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Tangled Tuesday No. 11

There is definitely a LOT to be said for being open and honest about your struggles – whether to yourself, either in thought or written in a private journal… or perhaps to a partner or friend… or, as I did in last week’s post, to a very supportive blog readership. 🙂

If you missed it, I was feeling rather discouraged and frustrated about various tangling– and creativity-related issues, which I shared in my previous Tangled Tuesday post. Much to my joy, I discovered that writing it out helped in a couple of different ways. Putting the situation into words for myself moved me forward to a place where I could to work through my struggles and come up with some strategies to get through my creative slump. And the overwhelmingly supportive response I received from you guys was beyond encouraging! Honestly, the comments on that post were so heartwarming, kind, and generous – and gave me so many good tips and new perspectives and reasons to press on through my frustrations – that I was glad I’d decided to share.

So it’s been a much better week of tangling! And in large part, I have you to thank. So, thank you. 🙂

New Tangles

As you’ll see, I went a little crazy with adding new tangles to my repertoire this week! I learned Growth, Holes, Intersection, Itsy Bitsy, Jonqal Variation, Jute, King’s Crown, Knight’s Cross, Krust, Lettuce Farm, Lollipops, Marbles, Melody, Mixed Signals, and Munchin, all from Joy of Zentangle. (If you’re following along in Joy of Zentangle you might notice that I’ve been skipping a few of the designs. This isn’t because I didn’t like or want to do them, but because I’ve previously learned them through one of my other books. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is often overlap and some repetition between the various Zentangle®1 books.)

I also learned Ballace, which was posted this week on TanglePatterns.com.

In a rather exciting development, one of the tangles I learned this week (I won’t say which one, as I want it to be a surprise!) inspired me with an idea to create a new design of my own, which I’ll be working on developing over the next while. If I do manage to create it, it’ll be my first original pattern, which will be quite a milestone for me!

Tangling-in-Progress

Carrying on in my alphabet series, I’m currently working on the letter K – which means that…

Finished Projects

…I finished several letters since last week!

Zenletter H

Zenletter H

Zenletter I

Zenletter I

Zenletter J

Zenletter J

I’m really pleased with my progress. One of my strategies for inspiring myself to stay fresh and creative was to push myself to incorporate several new designs as well as designs that I don’t normally work with into my latest finished pieces. I think it was a success in more ways than one – I’m pleased with the final products, and I started to work through the fear of branching out and taking creative risks. Win-win!

Coming Soon

This week’s tangling goals include:

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

This week’s tangling goals do NOT include:

  • Photograph my previously-completed set of four Zendalas and set up listings to sell the originals in my as-yet-to-be-opened Etsy store. This long-postponed task is now on hold until I return home from BlogHer ’14, at which point I will be seriously short on cash and will therefore get serious FOR REAL about setting up my Etsy store!

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.

UBC

NaBloPoMo July 2014

Laurel Storey, CZT – Certified Zentangle Teacher. Writer, reader, tangler, iPhoneographer, cat herder, learner of French and Italian, crocheter, needle felter, on-and-off politics junkie, 80s music trivia freak, ongoing work in progress.