It's spring with Camelia!

Phew, Spring is here. I love to hear the birds and frogs and smell the earth and rain. Spring in Vermont after a looooong, coooold winter is so amazing. Our snow is gone in our yard but the ski trails on the local mountains still have the snow. It reminds me of my oldest son when he was little. He was so excited for his birthday to come (May 16th) and I told him that it wouldn't be his birthday until all the snow has melted. Not yet, Cam! He will be 27 this year, once the snow melts.

I have been neglecting my blog and my Zentangle classes this winter. I guess that life just got in the way, but now I'm back. I spent 3 full days of tangling with over 100 CZTs (Certified Zentangle Teachers) in Portland, Maine at our second annual Tangle University. It was such great fun to see old friends and meet new ones while learning and getting inspired. Such wonderful and talented folks from all over the world!

On to the Diva Challenge #165, a UMT (Use My Tangle) challenge using Camelia by Anne Marks. I've enjoyed this tangle pattern in the past so it's a great one to help me get back into the swing of things. I also bought some Zentangle supplies and broke out the tan Renaissance tiles with brown and red Microns in addition to my black one. This is the first time trying the Renaissance tile and I had fun exploring it.

 At TangleU 2014, many of us had brought our CZT trading cards which we had ordered from Zazzle. When I opened my pack of cards I expected to smell the bubble gum, but the smell was not there. Funny how our brains work. It was fun to trade and collect the cards and later set them out on a table to revisit everyone. Not everyone had a trading card, but enough did to have some fun.
Enjoy your week!

It has been a while

I haven't updated my blog for a while. Holidays and vacation happened. It sure was a busy time, but now life is slowly getting backtrack to normal. We had a nice, quiet Christmas with local family then my husband's brother and family arrived from MD to help celebrate their father's 90th birthday. It was a lot of fun with a lot of cooking and celebrating. I was able to teach a Zentangle class during that crazy time, which was wonderful, then I taught an extra class to my talented niece and nephews. They were quick learners.






This week's diva challenge was to create a tile using 2014. I had already signed up for a postcard swap for the new year and was a little slow getting them out, but it worked in the long run since I could use them for the challenge! I love it when it works to my advantage.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Merry Happy! Challenge #148

This week's challenge is to create a piece for the holidays using Zentangle & the holidays as the inspiration. Since I was in need of creating neighborhood presents, this came in handy. I wish that I had taken a picture of the series of votive covers I made, but I just didn't get around to it. You know….a crush of time to get them done. I also made a few cute birch bark ornaments, but those too, did not get photographed. Ah well. They were well received.

I got a pad of Dura-Lar by Grafix which are like mylar, but not. It was wonderful to tangle on using a Pigma Sensei pen by Sakura and adding some color with either Tombow markers or Prismacolor Premier colored pencils, again, a delight to use.

Here is what is left from the presents: These were used with the markers. They do look better in person, but at least you get the idea.

I wanted to make some more, so I cut up another sheet and created these using the colored pencils. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them, but I do like the light behind them. I lined them up, keeping them flat, so you can see them all.

Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays.
Merry Happy.

Different challenges

This week I had to focus on my needle felting more so I could have more product to sell at the Mountain Painters & Artisans Gallery. I did get some tangling done as well. I got a pad of Dura-Lar which is like Mylar. It is wonderful to tangle on and colored pencils work well with it. What a joy to play with it. I bought some battery powered tea lights and put three behind my tangled piece. Here it is:


And here are most of my felted pieces completed:

Sled full of Needle Felted Creatures.

Felted stacked barnyard animals…framed.

Pea-Nuckle and Well Challenge

Hi folks!

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone. Our family had a fabulous dinner which was cooked by my husband, 2 boys, and myself. Believe it or not, we had 9 different kinds of animals for dinner, so it was a good thing that the girlfriends weren't vegetarians. Duck, turkey, 3 kinds of fish, cows (butter, beef jerky, cheese), chicken (stock), venison (in stuffing), and pig (bacon). Most of the food was local. The duck was the freshest as my son went hunting Wed. morning, my husband caught the fish, my other son and I harvested the cranberries from the local bog, a friend got the deer, cheese was made by one of the girlfriends, and we all stuffed ourselves. You know, for not knowing what we were going to be doing for Thanksgiving on Monday, we really pulled it off pretty well. I am very thankful for having a wonderful family, friends, and for all the farmers from where our food came from.

Cam's black duck

On to this week's Diva Challenge. It was to create a tile using Pea-Nuckle and Well inclusively. I've been so busy trying to make some needle felted creatures for our gallery, that I haven't had a lot of extra time, but here is what I came up with:

Pea-Nuckle and Well

And here's some tangling I finally got around to. This is my front license plate:

And here's my needle felted santa. I have decorated his tree since this photo:

created by me, Jane MacKugler.

Zentangle Challenge #145

Hi folks!

It's done in the nick of time. Phew. Here's my response to the Diva Challenge this week using Quib. It was drawn fairly quickly, and I used a new tangle pattern I just came up with, "Skyfall" (we were watching the James Bond movie, Skyfall, while I was tangling and I saw the pattern in one of the scenes). I think it has some potential. If it wasn't so late, I think I might have done some more patterning inside the Quib. Perhaps I'll add some later.

Quib & Skyfall

I got some wonderful mail today! I was the lucky winner of the complete set of Sandy Bartholomew's tangling cards from Sue Jacobs' blog: http://www.suejacobs.blogspot.com. I am so excited. Thanks, Sue, and congratulations on crossing the 400,000 page views! These card decks are filled with 40 tangle patterns with their step-outs (drawing directions) plus an awesome 9 card puzzle! I got all three decks: YOGA for your BRAIN, Totally Tangled, and the Kidz Card Decks. PLUS a set of 20 blank tangle cards. I can see that these will really come in handy. Wooo hoooo! Fun, fun, fun.

It's a bug's life…

Well, I'm back. I guess that I needed a break. I took a look at what the Diva challenge is this week and remembered it was about bugs. I used all different kinds of pens and pencils.

This is something that I did two weeks ago. I submitted it to the Frost Mountain Ski Club where my son is ski coach and executive director. Even though I got the most "likes", he has vetoed my design. In all fairness, I got a lot of my friends to vote, so I don't feel so bad. I love the design and think that racers would look awesome in this suit….and they would be VERY FAST!

This is a relatively short post because I'm having problems with either Blogger, or my computer, or both. Hope you have an awesome week.

Tangle on.