Zendala Dare #12

Here's my entry for this weeks Zendala Dare (#12) set by the Bright Owl every Friday.  Every week we are given a template to use, and this week's starting point was:

Now......this stumped me at first, it being only my second ever zendala!  So I thought I'd go for something completely different for me - bright and bold and lots of black.  I'm new to zentangling and it's all hard for me but I've found the tangle "Punch", by Sandy Bartholomew, particularly challenging as it just seems to end up a mess for me!  So I thought I'd try that under the petal shape sections to see if a larger scale made it any easier - and it did!


Hope you like my zendala - and thank you for looking.

I am the Diva Challenge 76 (b)

I decided to do a new entry for this challenge, which was to depict our "home" in zentangle.

Just down the road from me there is a little lane that loops around the end of the loch, and hidden in the bank next to the road, between bushes overgrown with ivy and thistles, there is the sweetest little waterfall which carries rainwater off the hill and down to the loch.  It's surrounded by rocks, out of which grow ferns, primroses and other foliage and flowers, and it buzzes in summer with the sound of bees and trickling water.  It's like a secret miniature landscape and it's one of my favourite spots on this lovely island just off the north-west coast of Scotland.

So here's my tangled version of it:

I am the Diva Challenge #76

I've been so busy sewing patchwork creations for our local gallery for the last few weeks I haven't had time to enter any of the challenges, then I saw this week's and Bingo!  My very first zentangle landscape, done a few weeks ago, was of my homeland on the west coast of the highlands of Scotland.  So I'm going to show that, and try to do a new one in the next couple of days.

So here it is.  I don't know why it looks so wonky down the left hand side, but it doesn't really matter to me. I wanted to illustrate all the rock layers on the side of the cliff leading down to a little jetty, and I was quite pleased with the result.  I hope you enjoy looking at it too.

I took this photo at the same time I started my ZIA:

My first Zendala!

Today I entered my very first zendala into the weekly Zendala Dare challenge hosted by the Bright Owl.

Every Friday Erin provides a zendala template for us to use, and as Erin was in wedding mode this week we were only allowed to use tangles beginning with the letters L.O.V.E.!

I decided to try some new tangles for me, mind you most of them are still new to me!

For my L.O.V.E. tangles I chose:

Looplopp - corners (sorry, I don't know what those pointy shapes are called!) 

Lotsadots  - all over the place!

Organza  - hearts

Opus - rectangles

Vigne - border

Estrel - circles

I was worried I would feel rather restricted having to use "somebody else's template", being a bit of a control freak (oops), and this is one of the reasons I've avoided zendalas up to now - but I was wrong.  It was really enjoyable, and actually rather liberating, not having to do the initial worrying about where to start!  So I'll be joining in more often from now on!

Here I am at last! Diva Challenge #73

Well here I am at last in blog-land.  Not that I have anything remotely interesting to say today - I just thought I ought to set myself up so I have a place to keep all my pictures and thoughts together.

Actually I did do something different at the weekend - I opened a Flickr account and joined the Zentangle community!  I posted some photos of my landscape zentangles and I was so encouraged by the comments left by some lovely people, I decided to have a go at the weekly challenge set by I am the Diva for the first time, and this was the result:

Weekly Challenge #73: UMT v.V: Bridgen