Molly Bee's Attic

This week's Diva Challenge is to do a tile, in the style of your choosing, to celebrate Chinese New Year on Thursday.  This year is the Year of the Goat, or the Year of The Sheep, depending on who you ask.  I love both goats and sheep but I can draw a better sheep so that's the one I picked. Throw in a couple of Chinese Lanterns among the tangles and it didn't take me long. Especially since it's only artist trading card size. Fun! It was good to work on a smaller sized piece since I have been working on a 3' by 2' piece for a couple of weeks now.  I got a hugantic piece of beautiful rice paper and laid it on the kitchen table.  You know how some people have a table with a jigsaw puzzle going all the time?  Same concept only no puzzle, just a big piece of paper to doodle a way at when I have a few (or a lot) of minutes to spare. Doesn't look that big in the pic, but it seems huge compared to the stuff I usually work on which can be as small as 1.5"...

Is was a cold and blustery day here in Madison   High winds causing white out conditions from the skiff of snow we got last night and -30 wind chill factors. I had to be out and about in it because I had an oil change appt. at 9AM. It was nearly impossible to get out of bed as I lay listening to the wind howl outside. So I decided that since I was going to be halfway to it anyway, I would drop into Olbrich Gardens for a little mid-winter tropical therapy. The parking lot was chock-a-block full when I got there at 10AM and I almost turned the car around and headed right back home since the best available space was quite a distance from the door, but I sucked it up and went in anyway. Come to find out, the reason that it was so crowded was that there was a fine arts craft show going on! I spent a few minutes looking at all of the pretties; pottery, weaving, paintings and jewelry before I went into the conservatory. BONUS!!! When I went to get a ticket to go inside...

This weeks Diva Challenge was a duo tangle. Laura gave us two tangle patterns:  Chebucto vs.  Copada , both by one of my favorite CZT's, Margaret Bremner. If you click on the pattern names it will take you to her website where she does the step-outs. I vaguely remember trying Chebucto before but not Copada so it was fun to do two patterns that I was unfamiliar with.  The tile turned out a little busy but I had fun with it anyway. I've had good  news lately. On Monday I won first prize at the Promega Art Show with 'Ghost In The Barn: It came with a cash prize and then I sold the drawing the same day! Cool!  I also attended the Wisconsin Zentangle Artist Coalition meeting last Saturday. We had a great meeting; lots of tips, tricks and beautiful work to see. It's great to network with other like-minded artists. It also makes you realize how far you have to go when you see some of the beautiful work that others are putting out there. I know tha...

I can't believe the Diva has offered us up 200 challenges! I have done them all, some of them after the fact and unposted, but they are all in my portfolio. I love these challenges. I love to create them, but the best part is seeing how so many people, given the same instructions, can come up with so many different interpretations. It's amazing! I also enjoy Laura's blog . She has the cutest kidlets EVAH, and she takes us through the journey of her days with humor and style.  So HAPPY 200th Laura! Thanks so much for everything you do! We Love ya! Happy 200th with Nzepple!

Haven't been doodling much lately. The Diva took a couple of weeks off of challenges, the holidays were busy and we've been playing copious amounts of Qwirkle in the evenings (I am SO addicted to that game) so I have good excuses! :-) Decided to take a few minutes and do the challenge this week which was to use the tangle 'hitched', which is the design that goes through the middle.  I liked it and had been wanting to try the twig one in the upper left too.  It was fun to kick back with a pen again. The holidays have been wonderful. We didn't have any snow until a couple of days ago and for the most part the weather was temperate so I got lots of walking and sunshine in-especially on the Christmas weekend itself. The tables have turned now and it's below zero with wind chills WAY below zero, but it's par for the course in Wisconsin in January, I discovered a system of walking trails in the field and woods by my house and am kind of hoping for some sn...

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...