Zendala 94!!! and Day 12 of my challenge!

Erin over at The Bright Owl took some time of from posting her weekly Zendala dares and I missed it. I did go back and complete some of the past ones but something about working on a current challenge always motivates me!
I was really excited the other day to see a new one pop up! Wooohoo!
As soon as I saw the template I imagined flower baskets. Then I read further and her theme was HAPPY. Spring makes me happy,and while it's a bit of a deviation from my usual approach to these, I have to say I'm really pretty pleased with the results.

I actually did most of it yesterday but I finished it this morning so it's going to count as my Day 12 project for MY 30 day creative challenge. (This way hopefully I can be almost a day ahead and get these posted for you a little earlier than I have been.)

If you are new here, you've found us on day 12 of a 30 day creative challenge. You are still more than welcome to join in! I really hope you do!

You can find the details here and today's art prompt is.. Growth. 

However you want to interpret that... I actually can't wait to see!

Here's today's linkey thing!

Something totally new and a little color

Ok... it's a lot of color! The Bright Owl challenge was to use paper not normally used to zentangle on for the 13th project, and I had this cute pink dotted scrapbook paper. Holy hell is it hard to shade on texture!
The pink is actually prettier than it shows in this picture, not sure why it has that purple-ish cast, but I like it.
I'm a huge fan of the color pink though..
Here it is.

Then for my project this weekend that is something different, I"m working on a mask.

Preshading...

Some shading and a little more detail. It's not done.. I struggled with not being able to use really fine point. I think I need some ultrafine sharpies. Shading on this was a DREAM though. I love it.
Now if only the darn puppy hadn't eaten my favorite eraser. :(

It's a good thing she's cute right? I think she's sorry. :) I'll forgive her.

Some new tangles...

This is one of Erin's (from The Bright Owl) older challenges. This was number 8 and the challenge was to use tangles starting with
L
O
V
E

Well.. I realized i didn't know many tangles that started with some of those letters. So time to try some new ones!

For L: Laced
For O: Ornamato (A favorite ... I think it looks like jewelry but I never use it)
For V: This was my biggest struggle. I couldn't find anything I felt "fit" with these other tangles that started with V. Finally, I went with a new one, Verdigogh and I really like it, but I'm not sure I love it on here. I'm going to make it a goal to use it a few times in the next few weeks to really get a feel for it.
For E: Another one I wasn't sure what to use, but I found embellish and it looks like it was made to go with Laced!

This was fun, I need to do a few more with only a handful of tangles, they come together so fast and I'm almost always happy with them.
(My shading could be better... but next time)

Something fun I posted on my instagram but didn't post on here til today. I got a new sketchbook the other day, and I put this on the cover. It's not really a tangle, but it works for me. I sometimes need the reminder.

In case anyone is interested, I really like the new sketchbook. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to use it for sketching in or for cataloging tangles... mostly I just hold it and look at the perfectly crisp and blank pages. I'm such a nerd. :D

Here's the link if you want to check it out for yourself. 

I do love a challenge!

Ok, so I am excited to make one blog post with not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4, yes FOUR different challenges completed. I suppose I could have combined a couple but that never occurred to me until I was typing this JUST NOW.
Hmm. Note to self for next time.

All but the last of these are in my small sketchbook, so at largest 4x6.

I'm going to post the pages that I got the challenge/dare from for you in case you want to join in and play along.

The first one is my first for the Wacky Zentangle Weekly challenge. It's the first time I've participated in one of these and it was a lot of fun. My style is a little looser, I just kind of played with it. The challenge was to tangle Easter Eggs. This year I don't think we are going to do real eggs, (the kids are older, C is in Germany until the day before, it's just weird this year and I'm not really big on celebrating Easter anyhow) so instead I made a card that I will send to a friend of mine for Easter. I think it turned out cute and was fun to do, and that's the goal anyway right?

This next one is The Diva's weekly dare #162. She calls it String Theory- Initial String, and has you use your initials for your string. BRILLIANT! I am always having a hard time coming up with strings. 

Moving right along... 

This is the weekly "Tackle it Tuesday" that's posted over at Artful Creations. 

This one was to use on "G" tangles, I used:

Girdy

Geos

Grid

Gingham

And my last one is from the Bright Owl's Zendala Dare.

She isn't currently posting new challenges, but I came in at the end so I've simply gone back, checked them all out and am slowly working my way through them all. There are close to 100, so that should keep me busy for a while. This is #6 and I've had it ALMOST done for weeks, but just finally finished it. 

This one is larger, probably 6" in diameter. There's a mistake in there that I see every time I look at it so I may redo it another time... or you know, just let it go (cue Disney music here) and remind myself that perfection isn't a virtue. :)

Time to break out some of those new pens

A while back I bought a ton of new pens,and then quickly found that I didn't quite need them yet. Well, I certainly could have used them at any time, but I liked them being brand new and looking at them untouched (I'm the same way with sneakers. I have 3 pair of converse just WAITING to be painted ) so I've had them in my little kit untouched. I didn't think today would be any different.

Anyway, I  knew it was time for a new project and decided to try one with some bolder patterns. I find that much of my work has a very "light" touch to it, but I do love bold and darker patterns. I picked Diva Dare #3 and here was my result. While working on this, I had 3 of my pens go "into retirement" which means I don't throw them out, they get tagged with a piece of blue painters tape and thrown in a baggie for emergencies and one run out of ink completely. It doesn't even have that much solid in it... so I'm going to say it was just time.

.

The shading in the center isn't as clear in the photo as I'd like, but otherwise I'm happy with it and it did make me push myself a little. The new pens were as fantastic as I knew they'd be.

Keeping them simple

These have a lot of white space and something about them seems really peaceful and yet fun to me.
Both of these come from Erin over at The Bright Owl and are past challenges, she's not posting any new ones right now and since I came in towards the end I have a ton to catch up on.

This is the 9th.

And this is #91

I'm noticing I really love dots.

Not overthinking this one

Here's one I just kind of tossed down on paper super quick.  It doesn't really have shading, it doesn't have a lot of "focus" I just kind of put pen to paper and let it go where it went.
I kind of want to add to it with my watercolor pencils but I don't know if I will or not.
Part of my deal with myself was that I not stress over perfection and just create, so I'm going to leave it and go on to the next project.

Falling behind!

I'm behind on my uploads, not necessarily my creations. So without a lot of chatter... I'm going to post a few at once and then I'll get back to regular posting.

This is one that was originally for Dare #1.
It's called Simplicity and this was what came to mind when I thought of that, for multiple reasons. I really love the way it turned out, the picture doesn't do this one justice. It's also small and in sketchbook size.

The next couple are very freeform from my sketchbook as well and seem really messy to me but I like them anyway. 

This is not a tangle, but when I realized I'd accidentally uploaded a picture of her here I decided to leave the amazing cuteness here for you to enjoy as well. 

My lines aren't straight in my paradoxes here, not even a little, but you know, it's ok. This is one of the Zendala Dare templates that I like to keep handy for practice and to keep me busy. Of course now that I look at it and like it, I'll never be able to replicate the wavy paradoxes again. 

I have more that I haven't posted, I'll get those up later.

Zendala Dare #93 - Snowflake Surprise

Snow.

How fitting... since we have, well.. more snow, again. Still. Always. LOL Well not quite always but it certainly feels that way this year!

I actually love snowflakes, not real ones...but the delicate composition, the symmetry.. blues and silvers.

When Erin over at The Bright Owl (see the link on the side) posted the snowflake surprise dare I was thrilled, especially because I had JUST received my mutlticolored pens (with blue!) in my earth tone set and was dying to try them out. I used the darker blue and it's subtle.. I like it. If I try another I'm going to try with the lighter and see what I get!

Now, the pens are also thicker than my preferred pen size at 05,so it's not as delicate as it might have been otherwise, but I really like the subtlety of the blue and after I accented it with my blue watercolor pens here's what I ended up with!

Bright Owl Dare- #92 Must use Paradox

Paradox is one of the first tangles I ever learned.. and its' one I really enjoy but actually find challenging.
Instead of printing this one out, I copied it into my sketchbook, no rulers, no straight edges, so I expect that it will have a "softer" feel than many.
(This is a terrible picture but since it was just my "before" I didn't bother to mess with it too much.

I'm not a fan of the paper in this new sketchbook.. so I may need a new one and this one can go to the kids but I'll keep it anyway. I think I'd have liked the overall final product if my pencil hadn't been so smeary on the paper. Quality tools matter!

Parts of this came together so easily but others I really struggled with. My original plan was to use Paradox in the star shapes and when I tried it, it looked... well, just wrong. So that turned into something else then I realized I hadn't used it and tried something different. I think I like it but it's not my favorite, I'll try some of these pieces again in the future though!

Not too bad for a lunchtime project right?