Tangle of the week: W2

I like W2 because it reminds me of a Mothers Day present I made years and years ago. The one where you cut out two shapes, cut strips into them, and then weave them together to form a heart.

paperkawaii.com

Mum still has the heart I made to this day.

At first I struggled with the set up of W2; I couldn’t wrap my head around the layout of the diamonds. But once I realised it was just a straight grid of squares on the diagonal I was sorted. I can turn my paper 45 degrees and draw the grid, then turn it back straight to add in the lines and finish it off.

You can find the Tangle Patterns tutorial here.

Step 1. Draw a grid of diamonds.

Step 2. Add in all lines in one direction, alternating inside and outside the little squares.

Step 3. Add in all lines in the other direction, again alternating inside and outside the squares.

Step 4 (optional). Decide where the ‘light’ is and add in some shading accordingly.

Fun fact: unless I actively think about it, my ‘light’ is always to the top left so I shade the bottom right of my Tangles. I don’t know why, it just feels right.

What do you think of W2? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Basic baubles

My dad works at a school that has a laser cutter in the technology department, so he asked me to design some zentangle Christmas baubles for him to etch out with the machine.

Zentangle baubles featured quite a bit on my Christmas cards last year, but somehow when I came to do them this year I just couldn’t get into the flow of it. I tried some old favourites, threw in some new ones, combined some together, every last one feeling like a struggle. Eventually I got 6 different designs, but I’m not especially pleased with any of them.

Even my favourite tangle doesn’t fill me with joy.

But I sent them off to dad anyway and hopefully he can make some pretty decorations from them. Who knows, maybe I’ll like them better in plastic than on paper.

What do you think of my baubles? Am I being too harsh (be honest)? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Deeday

I’ve got a pretty new Tangle to look at today, shared on Tanglepatterns just this month. You can find the tutorial here.

I wasn’t too impressed when I saw Deeday on its own, it just looks (to me) like very stylised bows and arrows – not a great deal of use for general card making.

But the magic happens when you play with the orientation. Point them in.

Or out.

Or a bit of both!

You could also remove the gridlines.

So many options! I’ll definitely be using this as a background for some cards soon.

What do you think of Deeday? Which is your favourite orientation? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Quiltz

So it turns out Knyt is not the only craft-inspired Tangle out there. This week I discovered the amazing Quiltz.
Here is the official tutorial, and here is my step by step:

Make a grid (surprisingly neat for me)

Draw one set of diagonal lines, preferably in one continuous line rather than taking pen from paper for each little box.

Draw the opposite diagonals

Now, here I add in an extra step just to keep myself neat. The official step-out just says to draw a plus sign in the centre of each cross, but I put in all the vertical lines at once

Followed by the horizontal lines.

Then join the tips of the plus signs to the corners of each box. First in one direction.

Then the other.

And it’s done! When I look at the finished Tangle my eyes switch back and forth between seeing the four-pointed shapes I drew, and big stars made by the spaces in between.

It’s quite similar to Hemp, isn’t it? Another of my favourites.

So what do you think of Quiltz? Have any of you made a quilt like this before? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Maryhill

I’ve got another Tangle with personal meaning this week.

When I first moved to Glasgow (gosh, nearly 8 years ago now) my Mum’s Scottish colleague said I would be fine as long as I avoided two areas of the city; Easterhouse and Maryhill. I was a good girl and only searched for flats in the West End, found a room for rent, and moved in.

It was several months later that I discovered the line between the West End and Maryhill is pretty fuzzy, and I was actually staying in the latter. Bad daughter. But it was actually a really nice street, obviously I didn’t die, and that flat was the gateway to me staying in Glasgow permanently so I’ll always have a soft spot for Maryhill.

Which brings me to the Tangle. Not only does it remind me of my first place up here, it’s also one of those magical patterns that creates a shape without me explicitly drawing it. Here’s the link to the official tutorial.

And here’s my first ever attempt.

It’s good aura practice.

The pinwheel is easier to see when the image is smaller. I need to try it with other shapes as well to see if the same rule applies.

Shading also helps.

It’s not quite as magical as Paradox, but it has the same meditative quality to it and I do love pinwheels so I’ll definitely be using it in the future.

So that’s Maryhill! What do you think? Can you see the pinwheel? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Knyt

It’s been far, far too long since I wrote a tangle of the week post so (even though the week is nearly finished now) I’m sticking one up right now!

It’s called Knyt, and just look at it.

How could I possibly resist?

If you’ve read some of my TOTW posts before you’ll know that it often takes me two or three attempts to really get it, but this one just seemed to come naturally to me. Maybe it’s because I’m a knitter. Probably it’s because Knyt is so simple. Either way I reckon I’ll be using this Tangle a lot in my crafting.

You can find the official tutorial here, and here’s my step by step.

Looking like tiny rainbows.

Just ignore that squiggle at the bottom. The wind blew the paper into my pen. Oh the perils of outdoor tangling!

Voila! It’s pretty magical I think. Next up I want to try it with chunky ‘yarn’ and see how that looks, as well as placing the original semi-circles closer together and farther apart.

So what do you think of Knyt? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Tipple

A super tutorial on some of the different ways you can use Tipple can be found here.

I tend to use pebble-style Tipple, where none of the lines overlap and I fill in the gaps with smaller and smaller circles. I also quite like the idea of weighted, where my ‘pebbles’ fall like they’re affected by gravity. Although, like most things, I still need more practice.

Rather than a background, I use this tangle as a filler for smaller areas.

I could use it as a little corner highlight on my cards if it would fit the theme, but I need to do some experimenting first to see if it works out.

So what do you think of Tipple? Which versions do you like? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Ciceron

This time we’re looking at a slightly more complicated tangle, Ciceron. Tutorial here – it’s the second one down.

I say complicated, it’s still just simple pen strokes repeated, but I know from my own experience that the layout can take a bit of thought.

For the fun, interlocking look, you need to make sure you start with an offset grid of circles like this:

I get myself in less of a muddle if I draw all the lines in one direction first

Then turn the paper 90 degrees and draw the lines in the other direction

And finally the curves to fill up the spaces

 

Here’s a quick scribble of how it looks if you don’t start with an offset grid, which is still pretty, but less interesting I feel.

What do you think of Ciceron? Do you prefer the interlocking version or the straight one? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Umble

This week we’re going to look at a really tangly-looking Tangle, although of course it’s simpler than it sometimes looks. You can find the tutorial here.

Image from Zentangle newsletter June 14, 2015

 

 

And here’s my step out, which is looking surprisingly dull considering I drew it in the 26 degree Australian sunshine!

I draw the inner lines and fill them in first, then if I make a mistake or go outside the lines (as I did in the top right corner) then I can just draw the auras to fit the mistakes so it looks like it’s meant to be that way!

I drew this example very square and went with the top, sides, and bottom next, but as you can see from the website example you can draw Umble lines wherever you want.

And add as many or as few layers as you want.

I stopped here, because I would stick/stamp a Happy Birthday in the space. I do like framing my sentiments with Tangles!

Umble works well with colour as well as black and white. My latest idea is to use a different colour for each layer, so it would look like rainbows separated into their different stripes.

What do you think of Umble? Would you like to see it in colour? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Florz

There is no tutorial for this tangle (it’s pretty obvious, really), but you can check out the official page here.

Nice and simple, but also pretty easy to jazz up if I want to, with gems or pearls at the crossovers rather than just filled in squares, or highlighting some of the lines with gold or silver gel pens. Simple, but pretty effective! Which you will see, just as soon as I get my shop updated….

 

So what do you think of Florz? Any other ideas for fancying it up? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Crescent Moon

I’m fairly sure this was the second ever Tangle I learned, from a book my Mum bought for me. There’s a tutorial video here, which showed me that I actually do a slight variation on the Tangle by not putting an aura around each bump individually first.

Either way, you start by putting some bumps round the edge of your shape.

Then you draw an aura around them. One by one as in the video, or in a continuous aura like I’m going to do. You can join the aura to make a complete loop:

Or just draw a continuous line until you run out of space, like this:

And the magic of Zetangle makes it look like a wibbly wobbly timey wimey tunnel stretching into the distance.

I love using this Tangle as a kind of frame on my cards; plop the sentiment in the middle, add my bumps round the edge, and then aura up to the words.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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Tangle of the week: Vortex

Today we’re having a look at Vortex, tutorial right here.

This is one tangle I struggled with when I first came across it, even though it’s pretty simple really. I kept trying to draw all the lines originating from the corners of the inner square, which left big gaps down the edges and looked a bit naff.

Like so

Then I struggled with getting the lines to curve the same amount, ending up with some massively C-shaped and some almost straight.

But I was pretty new to Zentangle when I came across it so I let myself off, and I think I’ve just about got the hang of it now.

Although my squares still aren’t always exactly square!

On my cards I love to use Vortex as a frame for a sentiment, putting it in the centre square with the lines radiating out from it. And I just this second had an idea to put a square of coloured card in the middle and keep the lines black and white – I do love my little pops of colour in B+W surroundings. I’ll try that one when I get back to my stash at home and maybe let you know how it goes.

So what do you think of Vortex? Do you think the coloured card would work? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

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