Four Evening Pieces

I have felt strangely scared of doing more than practising new tangles in the past week or so. When I first began making tangles, I was delighted with the results but recently, I've been less impressed with what I've done. Does that mean I am more critical or less inspired...don't know.

But I enjoyed doing four tangles yesterday evening and whilst I am still not overjoyed with all of them, I have to say, the process of producing them was definitely worth it. I feel considerably more inspired now and will keep on trying.

This is me, giving it a go...

Apologies for the slightly out of focus edges, I think I could have scanned this better but it was in a bigger book that overlapped the edges of my printer....
This one is the first I did and I was practising 'Paradox' which you can see (a bit blurred) down the left hand side and the cubed effect of Cubine - which is great to do - and at the bottom, the spiky leaf and berry tangle is called 'Verdigogh' and reminds me of Christmas....more anon! There's also my first bit of Hollibaugh.

This is another curate's egg of a tangle. I was trying to do some clever paradox tangle through the middle - which sort of worked, but not perfectly. As I continued, I realised I wanted a sort of pathway effect - hence the stones along the bottom - and then thought perhaps a compass tangle - I chose 'Drupe' - might look good in the top right hand corner - but it lost something in the execution - artistic ability, I think!
I will try the idea again at some point and make the compass look more like a compass.. 

Now in this one, I felt the mojo was working a little better. 'Fengle', the star tangle is notoriously difficult to keep symmetrical, so I didn't bother to try. The curly rope pattern is one called 'Cruze' and when I added a few spheres, I thought it had quite a celestial appearance. And I rather liked it all together, even though I still need to practice 'Cruze' to really get it to work well.

And finally, the 'Verdigogh' that made me feel a bit Christmassy just had to be done in colour. I wanted a fairly simple background, but managed to mess that up a bit by missing my links somewhere in the middle....hence the rather ugly 'stumps' at the bottom!

Not wrong...you can't do it wrong...you just have to try and make it right - perhaps I could have got it 'righter'...all good experience!

Tangles for Christmas

Hot on the heels of making cards came the idea of making tangles into Christmas cards! My take isn't very original but my first attempt was a couple of cute trees with some little tangles inside them - very simple.

I was pleased with the effect of the watercolour crayons.

After that, I was sketching some 'cruffles' - another tangle that I really like doing and which seemed to lend itself to Christmas decorations. This was only ever intended as a sketch but my mum liked it so much she asked for some cards to be made from it. I saw some similar lettering on Pinterest and copied it. I keep using this style now as it's simple and effective. That lovely red paper I had was coming into its own too!

Then I saw a very complex poinsettia design somewhere - possibly on Etsy - and took the idea and simplified it and then painted it in watercolour crayon.

The really cool bit was running it through BeFunky's website to ring some changes - especially as Mum wanted lots of cards!

Firstly, I brightened up the original....














Then I toned it down to neutral colours - I went on to add gold and silver accents to this and loved the final effect

This one looks all blurry but is meant to...it's also in some great autumnal colours.





And this one adds some blue/green effects and makes the leaves really stand out.







I then decided on a couple more designs based on trees.




This one is as simple a tree as can be...in a red pot with a gold star.


And my final design so far this year is again inspired by one I saw on Pinterest, but amended to my own level of skill (!)...that is, very simple indeed, but rather sweet.











As I said, my mum was happy to take all that I'd made when she went back to England but I have done some good quality photocopies and have made a few more to add to the card collection....

September tangles

I didn't do my first tangle until the beginning of September 2013 but once I started, I couldn't stop!

I  was still in 'card' mode at this time, so made tangles that I could turn into a greetings card. Colour was important for this purpose and I began experimenting for the first time in my life with crayons, watercolours, ...paintbrushes even! And was loving it!

This one I called 'Earthpearl' - partly because I thought the four 'Betweed' shapes looked rather like bandaged earthworms burrowing in or out of a tub of pearl shapes...nothing elegant or glamorous about it!

This one was - and possibly still is - one of my favourites EVER. I called it 'Stard' because of the star shape and there's nothing I don't like about it. It makes me feel like an artist when I look at it. It doesn't get any better than that...it really doesn't.

Continuing on the card theme, I did three more coloured tangles that are quite tiny and sweet. Unfortunately, they are both badly photographed and dreadfully mounted! There are still such a lot of things to learn.

As I was doing the first one, it felt as though I was being inspired by a friend of mine. This one was definitely for her.

And it's called 'Sammee'

In this one, I was practising the tangle that has ended up along the bottom edge and the lacy garter pattern along the top. You can probably see which are some of my favourite shapes now. I'm particularly fond of the one I call 'Moomin' - balloony, leafy shapes with little curls around the edges. They crop up everywhere.. 

This is a less elegant combination, I feel. I call it 'Tiger Horns' for fairly obvious reasons but I don't like the colouring and the clashing of orange and blue, but it was another good one to practice new tangles and I spent more time on the colouring on the horn pattern to get better depth.
Awful positioning on the backing card...

And all this time, I had a growing collection of sketches in my notepad...

I was hooked!