"Ye Are The Stars" process

I recently purchased a stencil called Alhambra (from Marieke on Etsy) and used it to create "Ye Are the Stars" on an eco-dyed Opus tile.

Here is the paper as it came out of the dye-bath. I intended to retain more of these colors, but that's not what developed.

I didn't want simply a pattern with designs, so I searched to see if there was a 'star moth' or 'star butterfly' I could incorporate. Lo and behold! There's a Pink Star Moth, native to the southeastern coast of North America! I found pictures and did one in colored pencil.

Fairly far into the drawing I decided there were just too many patterns going on; I liked them, but they weren't contributing to the look I wanted. Here are two details:

I didn't like the Ragz on the left or the five different corner sections on the right.

I had to change them. With high quality art paper (like the Tiepolo of Zentangle and Opus tiles), if I'm very careful I can peel off a top layer of the paper and begin almost fresh. I got out my scalpel, tweezers, and bone folder and got back to drawing.
(See further down for "How to peel paper".)

I re-tangled all those sections, opting for Tidings all over, and am much happier with the corners now. There is gold ink in each of the nine 8-pointed stars.

Here is the finished artwork.

HOW TO PEEL PAPER

First, I lightly cut around the edge of the section I want to remove - more like scoring than cutting. I absolutely don't cut all the way through! Then, I loosen a corner or two with the knife point...

... and use tweezers to peel off the top layer. It never goes neatly! I always have to pick off more edges and peel more. But eventually I get it all off, leaving a rather fuzzy section of paper.

Then I use the bone folder to really smooth it down. A thumbnail works well, too.

THE TITLE

"Ye are the stars" comes from this quotation from the Baha'i sacred writings:

"O friends! Be not careless of the virtues with which ye have been endowed, neither be neglectful of your high destiny. Suffer not your labors to be wasted through the vain imaginations which certain hearts have devised. Ye are the stars of the heaven of understanding, the breeze that stirreth at the break of day, the soft-flowing waters upon which must depend the very life of all men, the letters inscribed upon His sacred scroll."

Tile salvage (and a recipe)

I recently attended a pot-luck event and took one of my favorite summer foods, George Bernard Shaw's cook's stuffed green peppers. I didn't have time to make a label before I left, so I made one at the event. The only paper I had in my purse was some zentangle tiles.

After the event, not wanting to waste that lovely paper I decided to tangle it. I designed some pencil 'strings' around the text on the tile.

And then I tangled!

Tangles: Beadlines, Florz, Knightsbridge, Pearlz,
Printemps, Seljuk, Tipple

And now, I digress. Here's a photo of some of the stuffed peppers. I don't like cooked stuffed peppers, but these are raw. So easy to make. So yummy!

And here's how to make them:

• small green peppers (enough to feed who you want to feed)
• lots of grated cheddar cheese (I prefer aged cheddar)
• equal amounts of mayonnaise and mango chutney (minus the big chunks of mango)
Halve the peppers lengthwise and remove stems, seeds and membranes. Try to slice them so the halves will sit flat and not tip over. (four bump peppers work better than three bump peppers!)
Mix the mayonnaise/chutney mix into the grated cheese, so the cheese holds together nicely. Stuff into pepper halves. Really pack it in.
Crunch, munch and enjoy!

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.

"Turkish Tiles" process

Sometimes you just have to take a chance.

I had great expectations for this Opus tile, but I just didn't like it once it was finished.
But darn it all! I'd put a lot of time and work into it! No way I was going to just throw it out, and I already have too many ATCs to trade. Surely I could do something with it.

I'd had the idea of Turkish and Iranian mosques, with their columns and stripes and geometric patterns, but the parts hadn't come together as I had hoped. I realized that I needed a different vision for it, and decided that maybe it needed to become less cluttered by mixing it up a bit more.

I trimmed a quarter inch off all sides, leaving me with a 10" square, easily divided into 25 two inch squares. Here are all the "twinchies":

I painted a 12" canvas white and then decided how I would arrange the little squares. There were a few with doorways and I decided to place those along the bottom. The sides of the canvas were then painted mottled turquoise and blues, which turned out really nicely.

"Turkish Tiles" (c) 2016 Margaret Bremner
12" square; pen-and-ink, colored pencil, acrylic paint

I didn't like the tiny difference of level between the canvas and the paper, and I thought it should be glossy because of the "tiles" idea. I used a self-levelling epoxy varnish and it now looks as if there's a sheet of glass on top! I painted gloss varnish on the sides to tie them in with the glossy surface.

Flor de la Vida

I've been doing things with the classic Flower of Life pattern recently. You can see some pieces here. I don't want to call all the pieces "Flower of Life" so I'm using different languages! I tried another round tile with the one main circle in pink and the rest in green.

I liked it enough, but there seemed to be too much distinct separation between the green and the pink. What to do? I remembered four hummingbird pictures I'd saved and covered with layers of acrylic matte medium, thinking I might use them on ATCs. Maybe one of them could be added here.

Nice, but it really didn't show up very well. More work needed. I added color with a light pink brush pen, outlined the beak with a black 005 Micron pen, and put a few pink lines here and there on the bird. Then I made the main 'flower' more pink, which turned out to be too much pink and dominated the bird. But it was the lightest pink pen I have. Hmm.

Out with the trusty white pen to lighten it again. That's better. I added more pink to the wing on the right and a few pale pink bits around the edges of the tile. I think that's it. I like how the bird may not be the first thing you notice, but it's a nice little surprise.

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.

Tile redemption

(Or, Salvage operations 2)

Doing a wee bit of organizing the other day I came across some old tiles. These were mainly from my early Zentangle days, before I'd grasped the concept of the pencil string. Interesting in their own way, many of them seemed a bit empty. I decided to re-work them and see what would happen. Here are four old tiles, Mach One and Mach Two.

EGG. Tangles in mach 2: Florz, Hurly Burly, Msst, Munchin, Opus, Rick's Paradox, Tidings, Tripoli

NEW MOON. Tangles in mach 2: Ogen, Papyrus, Seljuk, Skaylz,
not exactly Hibred, dots and some nameless patterns.

Mach 1 was a little too reminiscent of boobs. (You probably didn't see that at all, did you?)
Tangles in mach 2: Caviar, Florz, Hibred, Skaylz, Shattuck, Tripoli and dots and triangles

DAWN. Tangles in mach 2: Betweed, Coaster, Crescent Moon, Rick's Paradox, Tipple

In every case these were originally borderless. I drew a pencil border and filled in empty spaces. Here is one that I really like, but unfortunately I didn't scan the original tile. Based on adding a border and filling in, perhaps you can get an idea of what was there before.

FAIRY GARDEN (a few weeks too late!)
Tangles: Florz, Flux, Munchin, Papyrus, Skaylz

Check back through your old tiles and pull out a few less-than-favorites. See what magic you can work!

Salvage operations

I always find it difficult to let go of a piece of work that is not up to snuff. Sometimes there's an emotional reason and after a while I can put those pieces aside and keep them just for me. Others times perhaps it's the investment of time. I need to remember to look at the time as invested in learning, experimenting, trying, and that investment will pay off, perhaps not with this piece or the next one, but down the road.

More frequently, there are parts that are really, really good but the whole just doesn't hang together. In these cases there are two things I do. First, I attempt a salvage operation by trying to determine why it doesn't work and changing it. If that fails - and the work is on paper - I cut out the really, really good parts and save them for future collage projects. Often those collage projects don't succeed either. Maybe I should cut my losses earlier!

Today I want to share three of my attempted salvage operations, with some before and after photos.

First is a piece done in various Sakura pens with pink ink. There was a lot I liked about it, but I didn't like how the bottom corners seemed so pointy. Can't change that, but what if I made the top corners pointy too, made the whole image more square? I also added more shading, filled in some of the Knightsbridge squares, added Msst on the opposite side, and decided I liked it better turned 90 degrees. (Which means the title and signature are now up the right side. Gotta love that "no predetermined up or down.") :-)

"Pink Ink" before

"Pink Ink" after

I called this "A Box of Sunlight" because it looked rather light filled. It struck me that while I thought of it as a box, perhaps it didn't really look that much like a box. I needed to make it more box-like. Perhaps if I added a lid? I also made some of the corners more solid.

"A Box of Sunlight" before

"A Box of Sunlight" after

The last one is something I did in my early Zentangle, pre-CZT days, when I was still a little unclear on the concept and didn't do any shading. I sometimes use a wash of Payne's Gray acrylic as a beginning, which is what I did here. I called it "Alpha" because it looked like an "a". I just felt that it needed more.  I drew a border around it, added some pencil strings and went to play. At one point there were too many fine details developing so I added some wide bold stripes. Again, once I'd finished I preferred it turned 90 degrees.

"Alpha" before

"Alpha" no more

I would be very interested in your frank comments. Forget about the time investment. Did the salvage operation work? Are any of them worth saving? Or should I cut out the really, really, good parts and save them for future collage projects?