In my Book: back cover, alphabet, gems, and paisley

This is an 'ideas' book of sorts. I've been including past and current artistic interests as well as things I want to try in more detail at some future point.

I'd been ignoring the back cover. It's on the back, after all; who looks there? But it was becoming a bit grubby and I thought I'd better do something. The large zenAgain stamp was there from November 2016 when I received the book, so I tangled around it. There are three circles with metal leaf. The thin "white" stripe beside Knase is a strip of holographic paper. It sparkles rainbow colors at different angles, which goes with the string of rainbow Pearlz, which may be my favorite part of the whole thing!

In the past I've done calligraphy and some lettering, so I did a page honoring that art.

The final two are:
 • an ampersand, E and T, the Latin "et" meaning "and"
• the German SZ (ess-tset, pronounced like an 's')

On another page I'd done a random, gray wash because I like to have something like that to pique my imagination. It turned into paisley and gems. I'd encountered the tangle Ilac and have liked Paisley Boa since I discovered it, so they became the basis for this page.

Paisley salvage

I had done a few tiles with paisley designs thinking that I would arrange four of them into one work. Should I add color? Sparkle? How to arrange them? They sat on my desk for months. And months. I decided they'd had their chance and it was time to reincarnate them as ATCs.

I sliced the edges off the four cards leaving me four 2.5"x3.5" ATCs. Then I added color to them all.

I was left with the four trimmed edges and decided to use them for more ATCs. I glued them to the sides of four black ATC cards. Then I had lots of fun adding other elements: patterned washi tape, holographic ribbon, a red gem star, black gem curlicues, white ink, metallic ink, little pearls, glittery white embellishment tape, and the hummingbird from a chocolate wrapper.

I have a hard time throwing out artwork that's just not satisfactory. Often, when I'm not happy with a final piece of work, I turn it into bookmarks or ATCs.
Some of these may find themselves in a swap at We Love to Tangle this June, in Calgary.

Paisley platypus

Here's another of the Australian shapes given to me by CZT Jenny Farrell when she was visiting Saskatoon recently. She referred to is as "our pushmi-pullyu" and in case you're having trouble telling head from tail, the head is on the right, with two eyes. :)

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Droplets, Paisley Boa, Tipple and elements of Cruffle.

Spiral out

The Diva's challenge this week is to use a spiral as the string. One of the challenges of a spiral string is that it's one long space, no divisions.

CZT Amy Broady's tangle Paisley Boa is currently one of my favorites, fast becoming a 'go to' tangle. I drew Paisley Boa all along my spiral, which made a nice series of divisions. Then I filled each droplet shape with various things. The spiral was getting lost so I added white along the lines defining it to bring it back into focus.

This is done on a tan tile with brown, sepia and white inks, white charcoal pencil, and brown colored pencils. It was fun.  Wish I had time to do more but I've had a little too much on my plate recently! Maybe later.

Tangles: Paisley Boa plus: Crescent Moon variation,
Cruffle, Ennies, Flux, Paizel, Phuds, Tipple