Diva Challenge #251 ~ Moebius Syndrome Awareness

The Diva (Laura Harms) has challenged us to use the Moebius Syndrome Awareness logo as our string this week. Her youngest son, Artoo, was diagnosed with this extremely rare syndrome when he was born. The syndrome affects the nerves in the face and doesn't allow the face to show emotion or move laterally. But it is a spectrum disorder, like many others, that affects each person differently. At present, there are only about 5K people with this syndrome worldwide as it only affects 1-2 in a million births. Those of us that have been watching the Diva's blog over the last 5 years have seen her boys, Chewie (the oldest) and Artoo (her youngest) grow up. They both are adorable boys, and it's been very interesting to see how well Artoo has risen to his challenge of this syndrome. Children with this syndrome are often seen as unintelligent, but Moebius Syndrome does not affect intelligence at all. In fact, the Diva has told us time and time again how bright Artoo is and doing well in school.

To show my support for the Harms family, I decided to just do a simple tile this week and have only tangled the background with a new to me tangle called CAUGHT by Christine Reyes. I found it on TanglePatterns last week and thought that it would make a good background. I was also attempting shading with my Prismacolor colored pencils on the logo, but I don't think that the photo showed it that well. It took me considerable longer to do the shading than the drawing. But at any rate, here it is and I hope you like it.

ARTOO, THIS IS FOR YOU!

FOR ARTOO!
Media: 3.5" square tile, Purple Micron 01 pen01,
Prismacolor colored pencils
Tangle: Caught
String: Moebius Syndrome logo

Please take a look at how other artists have met this challenge on the Diva's blog (click here) and, as always, any and all comments are welcomed. I'm off now to see the others and leave some comments of my own. Have a zen-ful day!

"Bringing it Back to the Old School" Diva Challenge #250

Well, here we are, already more than 2 weeks into the New Year, and I have yet to post anything.  I'm going to try to remedy that today. This week, the Diva (Laura Harms, CZT) has challenged us to do our tangles this week the "old school" way . . . that is, a WHITE 3.5" square tile, black pen, and graphite to shade. Simple and to the point. Well, it would have been simple, except my hands have not been holding my pen all that well for the last little while.  I suspect that's because it's been bitter cold here and my arthritis doesn't like the cold. I have been keeping my rice sock heated up so that I could keep my hands warm. It works pretty good, too!

Anyway, the holidays were good to us and hubby got me a couple of new sketchbooks; one tan tinted pages and the other one for mixed media, so I can try working more with my copics. Son got me a movie and cast iron cookware (the first time in my life that I have used cast iron), and I've got to say that I am really loving the cast iron stuff.

I actually have been doing a bit of sketching as well as doing the challenges when I can. I just haven't posted them all.  But here are a couple for the "Back to Basics challenge:

Tile 1
Tangles used: Aquafleur, Florz, Cadent, Flux, Tipple
Media: 3.5" white tile, black micron 01 pen, graphite pencil

Tile 2
Tangles used: Shattuck, Zinger, Onamato, Fescu, Punzel (?)
Media: 3.5" white tile, black micron pen 01, graphite pencil
Used Lily Moons string 146

I liked them both considering they took so long to do.  I had to keep stopping because my hands hurt, but I really enjoyed doing these. Much more restful than all the things I want to "try". One of these days, I actually will learn to use color effectively, and how to draw a gem, but I thoroughly enjoy just using pen and shading with pencil. Tile 2 could be so much more, especially in my haphazard zingers, but what can I say? They are there and I may redo this one one day.

But in the meantime, just enjoy all the beautiful work that has been posted on the Diva's challenge and perhaps try one of your own one day. Check out all the others here at the Diva's blog.

I always love comments, as does everyone here, so feel free to leave comments and I'm going to head on over to the Diva's place to leave comments. I've pretty much looked at them all, but haven't left comments yet.  Have a wonderful, Zen-ful day!

Diva Challenge #244 ~ Tripoli Triptastic!

Well, seems like Sunday is likely to be my new day to post. Seems like no matter how hard I try, it's usually Sunday that I make it here *giggle*. Oh well, at least I am getting here again. *grin*

First off, thank you for your kind comments on last week's attempts. It was really quite fun and I am going to have to get more motivated again to do many more. I need to apologize though, for my lack of comments made. I have looked at all of the submissions every week, and to tell the truth, I mostly don't comment because my hands hurt a great deal of the time. But I look and love each and every one of the submissions that are made. So I will try to get around earlier next week and hopefully will be able to comment more.

I need to really get going on the few Christmas cards I plan on making. Most of the handmade ones will be going to New Zealand to the Kiwi family. One of these days, I really do want to try to make it down to see where hubby grew up. I have been working on preliminary work on a few cards already but they aren't ready for publication yet.

But ... here is my submission for this week. Tripoli is not one of my favorites, but that may be because I just haven't worked with it enough. I never know what to do with it, so I normally don't bother. But following Laura's lead, I decided to try working with pink, since that just happens to be my favorite color (or at least one of them). I'm not real pleased with this effort, but it actually does have many nice features, so here it is. Any and all comments appreciated, as usual.

If you would like to see the rest of the submissions for this challenge, head on over to the Diva's Place (CLICK HERE) to see all the artist submissions. And it's really quite fun, so join in if you are so inclined.

Diva Challenge #243 ~ Just a tiny taste!

Soooo....the Diva wants us to try to do "just a tiny taste" of a tangle and leave the majority of the tile blank. I actually thought that this would be pretty easy, since I can normally come up with my major focus for a tile early and then wonder what to fill it with. But I found that it wasn't really easy to just leave it blank. It felt unfinished for the most part, but I kept trying anyway. And...miracle of miracles, I actually am getting it posted before midnight on Sunday *giggle*. Well, here they are and not too bad for the most part, so take a quick look please and any feedback is appreciated, whether it is good OR bad. Any and all criticism is always appreciated.

Tile 1:
I love the look of white on black; however, I don't have any black tiles, but I do have a lot of darker colors of cardstock that I used to use for scrapbooking, so here I have used a dark blue with my white gelly roll and a chalk pencil to highlight a bit.

White gelly roll on dark blue cardstock with chalk pencil to highlight.

Tile 2:

I honestly don't know what I was thinking with this one...at any rate it is NOT my favorite. Nothing else to say.

Black and brown microns with colored pencil and graphite
pencil to add shading.

Tile 3:

I had sketched this design a while back in my sketchbook and decided to play with it on a tile. I just thought it was a lot of fun, but that was before hubby and son saw it. They told me that I drew a very nice psychedelic banana and that it must be homage to the 70's that I seem to have a problem remembering. I told them it WAS NOT a banana, but I suspect that I will never hear the end of it now.

Black Micron with graphite shading

Tile 4:

It's a tossup between tile 1 and this one as to which is my favorite this week. My hubby is from New Zealand and the All Blacks are doing rather well, so I was looking at some of the Maori tattoos that some of the All Blacks and others were sporting. Since his family that is still back in New Zealand are such supporters of the rugby team, I thought I would try a ZIA inspired by Maori tattoos.  Hope you like it!

Brown micron on tan scrapbook paper using graphite pencil
and colored pencil to shade and white colored pencil
to highlight. This one was kind of fun!

So there it is, and I hope you enjoy. This really was much more difficult than I imagined it would be. And yes, I did go through some of the previous entries for inspiration....it helps me. So now I will have tomorrow and tonight to go through and comment on the submissions for this week.  If you haven't taken the time to look at all the wonderful submissions, then take a look and see the submissions for this week. You can see what's up over at the Diva's (CLICK HERE) and if you like a challenge, maybe you might consider joining in the fun. Have a great day and enjoy! 

Comments are always appreciated and make me happy.  Thank you!

Diva Challenge #242 ~ Gourdgeous!

Well, after Rick and Maria announced this tangle, I kept looking at it trying to decide what exactly I could do with it. To tell the truth, it honestly didn't look like something I would like to play with much. So I sat down and practiced and practiced and practiced ... and I still didn't really like it. So I played with it some more.  Here are a few of my trials with it ... they aren't bad, but it just didn't feel right to me.

Just one page of many that I tried of gourdgeous...I just
couldn't make it feel like it was mine!

So, I finally decided to just jump in and try something ... anything ... to see if I could truly like this tangle. I do love that it flows nicely (at least a few of them did). Hubby decided that they looked more like an onion until I showed him what it looked like when Maria drew it...lol. But I grabbed one of my small sketchpads and decided to see what I could do with the brown pen. It looked better to me and by the time I got it shaded and tinted, I really felt like this tangle and I could be friends.  Take a look below!

I like the way that this one turned out. I used an 005 and 01
sepia Micron, Prismacolor pencils, graphite pencil, and tried
a Tombow light grey marker for the first time. It actually does
look a bit better in person, since my camera is not a real
good one and I took the picture under flourescent light, not
daylight. But I am definitely please with this one.

I am happy that I actually managed to get this posted before midnight tonight, so now I hope to go back through all the submissions this week and leave some comments. I have looked at some of them and now I want to go and see the rest of them. 

Thank you for stopping by, and as always, any comments, feedback, criticism, or even just a "hi" is appreciated. If you want to see the rest of the submissions for the Diva's Challenge for this week, head on over to her blog (click here) and check out all the other artist's work. Perhaps you will join us soon and let us see what you do too *grin*  Thanks again for stopping.

Diva Challenge #241 ~ Stones and Ceremony

When I read that the challenge this week  had to do with stones, I remembered back to my childhood to a close friend that had a huge backyard, the back half of which was full or rocks and apple trees. We used to play with the rocks and stones for hours, making up new games and just appreciating how different they all were. This particular friend was very smart and was my first boyfriend (at age 5 no less!), so we had rock fairs in which he would decide what color and shapes we had to look for and then we would have a contest and he would award prizes. When it came to my turn to decide how we were going to play with the stones and rocks, we would make villages of stone and have all kinds of rock and stone builds set up. It was a glorious time and I never did outgrow my love for nature and stone builds. I love to take the stones in our backyard even now and try to pile them up to see if I can make something worthwhile. Not much stands anymore, but it was fun.

So when I read that guest blogger Paula Bramante wanted us to pay homage to stone cairns and ceremony, I thought of my little zen garden that I used to have at work and decided to try representing that. I'm not sure that it represented it all that well, but I quite like this piece and probably will end up framing it. This piece was originally started for something else, but I had set it aside in the hope that I would finish it at some other time. Well, it called to me to put my little zen garden inside the space in the center and I really kind of like the way it turned out.  Here it is!

"Zen Garden"
4" circular tile, black and sepia microns, graphite pencil,
light gray and light brown markers
Tangles used: Florz, Dragonair, Flux, Printemps, and
a few others I can't remember

As always, I appreciate you stopping by and visiting my blog and leaving comments if you are so inclined. I must apologize for my lack of comments posted to others' blogs lately, as I am having problems with my hands and can't really type real fast or very well lately. Please know that I have seen each and every submission that has been posted and they are ALL wonderfully done. If you haven't seen the other artists' work, check out the Diva's Blog and see all the beautiful work done for these challenges. Hope to be more interactive with all the blogs in the weeks to come. But know that I love ALL the work I have seen!

Diva Challenge #240 ~ Happy Fall

I'm a bit late posting this one...but Happy Belated Birthday Artoo! I actually did several versions of leaves to try to represent fall, but none of them managed to get finished. I kept having to stop because my hands were not liking the fall weather. Yes, we finally managed to get fall here and the temperatures have been beautiful....even the cats loved being outside. This is my oldest cat and he refused to pose for me, but at least it shows the beautiful colors that were outside on the grapevine that my neighbor so graciously grows alone my fence.

Mistoffellees enjoying the fall weather...
he's our 15 year old boy.

But I finally finished my tile and liked it so well that I decided to make it into a card to send my mother-in-law for this month's letter.  Hope you like it too!

Fall Card ~ October 2015

I used some die cuts that I had in my scrapbooking materials from a long time ago and traced them onto my tile. I used micron pens in both black and sepia to do the tangles and colors and then used some chalk for some the highlighting on the front pumpkin. Shading was done with graphite pencil for the most part. The shading around the edge of the leaves and pumpkins is done with a light gray marker. I then mounted the tile on a background piece of paper and cut a decorative edge on the corners before mounting it on a card. Then I just taped a couple of die cuts to the card to complete it. I had fun doing this one.

Thanks for stopping by and, as always, any and all comments are much appreciated. I'm afraid that I need to apologize for not leaving comments for the last few weeks. My hands have not been working well at all recently. I have actually seen all the submissions here, but I haven't been able to do a lot of writing lately. At any rate, I love seeing all the beautiful work that is being done here. 

If you want to see the other submissions, please head on over to the Diva's Place to see what is going on. Maybe you can join us there too.