Lucky clover

The challenge of 'Square One: Pure Zentangle' was to use the pattern Crescent Moon this week.  My Crescent  Moon turned out to be a four leaves clover ... for luck !  So here my wishes for 2015: luck and hapiness to all of you in 2015.

My next tile with crescent moon, I made on gray paper because I wanted to use some white in it. May be because of a bit of snow in my mind I think ?  And there it is: today a few centimeters of snow - may be tomorrow just enough for the childer to play in.

During the year I made some other flowers, and I'll post them here together with my lycky clover.  The first down here is my napkin-flower ('servietbloem') .  I made it in the summer after a barbecue we had with some friends.  The hostess put some very nice napkins on the table with a beautiful pattern.  I tangled it immediately at home, and made this nice flower with it. It's also made on gray paper.

The tile here was the first I made on black paper.  Not that easy with the white gel pens I have.  I should look for some better ones soon !  I tangled the flowers of my eyeglasses case, during a a coffee break while doing some shopping a while ago.  For the background on the tile, I was inspired by the wall paper of the cafe.

Keep it simple with a wish - challenge #198

This weeks Diva Challenge #198 is 'to keep it simple, stupid' (KISS).  What is simple to me ? A simple pattern, lot's of white space on the tile.  Not much thinking while drawing, but still enough contrast and a nice border.
Just as in life: I wish you some simple things, white space to fill in as you pleace and sometimes a bit of contrast and going outside the border as the finishing touch.

I used a simplifyed version of fricle for the border, and Indy-Rella in the middle.  A bit of shadow, and that' it. Simple and nice looking !

Christmas thoughts in Gneiss

My tile for the Square One zentangle group of the past week: focus on Gneiss.  I have put Chainging next to it and some baubles.  Yes, christmas is already in my mind.

And in the same line, I made a christmas card for my collegue who gives me each year a card with some nice wishes for me and my family and some little presents for the children with christmas.  So especially for him this Gneiss christmas card.

Because I like series of tree, I made another Gneiss card today, with  Holly christmas flowers and Indy-Rella next to it.

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

Flamenco girl - challenge #196

The Diva Challenge of this week (#196) has been posted by Emily Classon (http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.be/2014/12/weekly-challenge-196.html).  Her challenge is to use some dolls-inpiration to make your tile, because she is often surrounded by dolls of her little daughter.  Same at my place, you can find barbies and other dolls everywhere. As I am not a real artist, my drawings of dolls and related stuff realy aren't very succesful.  So I turned to internet and looked what I could find there: pictures of dolls, barbies, dresses, shoes, other accessories.   Than I came by a barbie flamenco dress and I thought is was just perfect to make my tile.  Quit a challenge to draw all the lace ribbons on the bottom of the dress, and I wanted to look as it is in motion.

And here is my tile.  I first draw the dress, and then I just added some strings as to give it arms and legs so it looks like the dress has an invisible doll or girl who is dancing the flamenco.

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:

Family moment

Last week I was  drawing some zentangles and the children came to sit next to me. They also wanted to make a real zentangle like I was doing on an real tile. So I gave them each one of my original tiles I bought at my CZT. I learned them some patterns and this is what they made. It was a real nice family moment all together around the table. Especially the eldest likes to learn more and more patterns so I showed her the http://tanglepatterns.com and a nice app Tanglepatterns Galery on the ipad and now sometimes she learns some patterns to me !

Cat-kin, frillee, fricle, flower-vine, eyletandribbon, agua (EO 15y)

Tipple, stars en some other patterns (AVC 10y)

And yet another banner

The Diva challenge #193 of this week is posted  by Holly Atwater, and we are challenged to use three patterns: Trio, Huggins and Xyp.  I did'nt know Trio en Xyp yet, and I particulary like Trio.  So much fun to draw !  I 'm sure I wil make some other tiles with it later on.

As I am still practicing with my banners, to get them beautifully curling, I wanted to make a banner with Xyp.  I took one of my tiles of the past weeks, and 'transformed' it into a tile with the patterns of this weeks challenge - it was a tile where I used Huggins so there I got my idea.  I also post my original tile bellow.

All the other tiles posted this week you can find on
http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.be/2014/11/weekly-challenge-193.html

My tile for this weeks challenge:

My original tile with link to the text I posted a couple of weeks ago:
http://alei-zentanglesandinspiration.blogspot.be/2014/10/banners-and-cemetery.html

Divadance in a window

For the Diva Challenge #192 of this week - published by Chris Letourneau - we were challenged to use the seton-pattern of Chris.  I wanted to create one big seton-window with a twist to Cadent.  It became a tile with different patterns in the corners of the window and a Divadance as focus in the middle of each part of the window.

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 !

A quick Betweed

Diva challenge #191: a quick Betweed ... in between intensive choral rehearsals, extremely good weather for 1 november and some concerts.

banners and cemetery

Last weekend I made another observation walk.  I decided to walk to the public cemetery, which is near to us.  It is a very old cemetery with lots of beautiful monuments.   I wanted to look around a bit, and get inspired for some new tiles.

On a lot of monuments I saw banners and garlands on the grave monuments.  Hm, quit chalanging for me  to try drawing it.  Back home, I looked also to some examples already used in tiles on the internet.  Thank you all for it !  Also the round glass window of the old church was inspiring.

A few days later, I made a nice card with some banners and circles in it.  Here it is !  And I'll try to make some other cards later on using the scetches I made that day in my scetch book.

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

Basic zentangle course and a challenge

Last saterday I followed a basic zentangle course together with Ingrid and Ulla at CZT Rita Nikolajeva in Brussels.  It was such a nice experience !  I only practice zentangle for a few months, and I wanted to know more about the philosophy, the real materials used to zentangle etc.  I surely can advice a course of Rita to you.   You can look at her website dotslinespatterns.com for different workshops she gives.

We learned some basic patterns like Tipple, Crescent Moon, Hollibough and Static and I decided to make a little series of them - just for practice .  One of my tiles is also for Laura, who set the Diva challenge #190 to use pink this week for her grandmother who passed a way a year ago of brest cancer.  As I know very little about colouring and have no special material for it, I just took a pencil of my chilren and coloured the bow of my 'cookie boxes' I put into my tile.  It reminds me of the cookie box I brought to the worskhop last week - it was on my birthday- but also because cookie boxes remind me to my own grandmother. Laura, may be your grandmother liked nice cookie boxes too !

And the pattern you can see in my last tile, is one of my daughter. She showed it to me yesterday and she calles it 'Sixties'. I give you also the steps for this pattern. May be this pattern already exists, but nevermind, at the moment we call it like this.

Yuma challenge #189

The Diva challenge of this week is to use YUMA in your tile.  So for me a challenge to learn a new pattern.  A quick look at tanglepatterns.com and I can start.  And oh yes,  on wednesday there are already many beautiful examples on the Diva site weekly-challenge-189.html so inspiration enough to make my own tile :).

On the patterns site I came also across the pattern Crescent Moon, and I used that in my tile in combination with Yuma and a little Diva Dance flower.  It did not take that long to make a nice zentangle with these patterns, and I made another one with a variation of Yuma.  I filled the space between all the lines, and I also filled the leaves.  Looks nice to me !

The third tile I publish here is a tile I made for a challenge of some weeks ago "draw a string with your eyes closed, and fill it with patterns". I didn't have time to finish is then and I added Yuma and Crescent Moon to it today.  Little shading and finished now.

circles in circles

On a lazy Saturday, I was practicing some new patterns and regarding the many beautiful and inspiring examples on the internet.  As my daughter was around, she said to me she likes to draw circels - 'it's so fascinating'.  So I asked her to draw some circels for me and she made me two drawings.  One with random circels, and the other circels-in-circels.  Very nice, now I could start to fill them with the patterns. I especially liked a new pattern I learned called Yew-dee, which is another nice variation on Bales. I used it in my two zentangles. Some other patterns I used ard Yincut, Paradox, Chill-on, Phicops, Zazzle, Queens crown, Diva dance etc. Hope you like the results too !

Rainbow challenge #188

Here is my creation for the Diva Challenge #188.  The challenge is to use some LGBT aspect in your tile - as to support the National Coming Out Day on October 11th.

So.... I looked up what LGBT means, and I learned a lot ! Thank you Laura for this challenge.  It was a nice thing to learn all about LGBT movement, diversity, rainbow, the colours used, the number of stripes etc.

I hope you also can appreciate my zentangle and the diversity of patterns I used in and around the rainbow.

zentangled friendship bracelets

My two girls are fond of friendship bracelets.  Last year, it was mostly the eldest who made a lot of bracelets in cotton tread - loom bands were not yet known in Belgium then :(.  She already used all the books of the library with examples (even more than once !), and made also many bracelets using internet video's and schema's.  They are endless, just like zentangles.  So for her birthday, I decided to make a Zentangle card with most of the patterns she used in her bracelets.  Nice surprise for her !

This summer the loom bands mania started also here so now the girls make mostly loom band bracelets using internet video's. Bit I did not yet zentangle them.  May be next summer :)

Birthday card with zentangled bracelet patterns.

One of the patterns I like very much so I give it here seperately.  Later on I will make a pattern of it and publish it also.  I'll let you know !

Wall paper, curtains and Ahh...

In June we were invited by our neighbor girl on her school to visit the exposition of thesis they made to finalize their high school.  She followed an art education, and we were interested in seeing all the things the students made.  In one of the exposition rooms they used a piece of wallpaper as decoration, and I found it so beautiful for a new zentangle.  I took a picture of it and put in my 'zentangle inspiration' album.  (I also took some other pictures, but not worked out in a zentangle yet).

And last week I passed a neigbors house (other neighbors) while fetching some bread at the bakery, and had a good look to their curtains.  Yes, today was the day I  would take a picture of it to make a nice zentangle card of it.  I already saw it many times, but never took the time to stand still and had a good look. So now I did ! Mindfulness you know :)

In the mean time, I got to know the pattern Ahh - as I am learning the official list of zentangle patterns - and Ahh... in a sudden I saw these two things were just a variation on Ahh.  Back at home I made my cards, and I publish them now together.

Here you can see wat I made of it, and I post the original pictures also. I hope it can be an inspiration to you too!

(creation date 2/10/2014)

(creation date 29/6/2014)

And here the pictures (yes that's me in the background)

Challenge #186 Leaves and light in BXL Parc

Well well, the Diva challenge of this week suites perfectly with the sketch I made last week in the parc of Brussels.  The mission is to use leaves in your tile this week.

Last week on one of the last really sunny days in september, I had my lunch in the parc, which is nearby my work.  I set there, enjoyed the sun and looked around.  Nothing special to draw... no need to for a nice zentangle or ZIA.  I looked again, and yes, wondered that there were already so many leaves on the ground.  Autumn is comming fast.  I made a sketch of it, sitting on the gras, just in front of a lantern.  Hm... that suites also in my drawing.  Leaves and light in Autumn.

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