Aries, I am!

As an Aries, I was quite excited when Ben Kwok posted a ram as the weekly template in Ornation Creation.  With a zodiac themed greeting card in mind, I initially tried colouring it in shades of reds and orange but for some reason, it just did not look right.  I started again.  It was a dull day and the light was poor.  I was half way through patterning on the head when I noticed I was using a sepia coloured fineliner instead of the black that I had intended.  I decide to go with the flow and use a brown colour scheme.

I wanted the ram to look woolly and organic and chose tangle patterns that reminded me of wool and curls.  ‘Knyt’, ‘Sand Swirls’ an ‘Hypnotic’ were all new to me but I found some very useful video tutorials on Youtube.

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More Tangling with Templates

I’m totally hooked!  Every Monday I can’t wait for Ben Kwok to post a new template in his Facebook group, ‘Ornation Creation‘.  I also love viewing everyone else’s work and it is incredible how different the same template becomes in other people’s hands.  Here are a few of the templates that I have completed recently.  All of these images are available as greeting cards from my new store, Tabby Tangles.

There are no mistakes in Zentangle

It is said that there are no mistakes in Zentangle –  a comforting assertion but one that I found to not exactly be true when last week I attempted the weekly template from Ben Kwok’s OrnationCreation.  The maneki neko (lucky cat) refused to be lucky for me and I kept making mistakes – glaringly obvious ones (block patterns out of sequence being the most frequent).  I eventually completed on my fifth attempt, but am still not sure whether I like it or not.  I think my judgement may be somewhat soured by the battle I had just to complete it.  Hoping for greater success this week.

Meanwhile, with Ben’s kind permission, I have sent up a new card store at Greeting Card Universe, where you can find all of these designs.  I will be splitting any proceeds between a number of different Stroke charities in recognition of how Zentangle has helped me on my long road to relative recovery.

Zentangles within a shape

Tangles within a scottie sihouettes

Another approach to Zentangle is to add tangles within a simple, easily identifiable shape.  Choose a subject with a distinctive silhouette, or use a stencil.  For this particular Zentangle, I hand drew a Scottie dog (you can’t get much more distinctive than that), then pencilled in the ‘threads’ which create the different sections, then using my black pen, added a pattern unique to each section.

These shape Zentangles look particularl effective mounted onto a coloured greeting card. Think of the holidays that are coming up – you could tangle within hearts, Easter eggs, etc – the only limit is your imagination.