Diva Challenge 387 & A New Celtic Knot!

Hello everyone! Welcome to The Tireless Tangler! There is a whole lot happening so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the fun! It’s good to get back in the swing of things! I’ve been really busy behind the scenes here on my WordPress site. I have many plans and I expect there will be growing pains but I am excited about the possibilities in the coming year!

March 17th is St. Patrick’s day and this is the perfect time to share some new Celtic Knot Tutorials. I’ve been hoarding some knot designs and I have some good ones for you this month. Below is a YouTube link for this week’s tutorial.

First though, let’s stop and enjoy this week’s diva challenge! The Diva, Laura Harms, challenges us to use CZT, Holly Atwater’s intriguing Tangle, HaWy. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this Tangle. It looks high focus but it truly isn’t. It’s all about recognizing the star shape and working from there. I also like how it can look like 3D blocks or something entirely different depending on how you envision it. Thanks Holly for deconstructing this amazing pattern!

Here are 2 tiles that are very different.

This pretty Celtic knot represents sisterhood which is a perfect fit for Women’s History month. Be sure to subscribe to my channel or check back next Friday for a wonderful lucky Shamrock knot with hearts woven into the leaves!

Diva Challenge 386

Hi everyone! Welcome to The Tireless Tangler! Life is a Sydney Pollock painting. Splat! Anyway, this week’s challenge by the Diva, Laura Harms, was to finish a tile that was already started but, for whatever reason, was not finished. Since I have multiple boxes filled with started but unfinished tiles, you’d think this challenge would be perfect for me. And it is…but not a single tile leaped from my boxes begging to be finished. Not one called “pick me! Pick me!” To make my life easier! So I’ve gone around and around and ended up with 2 I finished. I should be pleased but I was just happy to make a decision and finish! So, here are my 2 tiles!

I also completed my “it’s a string thing” challenge #280 and forgot to send it in! Here’s that tile as well.

I’m preparing now for my March celtic knot videos! You’ll love them and I can’t wait to show you the Shamrock knot we will be doing in 2 weeks!

Diva Challenge 385 💜

Hi everyone and welcome to The Tireless Tangler! My personal life has continued to keep me focused elsewhere but thankfully I’ve been creating a lot! You might have noticed this website looks different and I’m pretty pleased with the new banner! But before all else, I want to thank once again, digital artist and wonderful friend Christel Foncke for allowing me the use of this lovely art over the last year on this site and all my other social media profiles. It gave me so much confidence to have this site looking great! Thank you so much Christel!

So for my first post in awhile, here is Diva Challenge 385 dedicated to Valentine’s Day. The Diva challenged us to choose something from the day to be mindful of while tangling. I love the lace paper hearts and was working on a Ratoon tile for a tutorial video this week. (Ratoon is one of the newest tangles to come out of Zentangle ® HQ). I was adding auras strangely reminiscent of lace and decided to use the tile for the pearls and the lacy look.

The diva challenge a week or 2 ago was to use the Tangle Ratoon. I intended to do a tutorial right away because I saw the celtic knot potential in this lovely Tangle. I am about a week late but here is the art from the video followed by the video link. As always, I’d love your feedback!

Zentangle ® Project Pack 04 and Diva Challenge 378

Hi everyone! I’m still running behind with my challenges, but for some reason this week, I’m driven! I’ve even been back on Facebook for the first time in months! I don’t know why but I’ve gone from no desire at all to create, to a rabid fanatical! LOL!!!

I’ve been truly enjoying the new Project Pack 04 from Zentangle HQ for the “12 days of Zentangle” this month. In years past, the work was so intimidating I wasn’t able to keep up the pace, but the project this year is actually so zenful and relaxing that I’ve been checking my email for the next lesson everyday often and eagerly! I was lucky enough to get my project pack while I was at CZT32 training in October and it is something brand new and awesome! I want to tell you though, you don’t need the project pack to follow along with the lessons. Those are freely given and can be found on YouTube or you can watch them right here! Even if you use the videos to make regular tiles, it is worth working through them. Having fun, relaxing while doing the lessons with Rick, Maria, Martha and Molly is a real gift. They are just as wonderful in person as they are on the videos! Give it a try! Project Pack 04 is something brand new and will be a great teaching tool for CZTs but also can be made into a fun tangle game when you meet up with other tanglers. The paper is Opus tile size, original tile paper, with a hole in the middle for a little spinner. Each day for 12 days, we are filling in a pie piece (don’t ask why I’m thinking pie!) with simple original tangles. It is SO relaxing and fun. Relaxing in the holiday season is a gift as well!

Here are my day one and day two pictures. In the preparation video we did the watercolor portion. Of course, I went a bit nuts with mine but I gotta do me!

Here are the first 3 videos in order with the preparation day video first, followed by day one and day two. I hope you enjoy them as much as I am!

Preparation Day

Day One

Day Two

Last but certainly not least is Diva Challenge 378! This is a UMT or “use my tangle” week and we are exploring a lovely border style tangle by CZT Antonine Koval. It’s named 123 O’Leary. It’s very easy to understand but for me I needed some practice before I finally got it to flow well. You can find Antonine’s step out here. Here’s my tile.

Diva Challenge 368 “Straight Lines”

I’m so glad to have the Diva’s challenges back! In her 368th challenge, Laura Harms has challenged us to use only straight lines in our tiles this week. Although straight is tough for me, I threw in some MicroTangling (from the lesson of the same name by Eni Oken), Baton, and some Shattuck with a bit of Knightsbridge for embellishment and called it done. I have a real appreciation for simple and basic right now so this was great for me. Although, it’s not fancy, I enjoyed the process very much and was pleased as much with the stress relief as with the tile itself. While sitting in the chemo chair today my blood pressure started at 183/90…not good at all, but when finished, after tangling the hours away it lowered itself to 132/85. Perhaps not scientific, but proof enough for me that tangling is great for the body, mind and soul! Here’s my tile!

Diva Challenge 367 “N’Zeppel”

Welcome back everyone! This week the Diva, Laura Harms, challenged us to use the Tangle “N’Zeppel” either as a monotangle, or together with others. Zen is the goal here and that fit my week perfectly, as I needed some! I decided to use Renaissance colors, Pigma Micron 01 in brown and black, shading with a pencil and N02 Copic Marker.

Consider me Zenned! Here’s my tile! Come back this week for the It’s a String Thing” challenge 260! Adele Bruno is celebrating 5 years of challenges!

Diva Challenge 365: The Diva’s Return

Hello everyone! Welcome back to The Tireless Tangler! The last 2 weeks have been crazy busy with school starting and preparations for my trip to CZT32. My little one has managed to get through the last week with no problems, so (deep breath) I hope things will even out now (knock on wood!).

Almost by accident this week, I happened to catch that the Diva was back online and had finally issued a new challenge! This was great news, as I have truly missed the Diva Challenges and felt this summer was just lacking something special. Welcome back Laura! You have been sorely missed this summer! Dealing with anxiety and all it’s many forms in life is really hard! Dealing with these things and trying to create with purpose and on a schedule is daunting. It is so difficult to be a creator in any artistic area, but dealing with anxiety and depression while being forced to produce artistically brings a completely different set of problems. What happens to the schedule when the artist is empty inside? I will tell you, it’s a lot of nothing! So, I offer the Diva some encouragement and hope that she is able to start off and keep it up! While I do that, I hope this challenge will put my own emptiness to rest and start my creativity flowing again. Thank you Laura, for your weekly challenges that go back for years! I am in awe!

This week’s challenge was to go “back to basics”. A tile, pencil in dots and border, string and black ink using Zentangle original tangles. I chose to repeat the Lesson One in my Zentangle Primer. I’ve done this lesson many times and was hoping to change the look a bit this time. Instead of doing the tangles in the order of the lesson (crescent moon, hollibaugh, florz and printemps), I switched the order up and started with printemps, then moved backwards along the list. It was a real surprise to see the difference! For fun, I added my other 3 Primer Lesson one tiles. It’s clear to me that “florz” and I have a long-standing issue that hasn’t improved with time! LOL! It’s amazing to see the difference over time!

Diva Challenge 364B

Welcome to the Tireless Tangler! It’s time again for this week’s diva challenge 365? This week’s challenge was labeled 364, same as last week. It good to know I’m not the only one that does that! So, let’s call this 364/b. This is a Monotangle week, meaning a tile using just one tangle. The diva chose Puf by Carole Ohl, a fun variation on Bales. If you’re interested in joining the Diva’s challenge, start here!

I also managed to finish my latest tutorial video on drawing Celtic Crosses! Please forgive the desk clutter! I’m trying to reorganize and things took on a life of their own! Here’s some of the art I created for the video!

I’d love to see what you guys do with this so please remember to tag me #thetirelesstangler!

Diva Challenge 364 and It’s a String Thing 244

Hey Y’all! Welcome back to the Tireless Tangler! I’m crazy late this week with everything! My son successfully (yay!!) completed 2nd grade with a stellar performance in his school musical as Derio the pig! This was his first ever performance and first speaking part and he did awesome! He has also achieved his Kung Fu green belt, and started his sparring classes this week! That boy was obsessed with his new mouthguard! I guess that’s the boy version of ballerina slippers? 😂  I was SO proud of this young man who has overcome so much and is beginning to shine! Congratulations my little man! I’m so proud of you!

During the chaos of the end of school, I’ve still been creating like a mad woman, I just haven’t had the time to write and post like I should! The other incredible thing is that my gofundme for my trip to CZT 32 has reached the halfway point! What an amazing group of people you all are! Thank you, not only for the donations but for those who couldn’t donate but still sent me messages of support! I’m energized by the knowledge that this will happen and I’m totally stoked! There will be an upcoming post on what is going on with CZT 32!

On to this week’s Diva Challenge! This week, we were challenged to “remake a classic”. Basically, take a tile from the past and do a new version. Check out the Diva’s post here!

Here is the first tile I ever uploaded onto the Zentangle Mosaic App! It was a design by Deliberately Creative’s, Stephanie Bergeron. Stephanie has an amazing set of Gem Tutorials on YouTube you should check out!

And here’s my remake for this week’s challenge! What fun to revisit your artistic journey!

Because I was late this week, here’s my tile for “It’s a String Thing” 244. This week we revisited the Zentangle ® Original Tangle AuraKnot with a simple star shaped string. I embellished this to leave an “A” stand out in honor of Adele’s name! A happy accident!

I didn’t get my Celtic Cross video ready in time but expect a new tutorial up on Tuesday (God Willing! Summer is busy!)

Diva Challenge 363 and Pattern Tutorial “Circe”

Hi everyone and welcome to the Tireless Tangler! It is time for our weekly Diva Challenge and I have a new pattern tutorial on “Circe” by Staub Korn.

This week, the Diva challenges us to “aura”. Auras are simple ways to enhance tangles by simple adding new lines inside or outside that match, which adds interest. This week I chose a ZenGem and stuck with simple lines and orbs.

I have fallen in love with the pattern Circe by Staub Korn! It’s good that I liked it so much because it took me some time to figure it out! I wanted to reproduce it so my motivation was high! Here are 2 tiles from the videos.

I used these supplies for the video:

Zentangle ® Renaissance tile with https://zentangle.com/collections/square-paper-tiles/products/square-tiles-renaissance

Pigma Micron 01 brown https://amzn.to/2rHQG8D

Crayola Super Tips water based markers https://amzn.to/2rHPTEH

Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils https://amzn.to/2Gg76d3.

Finally, my diva challenge post was quite late last week, so I wanted to share this again and let you all know how blessed I am to be a part of a community that is so encouraging and supportive! In less than one week, I’m almost halfway to my $2250.00 goal! I really believe my dream of becoming a CZT is going to come true! Each of you that donated and supported me, I am truly grateful for the validation of what I want to accomplish! You help me feel worthy! Thank you! If you would like to support me or to get more information, just click the links below!

https://www.gofundme.com/Send-me-to-CZT32