Apcorg Published!

Well, picture me doing the happy dance! Pattern-collections.com published my Apcorg pattern yesterday afternoon! I’m still in a bit of shock but thrilled and excited as this means it was available to the 3,000+ group members as the pattern focus yesterday.  I hope a few more people will give it a try and I’ll have new art to add to the Apcorg gallery. This is what I  hoped for the last year while I sat on the patterns (Apcorg and Apcross). I’ve always wanted to experience what other, more creative minds than mine, could do with these!

Since this this will be my offical Apcorg post, let me quickly describe how this pattern came to me. Several months after starting my Zentangle journey, I was lost in a new website for me, the Antique Pattern Catalog.org, and came across a lovely image from the lid of wooden box from the 1800’s. When I started sketching I was simply trying to render the image by hand as it was quite pretty.

This is my first sketch and fairly close to what I saw on the box top. As I was adding a few tangles around it, I wondered if I could modify it somehow to work in a tile format and like that, I began the process of deconstruction d. The pattern was deconstructed over several weeks. I was quite disappointed when I put it in grid form because the sheer number of orbs were overwhelming and too messy to work. It was during this grid exploration that the meta-pattern Apcross revealed itself. 

Apcorg is similar to the pattern, Skye, in that it can take some practice to get it even and the inner wing form can be be tough until you get the hang of it. There was a comment that it looked complicated so I  will be adding a “tips to draw” page to this post as well as a simple step out to show how to set up the border version. Apcorg is endlessly variable to match whatever other tangles you might use and a variation page will also be added to this post. My heartfelt thanks to CZT Dolly Bolen, for the wonderful mandala in the feature image! This mandala was an instant favorite of mine and Dolly was kind enough to allow it’s use for Apcorg!

Please tag me or the pattern name so I can search for art using this pattern! With your permission, I’ll add your work to the Apcorg gallery on this site.

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ZenGems: Meet Amanda Rose Rambo

About a month ago in my Facebook group Tangle It! Pattern Club, they featured an amazing artist named Amanda Rose Rambo.

Amanda Rose Rambo

She was focusing on creating faceted gems with setting patterns provided by artists within the group. Faceted gems were something I’d wanted to try for awhile so I took a chance and tried it out. I could show you my last try but no. Best to learn from the mistress of gems, the talented, Amanda Rose Rambo. With a great YouTube channel, coloring books and and tutorials, both online and in books, Amanda’s star is on the rise. Looking at her work will give you an idea of just how talented she is.

Here is Amanda’s bio and links to her YouTube channel and etsy store. If you are crazy about coloring or tangling, Amanda’s books are a great place for information and exquisite art!

“Hello to all you lovely people. My name is Amanda Rose Rambo and I am a Gem-aholic!

It has been a life long dream of mine to be an artist and to do what I love as my career. With the incredible support of my amazing husband I began doing my art full time just under 2 years ago. 

Although I am not a tangler by heart my love for art and the constant work I began doing with art again led me to tangling, when I was looking into the craze of Coloring Books for grown ups. Traditionally trained as a painter and 2 dimensional artist I fell in love with tangling for a short while and did my first Coloring Book for Adults in the Zentangle style, (Color a Creation, For the Artist Within) After that my love for making coloring books took off and I joined the craze, creating books every other month or so. After a few coloring books were made I found more than a love for creating them I started really coloring and found that Colored pencils were a really versatile medium and began getting into the art of it, not just the illustration.

 

This is my favorite! The setting is lovely and the gem amazing.

 

A few months later I found ZenGems and a new obsession was born!! I couldn’t stop, I made gems and settings and doodled like a mad woman and then began creating Coloring books just for gems! I became pretty good at them and began getting asked if I made tutorials and such. Since I love to teach and help and see others grow I thought it was a lovely niche to be in! So now that is mostly what I do, I still create my Coloring books, just finished the 3rd one in my Gemstone series, and am currently working on the fourth but everything is gem focused now! There is so much I hope to create and so much beauty that I want to show in the world.

I have created follow along tutorials for gems, all kinds of them from basic ones to faceted.
Tutorials on youtube, written ones on etsy. Color alongs and follow along sheets. This is my whole little world of gemminess and I love it!  

zengem collage Amanda Rose Rambo

Faceted gems are the new craze!

For you lovely people I have even created some step outs for how to draw your own faceted gemstones! 

• Round Diamond 
• Square Diamond 
• Triangle Diamond 

You can find me on facebook at facebook.com/vitruvianart
On Youtube at http://youtube.com/c/vitruvianart
On Etsy at etsy.com/shop/vitruvianart“

 

Amanda’s gems are amazing and I would encourage you to watch her tutorials if you are interested in learning to create these gems. I will definitely be working on my faceted the gems again soon! Whether you are into coloring or tangling, Amanda has something for you.

It’s a String Thing #192

It’s been 2 weeks since our last “It’s a String Thing” challenge from Adele Bruno at Tickledtotangle.com. I appreciated the break and I’m excited to see her pictures from Fabriano, Italy! As I wrote in an earlier post, Fabriano is the city where the original Zentangle tiles are made. Original Zentangle® tiles are something very special. Their quality is beyond high. I would love to see it and how they are formed! Yes, I’m a nerd. 😉 We will be talking about them in more detail in a future post, as they are worth some discussion. 

So! For this week’s string, Adele drew a stylized version of part of their watermark. It looks like this. 

And here are this week’s 3 tangles to use.

• hearts-a-flutter by CZT Leslie Goldberg
• Msst by Maria Thomas 
• Warped eggs  by skinnystraycat, Livia Chua

My IAST #192 Tile (the lovely bell is Venetian glass in honor of Adele’s trip!)

Here’s what I did with mine. If you are interested in doing these along with me, I will add your  entries to this post and show your gifts! What would you do with this string and those tangles? Artists all over the world participate in these challenges so if you’re interested in the other entries and what they did, you can find Adele’s site here! 

Milestones

I had to stop yesterday and breathe, and focus on accomplishments. I am normally frenetic about constantly creating at a high level (that’s a high level for myself not everyone else!) and pretty OCD about getting things done well and on time. Unfortunately, this means I get lost in the journey and forget about the big picture. Me and half the population, right!? Today was a big picture day for me. After slogging along for about 9 months this blog hit 3,000 views and today i had 100 views in about 8 hours. Seems silly but its nice to see your hard work realized even to a small scale.

I wouldn’t be here though, without the encouragement and support of the wonderful people in the Zentangle® Mosaic app, as well as the amazing group of artists and friends at Tangle It! Pattern Club on Facebook. Hmm, this sounds like a bad award dinner speech! Since I’m thanking the academy, let me give a nod first to Barb Masinton for the use of her beautiful art for this post! It’s nice not to need to prepare art for each post and quite honestly her art has been part of the reason my site traffic has been up. It’s simply spectacular! I also wanted to thank Dr. Ellie Miller (who’s off for CZT training next week, Gratz Ellie!🤗) of Tanglesxm.com and Write of Passage. She stuck with me thru a long time during which I couldn’t write or create. We found each other on WordPress then discovered we were both on Mosaic. Since that time, she’s been a true friend in her support and encouragement. Thank you Ellie! I cant forget Terri Delaune, CZT for your help with my pattern submissions. It helps having feedback! Dolly Bolen, CZT, Jody Genovese, CZT, and Sarah Fowler, each of whom have been encouragers, and all of whom created fabulous art using my Patterns so I would be able to showcase them in a variety of ways, thank you all! In honor of their impact on my life, here is some wonderful art by these wonderful ladies! Zentangle is amazing! Everyday, I get visitors from all over the world. April has been my most successful month yet. Thank you all!

Apcorg by Sarah Fowler

Apcorg by Terri Delaune,CZT

Apcorg By Dolly Bolen,CZT ( a favorite!)

 

Apcross tiles by Terri Delaune, CZT (thank you so much!)

Tangled tile using Apcross by Terri Delaune, CZT

Apcorg by Dr Ellie Miller

Apcross by Dr Ellie Miller

(struggling with this WordPress iOS app. So the photos aren’t set in perfectly and I had 2 duplicates I couldn’t remove without starting over. My quick post changed into a nightmare but I’m still grateful!)

Diva Challenge #312!

Can you believe there have been 312 diva challenges!? I don’t know where she goes to keep them fresh but I love her ideas. This week we’re doing something we’ve done before, using a stained tile as a string to Tangle on.  I don’t drink tea or coffee so I  watered down a bit of my green aquamarine Inktense pencil and dropped tiny drops of ink on the tile then carefully let it dry to preserve  the drop shapes. Tangled, marker background and prismacolors for shading the bubble shapes and I called it done. It was nice to work in color again. I’ve almost exclusively stuck with black and graphite for awhile as I focus on the art of tangling. As always, if you’d like to join the Diva challenges you can find her here!

This will be a short post as there’s still much to do, but I want to thank all of you who come by! I hit 3k views last week and it wouldn’t have happened without all of you, dear readers! See you soon for “It’s a String Thing”. I can’t wait to see Adele’s pictures from Italy! 

Easter Weekend Catch Up

This week’s “it’s a string thing” from Adele Bruno is going to be delayed a week. The lovely Adele, is taking a magical trip to Fabriano, Italy. This lovely Italian city is the place where the original Zentangle®️ tiles are created.  Luckily this gives me, and others, time to catch up on their art, spend time with families and enjoy the weekend. I know I literally have dozens of projects awaiting my attention!
First on the list is to work on this week’s go-to library submissions. One of the talented artists in the group, Barb Masinton, did her first week’s tiles tangled together on a journal page. I loved the design and wanted to give it a try myself. Let me show you how awesome Barb’s art is and why it was so inspiring! As I’ve posted before, there are 7 strings per week with a focus pattern to use with your go-to tangles. Here are Barb’s 7 posts and a final picture of it all together. I just loved it!

I’m really blessed to be able to share this wonderful piece of art with you all! Barb is one of the people I’ve run into that is so encouraging and inspiring, it makes it a treat to login everyday!

I almost didn’t post my work after these great pieces, but…unafraid… here are my first 2 tile/journal entries. 

I would like to invite everyone interested to join the Tangle It! Pattern Club on Facebook. Lots of great people and tangling fun!