Molly Bee's Attic

This week's Diva Challenge was right up my alley! During the busy hustle-bustle of the holidays, Laura encouraged us to just Keep It Simple for our tile this week. This was left open to interpretation as to whether you would  do a simple string, or some of the more simple tangles. I decided, no strings, no deciding which pattern would go best where. I would just do a tile of a new tangle I had seen and wanted to try ( Cirque by Chris Gerstner ). No sting. One Tangle Pattern. Simple. It is about as far away from an 'official' Zentangle as you can get and it's not much of a looker but it sure was relaxing, just when I needed it most. Apparently I was so relaxed that I fell asleep taking the picture and so it's all crookedy!  I aim to go back in at a later date and fill in the background but for now, it's...well...simple! Sincere thanks to Laura for another amazing challenge. This one really hit the spot at this time of year. Thanks for the pleasant 30 m...

I walked in the back door last night and the house was flooded with red flashing lights. I ran outside and there were men on ladders, on my roof and the neighbor's roof. Before I had a stroke, my neighbor yelled that it was a false alarm. Seems two girls out playing in the' hood noticed 'smoke' coming from my neighbor's roof. Being responsible citizens, they called 911 and then ran to his house and told him his house was on fire. He explained that the smoke was steam from the dryer vent and turned off his dryer to show them. By then, four fire trucks had arrived and my neighbor explained what had happened. They thanked the girls for looking out for their neighbors and said that while they were all there, they would run some ladder practice drills. That's about the point where I walked in from the garage and was sure it was the end of times. I don't think that Ben and Cooper's eyeballs have gone back to normal size yet! Mine either. Never a dull moment a...

Yesterday was a long, difficult day so I was pleased as punch to sit down with a couple of tiles and work on the Diva's Challenge for this week. Laura is back after a short sabbatical and her tangle this week was to use the newest Zentangle pattern 'Arukas', designed by Molly Hollibaugh. (See below.) A clever person at our Zentangle Artist's Coalition meeting realized that 'Arukas' is 'Sakura' (the name of the pens we use to Zentangle) backwards! This tangle has lots of possibilities. I made it BIG in the first tile.  And smaller in the second tile.  I wish I had doodled at the table like I usually do, but I was hunkered in the fetal position in the corner of my cozy nest with my snugglie woobie due to an excruciating Monday, so my lines are a lot wonkier than I'd like, but I LOVE the new pattern!  Thanks for another great challenge, Laura, and a great new pattern Molly!

I must admit when I first heard that the good Zentangle folks had put out a new  2" x 2" sized tile, my first thought was, 'Well what would you do with that? That's too small to do anything with!' So listen up, People, because this doesn't happen very often....I WAS WRONG. That's right. I said it.  I won a tin of tiles and they were kicking around and kicking around. On Saturday, the perfect storm brewed. I hurt my back which slowed me down considerably. Whilst on the coach, snuggling with my bag of frozen corn, I had time to watch a multi-part video  AnnDoodles  posted to Facebook. I encourage you to go to her blog and look at her work; so much detail! The videos were  time lapsed- showing how she makes her beautiful work.  I decided to give it a shot, but just a little one and dug out the Bijou tiles. I figured I'd give it at least 2 inches and see how I liked it. ME LIKEY! VERY MUCH! Both the tiles and the technique! This was my f...

Today's Diva Challenge is by guest blogger, Sandy Hunter. Little Artoo is still on the mend and Laura's pinch hitters are really stepping up to the plate! The theme is 'Turning Old Into New',  taking a tangle pattern you always use and using it in a new way. I use Sanibel and the flowers (can't remember name) in the grid a lot, but never in a grid- always free form.  Demi (the black and white squares on the left are supposed to be in a grid, so I took them out. Tipple (the bubbles) I use as a filler but not a border and Perk (what I think of as a seed pod) usually has all of it's seed intact instead of flying all over. This was a thought provoking exercise. I found it very uncomfortable to do which tells me this will be a great thing to investigate further! Thanks Sandy for the awesome challenge!

Over at The Diva's Place  little Artoo is having some surgery, so Laura has put a crack team of guest Zentanglers on the job of putting up the challenge every week for the next month. This week's was by Chris LaTourneau and was to use the tangle 'Seton'.  It's a new one to me but I enjoyed it. I made it into an RAZ  and added it to my stash. Seton is the pattern with the ring toward the right hand side.  One of the objectives of INKtober was to  study the evolution of your art over a month and see if you can see progress, patterns or evolution in your work. I decided to put thumbnails of  all of the pieces together to make this a little easier.  Upon review of the lot of them, I have come to the conclusion that I am a schizophrenic with more personalities than Sybil, am on crack, and quite possibly may have been abducted and altered by aliens.  After the first week I consiously tried to not to use the lower left to upper right arc in e...

INKtober 27 This was for a friend who asked me to put this saying on a card for her fridge. It has a lot of pink sparkley on it but but the picture of it is poor. INKtober 28 I printed off a piece of triangle graph paper and just started filling in the triangles with Paradox during a dept meeting. I took it home that night and shaded it. Then I submitted it the next day as the notes I took during the meeting. Some team meetings are so sciencey that I tend to black out if I try to figure out WTH they are talking about. Doodling keeps me conscious.  Inktober 29 This week's Diva Challenge was to use only the pattern 'Betweed'. I used my new Helix circle and angle making drafting tool and still managed to make them not round. More practice required! Today's was a quicky at lunch since I have a party tonight. My last dyed Zen tile. It was mostly pale yellow so it doesn't show up well. It looks really wonky in this photo but it's not as crooked...

This week's Diva Challenge 191 is a monotangle.  You can only use the tangle pattern 'Betweed'. I was kind of rushed since I also had to make deviled eggs for tonight's Halloween Pot Luck so the shading is all wonky.  I used my new Helix Angle and Circle maker tool for the first time and can see lots of potential once I learn to use it correctly. Look at the second circle from the left on the top.   [Who can't make a circle with a plastic tool shaped like an actual circle designed to make actual circles? *Waves hand wildly in the air* Me! Me!] The tangle was fun to do. I used Betweed quite a lot in my other tangles. But I'm not happy with the overall design since it was so rushed. The deviled eggs came out much better! Happy Halloween!!!

This is an archive of my entries for INKtober last week: I've had a rough sketch of this idea sitting around for a while so I finally decided to tackle it. It might lend itself to being a bigger version with some color in the future.  It was drawn as a RAZ to leave for someone to find.  This one was submitted to the Diva Challenge for breast challenge even though it isn't very Zentangley, it's very pink! I'm digging my new Jelly Roll pens. I see now that I need to fix the tail wings up a bit! I had seen images similar to these on tattoo sites on line so I combined two of my favorite on a piece of paper I dyed last spring. I like it and think I will try to do a bigger version on a pretty piece on scrap book paper. Found a 'How to Draw a Cat' tutorial on line and decided to give it a whirl. don't think that this  Zepple variation (the background pattern) works very well on an arced grid. The background was hand dyed. This will be...

This week's 'Diva Challenge'  was to use pink for breast cancer. Laura's (the Diva) grandmother passed last year of bc and I've had several friends who have fought the battle. I'm happy to say that the majority of them won the war but sadly not all. Cancer in ANY form is a horrendous disease. It affects not only the person fighting it but everyone who loves them.  I know this design isn't technically a 'Zentangle' but the first thing that came to mind was a butterfly for hope that one day, hopefully soon, no one will have to ever deal with this horror again! I also submitted this doodle for my INKtober entry because I didn't have as much time to draw as I thought last night and didn't get a chance to make two designs. I looked out my window at suppertime and the neighborhood was full of smoke. I heard LOTS of sirens so I put on my jacket and sneaks and went to see what was going on.  So did the rest of my neighborhood. I've n...

Here's the stuff I did for last week's INKtober entries. Most of my stuff is little so I can leave it places for my Random Acts of Zentangle or Art Abandonment groups, but this first one is 12" x 12". I made it in Katie Butler's Halloween Zentangle class over at Lynn's Craft Shop in Madison. Katie is an awesome teacher with lots of fun idea for Zentangle Inspired Art. This was all white ink on black paper and then highlighted with Zen Stone  which is a soft mineral stone. Therefore, I got a ton of weird glare when I took this photo. Come of it showed up like up at the top and some didn't show up at all, like at the bottom. I guess that makes it more spooky.  I like to work on 12 x 12 scrapbooking paper because it's so inexpensive and easy to frame.  I found a couple more little scraps of the paper I dyed last spring.  This quote has been bouncing around in my head for a while and I had wanted to try the border motif which I saw elsewhere...

I got the loveliest birthday gift this year. Those of you playing along at home know that I was recently reunited with four birth siblings earlier this year. Unfortunately but fortunately, we found each other through youngest sister, Shelly's obituary but I was thrilled to meet, Doris, Dina and Dan when I was home this summer. We've stayed close by phone and online but I was totally not expecting the gift they sent. It was a box with an 'open this end' message written on it. Inside was a note that said, "Give the dog and cat their presents and open the tissues, then open the next three boxes in order." Sure enough there was a jingle ball for Cooper (which he immediately picked up and disappeared with) and a pull rope for Ben (which he settled down to blissfully chew) and a box of Kleenex. The next three boxes contained 48 birthday cards; one for every birthday we have spent apart. Dina took ages one through 17. Some cards were homemade and some were age appr...

This week's drawings were supposed to be a departure from my usual drawings, and they were for the most part. I tried to be conscious about not putting that diagonal band in every one. But mostly they came from a nightmarish place of oxygen deprivation and cold medicine 'Michael Likes Flamingos'  Had a piece of pink card stock. Had recently been to the zoo with friends. Michael was looking for flamingo feathers outside the enclosure. He said he already had two. It had never occurred to me to look for them before. I will now! The game is on! I kind of like this one, I must have had a moment of clarity. Oh I wish I could! Bookmark. Didn't shade it. Too drugged. What?!? Totally phoned this one in. Tried to make up for the 'cheater' ones. Wish I had been more conscious of the empty space on the left and right of the diamond-way uneven. This was my head yesterday before I got the really good drugs-sharp pointed edges in an airle...

I have a cold. My nose is stuffy, my eyes feel ready to burst, my throat is killing me and I don't have much, if any, voice. It's been a week. I am ready to be over this. But all people get colds and I understand that. I, however, do think I should get some special consideration for having to put up with the flak I have to take from my family of 'friends' who delight in making fun of my misery. Yesterday, I went through Culver's drive though with a friend to get supper. You order at the outside speaker, pull around to the window on the side of the building, they give you your drink and a plastic doohickey with your number on it to put on your window. Then they ask you to pull ahead and in a couple of minutes they bring your food out, match it to the doohickey and trade you for it. It all went swimmingly until I pulled ahead and realized that the guy hadn't given me a plastic doohickey, but I figured they'd sort it out. I was right, pretty soon a lady comes...

This week's Diva Challenge couldn't have happened at a better time!  It was to create a tile with an LGBT theme for 'National Coming Out Day' next Saturday October 11th. She suggested using rainbow colors or tangles that started with the letters L-G-B-T. Hmmmm... I was ruminating on how to tackle this yesterday when word came in that The Supreme Court refused to get involved in the same-sex marriage debate, thus legalizing same sex unions in 19 states with more to come!  This is a topic that means a lot to me. I have many LGBT friends and have wished this for them forever! I have been banging my 'You-love-who-you-love-and-family-is-who-you-say-it-is' drum since before I could articulate it! Many of my gay friends have longer lasting and healthier relationships than my hetero friends! Here's to  recognition of that and equality for all! On top of that, THIS happened! These came in the mail yesterday! 64 brand new colored pen! Some are shiny! Some are...