Pinch me!

This summer seems to have directed me towards 'fun' art projects rather than 'work' art projects. Granted, the 'work' projects are also fun, but I seem to expect more of myself when I'm thinking "This could end up framed and on someone's wall."

Last fall I had purchased a Pinch Me Ball kit from Jenny Perruzzi's Acadia Laser Creations on Etsy. I decided it was time to try to make this thing. This is the kit with instructions and supplies. The paper colors I got are one of my favorite combinations!

Here are the three strips with tangling and shading completed. I used some Glaze and Stardust and metallic inks and they don't show up very well, especially on the purple paper.

Generally I found it a fairly simple process to construct the ball, except for folding the last arcs on the last ring. That took a bit of fine-fingered finagling.

Here are six views of the finished piece. Pretty cool! I forgot to add a hanging string, but I think I can do that later if I want to. Hmmm... I might make more.

If you'd like to order one of these kits for yourself, go here.

Mandala rescue

Last week I showed some zendala tiles done with a template that looks like a sphere. I didn't like the last one I showed, so I cut out the middle and promised to show you what I did with it.

On the left is the zendala tile with a white border. I thought the sphere was
too dark (and messy) at the edges so I cut out a smaller circle, shown on the right.

I've been working on this mandala for some time. It's 14" square. I'd made three rescue attempts already but I think this last one is working! I've added some collage and a fair amount of white ink.

I had started drawing a center (shown above), but found I preferred the cut-out from the zendala tile there and so did my daughter and husband! Coincidentally (really?) it was within a millimeter or two of the size of the middle of the mandala! But I also liked what I'd already drawn. This mandala is on illustration board, so with an X-Acto knife I carefully cut around the circle and peeled it off. Now I have another lovely little tangled circle to do something with.

Mandala with the original center peeled off.

I glued the new center on, and also changed some too-dark-reddish areas towards the corners. (Now they're too light! Oh well, I can deal with that.)

Mandala with its new center, still not finished.

It's not finished  yet. There's still a bit more collage, some fine-tuning and some touching up to do.

M'Orbs

Follow-up on a previous Challenge...
After the Diva's (Laura Harms) fifth weekly challenge to do ORBS, and the launch of the new tangle(ation) IXORUS, I found myself still engaged in orbs and interested in Ixorus. I went a bit larger and full-color. I began with a two-pencil string and added some large circles with a template. I'm pretty happy with the result. Here are more orbs, m'orbs, "Orbs":

ORBS; 15 cms. (6") square; pen & ink and colored pencil; © 2011 Margaret Bremner

Orbs

This week, Laura Harms' zentangle challenge (#5) asks that we use orbs. To be honest, for some reason I wasn't particularly taken with the challenge. At one point I thought maybe I'd skip this one.

Yesterday, we had a lovely evening with two of our daughters and five friends playing board and card games for three hours. After that, I went down to the studio. My automatic pilot takes me there a lot. The orbs appeared! To be honest again (not that I'm usually dishonest!) two of these tiles I think are among my best ever. I'm also fascinated my how different they are, one from another.

Those blind strings got me into going off the edge of the paper, and even filling the entire tile. 

This first one started with a blind string. I admit to using a circle template for some of the large circles.

Orbs full tile

Then I decided that I should use a border again, having got quite away from that.  I added some random circles with my eyes closed, none of which met at the ends; I made some adjustments!

7 orbs in a box

Then I did a 2-pencil string just going 'round and 'round a few times. 

It didn't look like much at that point.

Orb

I'm delighted, and occasionally dumbfounded, by how much difference shading can make! Shading can adjust, correct, hide, enhance, improve, and even salvage.

Now here's an added treat.
My daughter - the one who just got married - gave me a little pack of
rainbow Scratch Magic Mini Notes. 'Orb' to me seems to include 'lighted' or 'glowing'
so I tried an orb-y thing on one of those notes.

Orbs? Scratch magic mini note. Memories of lava lamps.

See a follow-up to this post here.