towers all over. Everywhere beautiful buildings and we could take a pause in the meadows and near the river. Yes we had some nice sunny weather there.

I made this tile of it to remember our visit.

Once in Wales, I made some other nice zentangles in my holliday sketch book, I post them also here.

The frontpage of my sketch book

The Coast and Coast path of North Wales, after a long walk.

Welsh stones and hollibaugh

Clouds and sun above the sea in North Wales

Welsh beach stones

I collected some nice stones on the beaches in North Wales when we spended our hollidays there because I wanted to zentangle them.  It is not that easy than working on paper, but it gives a nice result. I use my special Posca pens for it.

Here my first zentangled stone.  I tried different patterns, and also used some white to give it some 'shadow'.

The next one was a gift to my sister, who passed their hollidays in the cottage next door.  It was really nice to spend our hollidays with their family ! Our children enjoied it a lot.  Here I wanted to create some circular patterns on one side , and on the back side I searched for a pattern that reflected the Snowdon they mounted on.

The last one I zentangled was a gift to the owners of the cottage.  It was a pitty we didn't see the lady anymore, because whe left so early.  But I left my stone on the window sill of the living room in the cottage.

At home, I'm going to do some other stones I collected.  I'll post them later on as soon as they are finished.

Baby Q

Last week a new baby elephant was born in Planckendael, with the name baby Q for now.  That reminded me of a drawing in my sketchbook I made last year in the elephant Temple of the Zoo in Antwerp. It's a kind of Oriental /Egyption inspired building for the elephants. I wanted to make a zentangle of it, but I never took the time to really do it.  So, with the new born baby I finaly wanted to create my tile.

I used the new pattern Fat Man in my tile.  Fat Man is a pattern of my own and based on the drawings and signs around the elephant temple.  You can see some pictures and the step-out for the pattern down here.

Fat Man pattern:

Pictures of the Elephant Temple:

Easter Eggs

We celebrated Easter yesterday, and we were so happy to see the good weather for the first time in weeks ! A bit to cold, but a lot of sunshine.

I zentangled some easter eggs.  I must admit it is a lot more difficult than tangling on paper.  But still a nice result.  I used the black and white Posca pens I bought a while ago.

And my teacups I zentangled with these pens ? Hm... it was not a good idea to put them in the dishwasher, so most of the tangles are already vanished.  I 'll start again and wash the cups by hand then :(. Or I'll choose some other objects to tangle on.

Arukas for the Diva challenge #197

This week's challenge #197 is to use Arukas in your tile.  It was a new pattern for me, so first some practice.  I could go for it quietly on sunday afternoon.  The youngest stays at my family for one night and the oldest is studying, so... time for me to tangle !
Here is my tile in which I combined Arukas with Indy-Rella (Square One 's challenge of this week) and Tipple and hmm... I like the result.  I hope you too.

At the same time, I'm working on some christmas project, or better New Years project but I don't want to post any of it yet.  Must be a surprise for Januari 1st.  If I don't post that much on my blog you know why.  So... some patience !

Assunta bees

Two tiles with Assunta for the challenge of the past week of the facebook group Square One.  I especially like the first one.  Open space and the patterns Assunta and Flux nicely next to each other.  To me it are just little bees or some other flying insects.

In this one I used Assunta with C-scape and some form of Yincut

Momorial flowers and ING

Since October and November in Belgium was all about momorials and remembering WWI, it was a lot in my head too.  Especially because we gave two momorial concerts one in the beginning of November, and one at the end.  Two different locations and also two different choral groups and programs to perform but twice momorial songs with some memorial flowers. Everyone had to put a  little poppy on there (black) clothes, to have a nice homogeneaus group on stage. 

On the last concert we had to wait about tree hours (!) before we could perform, and fortunately I had  my scetch book with me.  I started a zentangle with some simple poppies and some strings. Then I saw the challenge on the facebook group ' Square One: Purely Zentange' to use ING and shading this week.  I took my momorial tile again to finish and ING just fits into it.  Don't you think so ?

And here our memorial poppy

Happy thoughts

I can not always go out during my lunch pause now, because of the changing weather.  So, some days I  just stay in my office - especially the rainy days.  What does one do then ? Reading, searching on the internet, looking for nice patterns, trying patterns in my sketch book etc.  One day, I wanted to change my desktop background, because it was a bit boring.  I looked at the possible backgrounds on my PC and found just a nice one that made me smile immediately.  Yes, it wil be this ! I also saw a zentangle in it.  I had a lot of ideas and happy thoughts looking at it. Always when I looked at it, I saw something else.  Very amusing.

And during lunch pauze some days later, I made this Zentangle Inspired Art card.  The little worms in the card reflect my happy thoughts. It hangs in my office now, to remind me on having a happy thought each day.

My desktop background picture:

Chainging in Square One

I am a member now of the Square One Purely Zentangle group on Facebook.  I realy like the intention of that group.  Only 'basic' zentangles are to be posted. Meaning: 3,5"x3,5" white tile, only black pen and pencil for shadow (and strings of course).  So back to basics.  It's a good way to focus on the patterns  itself and to see what you really can do on a tile of the original format.  People are making the most beautiful zentangles !  And it's a real inspiration source to me.

Here are my tiles with the patterns Chainging and Punzel, the focus for this week.
My best tile is here: Punzel, Flux and Tipple.  In Spring, I made a sketch of a huge plant near the swimming pool of De Nekker, but I did not yet know any patterns to make of nice zentangle of it.  And now, after learning Punzel and Flux I could transform my sketch in a nice tile !

And here are my earlier tiles of this week, where I still had to learn the pattern.
Tile with Chainging and Betweed (and surely a better one than I posted last week for the Diva Challenge of Betweed)

Tile with Punzel and Ennies:

And ... thank you all for all comments I already received on my blog posts.  It's always nice to read and it keeps me going !

Zentangled earrings

My daughter has always such creative ideas. The loombands mania is a bit less now, so she wanted to do somerhing else. She likes to make objects and juwerly with schrinking paper for instance. And she tried to use zentangle patterns to create them. She made some zentangled earrings and I think they are fabulous ! She used the patterns bales, featherfall, kaleido, cadans, nzeppel and some patterns of herselves: sixties, auraleaves ... May be one day she starts a webshop with her creations. 

And here an example of the earrings before schrinking

Mooka II series

And finally, I finished this weekend the series of Mooka that I started during our holidays.  I love the Mooka that much, and I wanted to make a series of it.  So during our holidays, I made different sketches of it, but never had the time to work them out properly.  So this weekend, I finially finished the last ones.  Some of them look like Mooka Family's, some others are just nice looking Mooka's.


Mooka with Sandwirl, Groovy and Knightsbridge

Mooka with patterns flutter, undling, squid, cadans

Mooka in stones

Mooka Yin/yang

Mooka around Pavonia

Birth and Mooka Family

In the period I was trying out the pattern Mooka, my niece gave birth to a little baby girl.  I wanted to send her a handmade birth card, since I was full of drawing tangles.  The Mooka was just perfect to make a nice card of it.  I call it my little Mooka Family with three mooka-strings in it.  Just enough for a new family.  And the pregnant belly just peeps out of the border on the right...

(creation date 26/6/2014)

A star ING for zentangle challenge #184

I just could'nt stop with challenge #184 of "I am the diva" http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.be.  So I made another one: a star ING.  In the beginning I found it not so succefull with Puff-O at the border, but then I added Roel to the tile. And then the feeling...yes this is it ! I let you share my joy of creating a nice tile.

Zentangle challenge #184

I'm not yet that familiar with the 'zentangle-world' and so for the first time I use a zentangle challenge.  Challenge #184 of ' I am the Diva ' gives us the pattern ING to work with.

After a few trials in my scetchbook here's is my result.  I used ING and Quib in my tile.  My housemates love it. Hmm, maybe I look also to next weeks challenge...

Breathe

One of my favorite zentangles I made for Jorinde, my physiotherapist.  A while ago, I sufferd from chronic hyperventilation and I went to a physiotherapist for a few months.  And she learned me to breathe again.  There was one excercice I had to repeat and repeat over and over again, and it inspired me to make a zentangle of it.  Sitting on a chair... breath in - move forward, breath out and relax - move backwards.  And after two months, I felt much better ! Thank you Jorinde.  I put it on my blog, so I should never forget how to breathe in an easy, relaxed way.

This is what I made of it, and I gave the tile to Jorinde on my last session.