My Very First Zentangle

I must confess: I took the Zombie Iolite Fringe Necklace home Saturday evening, with good intentions of working on it Sunday, but never did. Instead, I got sucked into Pinterest. I'm sure some of you know what I mean! I feel bad when I make promises to myself (in other words, when I set goals) and then don't follow through.

But Monday was Zentangle day - another promise I had made for the weekend, and here is my very first Zentangle:

I really love it - and it was fun to do.

It was advertised (in the kit I received) as taking about 15 minutes to do, but this one took me over 4 hours.

The tile (the paper it is drawn on) measures 3.5 x 3.5 inches, which is pretty small. I drew a complex string, because I wanted to try a bunch of different tangle patterns. That's me - always biting off too big a bite!

So part of my 4+ hours was finding and learning the different tangles (shown below).

Another problem I ran into was trying to fit my chosen tangle patterns into such a tiny space - I ended up making the designs too small (I had to use my optivisor to see my work!) - so that was also time consuming. Most of the designs I chose should have been much bigger.

Here is a breakdown of the tangle patterns I incorporated into my Zentangle:

2 of the tangles are labelled "TBE" - that stands for "to be edited" - I did this drawing at home yesterday, and left my list of all the patterns I used on the bedside table - so I don't have it with me. I looked up as many as I can, but will have to retrieve those 2 and edit them in, or something.

The pattern labeled "Egyptian" came from one of Suzanne McNeill's Master Class videos.

I enjoyed doing this, and there are so many more tangles I want to try! I feel so limited by the tiny tiles - I can already see I will have to go find bigger paper, so I can do bigger designs. I also need to work more with space, negative space, and working outside the lines. More goals!

Edited 6-20-12 to add names of the tangle patterns I couldn't remember yesterday.