Tangled Tuesday No. 4

This is the I made the first sales in my brand new Ten Thousand Tangles Zazzle shop and I’m SO EXCITED! edition of Tangled Tuesday… welcome! Hope you enjoy this week’s tangling fun!

Tangling Goodies

I’ve been asked several times what kind of pen I use for tangling, so I thought this would be the perfect place to share my answer.

There are a ton of choices out there in a range of prices, but the ones I’ve used right from the beginning and absolutely love are Sakura Pigma Micron pens. For most of my work I use the 01 size, but the smaller 005 is handy for finer details, and the thicker nibs (I’ve used 03, 05, and 08) are terrific for filling in large areas. (Disclaimer: Using the thicker nibs to speed up the process is quite possibly not in the “true” Zentangle®¹ spirit of things!) If you’re just starting out, my recommendation would be to give the Pigma Micron pens a try, but if they’re not in your budget please don’t let it stop you from getting going… because you can tangle with any pen on any piece of paper!

New Tangles

As I continue to make my way through Totally Tangled (by Sandy Steen Bartholomew), I added a bunch of new tangles to my repertoire this week: Punkin, Flaske, Nebel, Holey, Buoy, Boing, Awdry, Pods, Bambu, Kogin, Xpetal, Bleeding Hearts, and Btl Joos. There are definitely some fun ones in there, and I’m looking forward to incorporating them into future pieces!

Tangling-in-Progress

I rarely feel comfortable sharing photos of my WIP, so you’ll just have to imagine the “B” I’m currently working on (and continue reading for details as to WHY I’m working on a B)! Suffice to say that I’m more than halfway through and will probably wrap it up this evening… then share the finished piece in next week’s post.

I also started a rectangular piece (one of the goals I set last week), but ended up putting it on hold after making a mistake that I’m not entirely sure how to fix. Normally “there are no mistakes in Zentangle” – but a ZIA that I’m willing to scan and add to products has to live up to a very high standard, so I’m going to sit on this one for awhile until I decide if it’s salvageable for my shop. Eventually I’ll finish the piece and do my best to camouflage the mistake, and if I feel it’s not scan-worthy I’ll just hang on to it for my portfolio.

Finished Projects

This week I did a quick ZIA (well, as quick as my tangling ever is – which is to say, not very quick!) for the Photo A Day Prompt “Sunrise” – because there was absolutely no way getting up on a Saturday morning to take a picture of a REAL one was ever going to happen! It seemed like the perfect opportunity to do a little tangling practice, so here’s my interpretation of a tangled sunrise.

ZIA 19 – Sunrise

Possibly inspired by my Tangling from A to Z project, and knowing that people tend to like to personalize things, I came up with the idea to do a series of tangled letters (and possibly some symbols – we’ll have to see). My thought is that once my tangled alphabet is complete I can use the finished pieces in monogrammed products in my Ten Thousand Tangles shop. Wouldn’t you love a mug, or a T-shirt, or some note cards (or, or, or…!) with your tangled initial on it? Or perhaps a series of wrapped canvas letters that spell “Love” or “Home” or “Welcome” or something along those lines? I know I would!

So I started, predictably, with the letter A, and this is my finished piece.

Zenletter A

As I mentioned earlier, I’m partway through B, and will carry on throughout the alphabet until I’m done. It’s a rather ambitious project, but so much fun… and I’m looking forward to some good results from my hard work!

Coming Soon

This week’s tangling goals include:

• Continue adding products to Ten Thousand Tangles.
• Create pieces for new sponsors.
• Carry on with my Zenletter collection.

P.S.

Previous posts in this series are all tagged Tangled Tuesday.

For background on how I discovered and got involved in Zentangle, and links to further information and resources, check out my blog post For the love of tangling.

You can browse my entire tangle gallery at Ten Thousand Tangles.

And, if you’re interested in having a little piece of my art for yourself, please click on the GoFundMe button below for more information and also visit my Zazzle shop Ten Thousand Tangles. (Pssst… links to my international Ten Thousand Tangles shops are in the Alphabet Salad sidebar – just click on the appropriate flag and you’ll get to the place you need to be!)

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.