Blogging from A to Z Challenge: On your mark, get set…

Exactly one week from today – and yes, I’m actually counting down! – I will be embarking on an epic blogging adventure: the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, held annually in April and embraced each year by an ever-growing number of participants.

And I am surprisingly excited about the whole thing!

I think what I’m most thrilled about is the theme I chose for the month – “Tangling from A to Z” (in case you missed it, you can read all about it in this post, and find out more about Zentangle®¹ in this one).

ZIA 2 by Laurel Regan, July 8, 2013

See, my time over the past few months has been taken up with other things and my beloved tangling has unfortunately fallen by the wayside… so choosing this particular theme was rather inspired (if I do say so myself!). I’m so looking forward to rediscovering the joy of tangling, and all the resulting creativity and learning that this month will bring.

ZIA 4 by Laurel Regan, July 14, 2013

It’s not without a whole bunch of pre-challenge work, however – THAT’S for sure! Even though April is still a week away, I’ve already been busily preparing myself and my blog for the upcoming frenzy. Taking the example of many of my fellow A to Z-ers, I’m trying to get as much of the background stuff done ahead of time so that come April I can really focus on the task at hand – learning new tangles, putting them into practice, and then blogging about the process and results. So any “housekeeping” stuff that I can do now will make fulfilling the challenge that much easier.

ZIA 5 by Laurel Regan, July 14, 2013

As of today, I’ve:

• Gone through the A to Z Checklist to make sure my blog is ready for the challenge.
• Set up drafts and scheduled blog posts for the entire month of April.
• Chosen each of the three new tangles (following the letters of the alphabet, of course!) I’ll be learning each day.
• Started setting up my tangle samples sketchbook with instructions and examples of each tangle (so far I’m up to the letter F).
• Warmed up after my long break by learning a few new tangles (different from the ones I’ll be including in the challenge posts).

So I’m getting there, and once the rest of the preparation of my tangle samples sketchbook has been done, I should be ready to go.

And I can’t wait!

ZIA 7 by Laurel Regan, July 20, 2013

I hope you’ll drop by Alphabet Salad throughout the month of April for lots more tangly goodness… it’s going to be a fun month!

Are you participating in the A-Z Challenge?
(It’s still not too late to sign up!)
Please share!

¹ The Zentangle® Method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas and is copyrighted. Zentangle® is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.