Artoo’s “Beads of Courage” from his fist year.
[If you’ve never heard of Zentangle, start here.]
This week the Zentangle Diva, Laura Harms, challenged us to produce a tile with the prompt of “Beads of Courage”. This program “supports kids with chronic or life threatening illnesses and their families.” These children face many years of medical tests and procedures, often painful ones. Instead of stickers or sweets for being “brave”, the children receive a glass bead.
Laura reports that her young four year old son, Artoo, now understands what the beads
represent. She said, “After his last hospitalization [last month] he wore his Beads of Courage every day and would tell me what each bead meant and how he was so brave”. Laura shared a photo of his impressive stash of colorful beads from just the first year of Artoo’s life. When he looks at them, he is proud of how brave he was and is.
Inspired by Laura’s photo, I dipped my big toe into the world of color. Those “x’s” in my zendala are actually composed of multiple “beads”. Unfortunately, I used fine point Sharpies which tend to bleed on the Mother Ship Zendala rounds. Oh well.
The outermost ring of my Zendala is a tangle I “may” have invented. I shared it with the CZT Facebook group and so far no one has said it has already been “invented”. Does anyone seeing it here recognize it as an already “certified” tangle? If no one does, I’ll work on naming it and submitting it with the step outs.
Now I’m off to check out everyone else’s beads.
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
The bleeding of the colors do not show at all. The overall effect is smooth and the painted mandala looks lovely.
Perhaps you could use a white gel pen to make the beads look more round again. It’s a lovely detailed tile as it is. I love using “Paradox”. 🙂
That sounds like a good idea.
Your Zendala is wonderful! And I love the color. 🙂 If you hadn’t mentioned the bleeding colors I would not have know because it doesn’t show. Good job!
Wow, Suzanne, this zendala is gorgeous!!! I love the way it is detailed and full of color.
Hi Suzanne, On screen I can’t see the bleeding, so no need to worry about that. I think your design is lovely and the evenness you have achieved with both Paradox and Betweed is impressive. You’re going to have to stop denigrating your own work, Suzanne, this is goooood.
I’m working on the “stop denigrating our own work” thing. Thanks for the pep talk.
this ist a beautiful zendala 🙂
Hiya Suzanne!! How have you been? 🙂
I admire your use of colour! And I agree with Maggibee – stop criticizing your work!! I like the outcome very much. It reminds me of a suncatcher crossed with a gumball machine (if that were possible!) 😛 😛
Cheers.
D.
Thanks for weighing in all the way from Singapore, Debbie. Remember, in Zentangle anything is possible, so “suncatcher crossed with a gumball machine”? —- sure, why not?
I think I meant ‘dreamcatcher’ sorry 😛 I need my caffiene 😛 P.S. Weighing in from Singapore is easy, always happy to do so… as long as I don’t need to do the 30 hour transit!!
Your zendala turned out beautifully, and I love your border tangle. It doesn’t look familiar to me, so I hope you can create step outs! Kind of reminds me of SOS.
Thank you, Lucy. I have the step outs. I’ll run them by the CZT group to see if they need to be modified before I share the tangle and step outs more generally.
Suzanne, this is breathtakingly beautiful. The bleed isn’t even noticeable and even if it was—wouldn’t that just add character? I still think your new tangle is unique. Time to give it a name and step-outs!
I just keep looking at your zendala over and over again. It’s beautiful!
Love your zendala. The colors add a nice touch to the background !
I have tried leaving a message 3 times before but I think maybe my website wasn’t right 🙂 🙂 I love your Beads of Courage!! It looks like carved wood and the color really makes it pop!! I have never seen your tangle – I think it is new … and look forward to using it … (just my style). Just lovely!!
~ Diane Clancy
http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog/2015/06/my-diva-beads-of-courage-challenge-entry
I LOVE your tile!! Gorgeous!
Your Zendala is awesome, Suzanne. Beautifully colored, and wonderfully designed. I love your “Outer-Ring Pattern.” It sure looks unique to me.
I forgot to mention that I love color! I actually have a hard time not adding color to my tangles. The one I just did for the challenge is rare- black and white
Beautiful Zendala.
I think this is one of the most detailed and symmetrical piece I have seen you do. Nice work. Like the all the color beads in contrast to the Renaissance tile and the other line work. Your outer border tangle looks really like this.
Suzanne, I love this tile! I know you are usually with me in the color-phobic camp, so this is a big deal! Beautiful! I really love your new tangle, and I don’t think I have seen anything like it before. It has a sort of SOS construction to it, but not sure if that name has been used for something else or if it actually fits your concept. I love it because it is graceful without being flowery. (I’m not a flower girl, really) Anyway, your colors are vibrant (forget the little “flaws” – no matter!), and your work is just wonderful!
It’s gorgeous! I still don’t have a good feel for starting a zendala.
Lovely!
It is how it is meant to be. It is beautiful. That was a *lot* of work! (but PS…I never use Sharpies…last time I tried them I had a raging headache for hours!)
Now you tell me…….;-)
Wow … what a beautiful and well-balanced zendala! Wonderful colours … look wonderful on the Renaissance paper.
Dear Suzanne, Thanks for the kind words. I think you did a fine job of using the Sharpies, they are my favorite tool for anything, not just drawing. Surely there are finer materials to choose from, but if the choice is to wish for fancy pens and sit wanting or to use what at hand and make art, the decision is easy. I, too, shy away from color and am trying to break out of the mold. Baby steps. Have a brilliant day! c
This is beautiful, Suzanne…I’ve tried using color, but the results are always kind of…meh. Maybe I need to take some of Maggibee’s advice too? ^_^ I love, love, love your Rick’s Paradox…I’m not sure why, but I really just can’t stand drawing it myself. And I can never figure out how to incorporate it into anything…and it never looks all that great anyways…and yeah, I should probably stop “ranting” about it now. I’m prone to do that. ^_^ On your possibly-new-tangle…I think I might have seen it somewhere on Flickr, but it’s certainly not on tanglepatterns.com, so you probably have something. It’s really pretty and airy – I love it! ^_^ And, holy mother of whatever-I’ll-invoke-today this is a long comment. I’ll leave now ^_^
Glorious Zendala! I am obsessed by these myself at the moment so have been taking a good close look and I like it very much indeed. The little bead tangle around the edge is very pleasing. Axxx
Oh neat! It reminds me of a pile of perler beads, and I love the curly, twisty beaded line around the edge of your zendala. Great job! Fun to look at and bright with color.