My latest grandchild has arrived...

Landon James Davis finally made his appearance at 3:58 pm yesterday, October 16. 2013.  Just like his mama, he apparently also believes in being 'fashionably late' as he was due on the 12th.   Landon is the newest of 5 grandchildren, 3 boys and 2 girls.

He weighed 6 lbs 13 oz, exactly what his big sister, Lilyana, weighed at birth, but he's longer, at 19.5 inches.  He definitely has a healthy set of lungs on him because when he's ticked off, you know about it!  He makes the sweetest little squeaks and mews as you hold him - even when he's asleep.

Nana is in love again...

This one was fun (and two other tiles, too)

Did this one in the slow time at work last night.  I'm still practicing shading and it didn't come out quite what I wanted, but I still like the tile.

Below are two that I also did at work, over the past few days.  One of my customers is now calling me 'The Designer' - too funny!

I'm not at ALL happy with the shading on that second tile and I'm not so crazy about the Tipple, either.  The center of the design, tangled with Paushalov, looked great before I added shading or the Tipple background, so I'm going to try to recreate that look and do it differently at some point.

Paradox Tangle Play

Paradox is one of my favorite tangles so far so I did another monotangle using it, then did some shading.  I have to practice with shading again as I tend to overdo them, so I deliberately kept the shadows at a minimum on this.

Diva Challenge 140

This week's challenge was to do a tile with nothing but pointillism (using only tiny dots).  This has never been a favorite technique of mine, but I have to admit that by the time I finished this tile, I can see where this effect could be perfect for certain things.

I normally only do one piece for the challenges each week, but I may try another for this one since I finished early in the week for a change.

Ben Kwok Kitten

This is the current week's template from Ben Kwok.  I am pretty pleased with it, overall.  I tried to use as many tangles as I could without it looking terrible and I ended up using 11 patterns, plus a bit of filler doodles like lines and dots.  The swirly squiggles that I used across the face and atop the feet is something I just came up with.  I'm not sure if there is an official pattern name for it or not. It's kind of like Printemps, but not so structured.

The 11 patterns used (in the order I used them): Bateek, Verve, Por Fin (modified), Ticking, Paushalov, Beelight, Dansk, Ragz, Bales, Tipple and Chillon.

Tangle Play

As I continue to experiment and learn new patterns, I have pieces that I like and pieces that I don't.  I guess that's to be expected.  Most of the time, I seem to like my work when it's planned, rather than when I just start tangling.  Since that rather defeats the true purpose of tangling, I'm going to continue to work on letting myself go with the flow.

This first one was a true Zentangle, although slightly larger than an official tile.  Of course, I just had to add color to it, but I think I liked it better without the color this time.  I'll have to start saving pieces before I add color, like I've seen other people do.

This next one was done in true Zentangle fashion - starting with a string and just going with the flow.  I used a brown pen, instead of black, mainly because I only have the one black Micron and I don't want it to run out before I get a chance to obtain more.

So far, my go-to tangles have been Onamato, Bales and Paradox.  I wonder if that will hold true as I learn more patterns.

Diva Challenge #139

The Diva challenge for this week was to play with 8's Parte Dos, a really cool pattern from Jane Eileen of SeeJaneRun blog.  Jane Eileen is a CZT and she's created a whole series of patterns from her original 8's pattern.  You can see the step-outs for this pattern on her blog here, as well as the step-outs for the others in the series.

I have a hard time experimenting with only one thing at a time, so I also just had to play with color and shading at the same time.  While I'm not totally happy with this piece, I can live with it.

Zendala Dare #76

I had fun using my new Micron color pen set last night.  I need a lot of practice to get back the control that I used to have when I was always drawing (almost 30 years ago!).  The biggest reason I don't have the control I want is that I try to go too fast.  I need to re-learn to slow things down and be more deliberate.

It was nice to use color, but the green Micron doesn't look like green to me.  The Serpentine pattern in the octagon and the Ennies in the center were done with green, but they look more like light blue or blue-green to me.