I'm back, all rested and relaxed....

Sorry folks, I have been away from my blog for too long. The end of the school year then off for a nice vacation after that has kept me away. Phew! I'm so happy to be back rested and relaxed.

This week's Diva challenge was to create a tile reflecting "home". I live in southern VT (Vermont) and was vacationing in northern VT, in the Northeast Kingdom, on Lake Willoughby. What a beautiful place. I do love Vermont and I wanted to create a tile showing parts of VT:

Grass Border, Msst, Pokeleaf, Verdigogh, Sunray, Mooz*, Waves, and Splitzer , ahhh, and my snowflakes.
*Mooz I made up to show the cow patterns of our wonderful VT cows :)
I will show you more tiles later on this week, in the mean time, enjoy some Vermont pictures:

Lake Willoughby is the deepest lake in VT that is fully contained in the state. Here are some pics:

Sunset

Looking to the south

Stone bridge between rocks

View from the screened porch

Another sunset

Calm morning looking south.

Beautiful mountains.

Son Cameron and the fish he caught.

Merganser family. Little ducklings were learning how to swim with their heads in the water watching for food.

Beautiful clear water & amazing rock layers

Farm up on the hillside. Our rented camp is in lower left of picture.

As you can see, I love this place.

Challenge #73 and Zendala Dare #8

I must be nuts. I'm involved with 2 challenges a week now. I am enjoying it though, even if it's keeping me up late at night.

Here's my Diva's challenge #73, using Bridgen:

And here is my zendala dare #8, using LOVE: Laced, Opus, Vitruvius, and Ennes:

Interesting stuff.

Monotangle Challenge - Crescent Moon

Laura, aka Diva, challenged us this week to create a mono tangle (creating a tile or ZIA using just one tangle pattern but using different variations) using Crescent Moon. I was so happy to have Monday off so I could get a jump on this. I just love the surprise I get when I tangle away and the results are different than what I had expected. I decided to quit while I was ahead:

I'm not sure what it is that I like so much, perhaps the openness of it.

Maybe I will also get to the zendala dare taken care of this week!

Enjoy the week, everyone.

UPDATE! I did get the zendala dare created tonight. I was trying to keep with the organic/mother nature theme:

Pea-Nuckle, challenge #71

Laura, our Ms. Diva, queen of keeping us challenged, has asked us to use the newest official zentangle tangle pattern in our tiles this week. I didn't think that I was going to make it, but here it is!

I enjoyed the S shapes so I then went on to Fengle and Zenplosion. I threw in K-Nynjy because that was also new and I wanted to give it a try.

Sorry, no piano pictures this week. I couldn't go back because it is Vermont's Open Studio weekend and I  had to go to the gallery where my work is. I did get out kayaking though, first thing this morning and it was so good for my soul. Ahhhhh, I was able to finally relax. Really relax. Mmmmmmm.  I will post some pictures of the finished piano once I get them.

Here's a few pictures from my kayaking trip this morning:

Landlubber Fish aka Pitcher Plant

Serene

Pitcher Plant in bloom.

A pair of Lady Slippers.

And the beautiful loon.

Just a hint of color & Zen Piano update

The Diva's challenge this week was to use sepia in our tangles. Just enough to change things up a bit. I'm glad that I got to work on this earlier in the week. I thought that I had a sepia micron but it ends up that what I have is a Micron dark brown brush pen. Interesting. Okay. Actually, I enjoyed brushing on the ink in the background pieces. It sure was a lot quicker and easier than using the 01 pens. It works. Here's what I ended up with:

Today my friends, Dana and Debbie, and I worked on the Zen Piano again. We spent all day in an old warehouse tangling a piano for a community arts and music awareness project in Hanover, NH. This was my second day tangling it. It was wonderful to get some more progress made and great to see how the other pianos were coming along as well. It's amazing how fast time flies..but my body certainly feels like it was a long day.

 Tangles are tying together well.

   

Duo Tangle v. IV

Hello folks. Today's entry is this week's Diva Challenge: drawing a duo tangle using Hybrid and Strircles.  Funny how things come out in the end. Putting Strircles in the dividing lines in the Hybrid gave the tile a whole different look. I like it though:

Today I finally met the other CZTs from Vermont. Here is a picture of ALL of the Vermont CZTs:

 L-R: Ann Coakley, Suzy Shedd, Sadelle Wiltshire, and me (Jane MacKugler)

We got together today to start on a zentangle project over in New Hampshire with some other folks. Yes, we are going to tangle a piano for a community art project in Hanover. Call us crazy.

Standing L-R: Debbie, Bette Abdu, Ann Coakley, Suzy Shedd, Sadelle Wiltshire

Sitting L-R: Jane MacKugler and Liz D'Amico

I'll add more photos as the month progresses. The piano should be all done by the end of the month. FYI there are 47 pianos being decorated one way or another in the warehouse. These will eventually make it to busy sections of the greater Hanover/White River Junction area. Can't wait to see how they all turn out.

Surprise!

What a nice surprise. My sister emailed me telling me that I am in the Art Jewelry Magazine. Really? I looked at the photo she sent and it was an article by fellow CZT Susan Breen Silvy. She had written an article about designing jewelry with dye oxide patinas. She included a photo of a brooch she made inspired by my tangle pattern "Henna Drum". Wow! How awesome is that! I do thank Susan for crediting me, even though my name is spelled wrong and she didn't have my state (or she had but the magazine didn't print it). I will send an email to the magazine to set that straight, but WOW! I'm very excited. Tee hee. So, here's my Henna Drum pattern for you all to see and play with:

I hope you enjoy the pattern. It's a lot of fun to play with and has a nice delicate look to it.

Here is a bigger version so you can hopefully see the steps better:

Click on the picture to enlarge it even more (depending on computer screen size).