MySwing reloaded

I am very proud of my tangle MySwing which has been published on tanglepatterns.com in December, 2016. It was my first tangle at this site and the special blogpost has been visited 16.859 times already! I did not expect that at all and I thank you all who like to draw MySwing.

During the last weekend I played a little bit with this tangle and found some new possibilities of drawing MySwing :

How to draw a MySwing Flower

This is a sketch with an idea only with pencil on a sheet of my notepad. I did not have my tangle tools available...

Zentangle ProjectPack#09 finished!

In April we had the opportunity to take part to a beautiful new Video Project by Zentangle HQ- accompanied by ProjectPack09.
It was announced as a Spring project and so it was no surprise that the main color of the project is GREEN!
Normally, I am not a great lover of green, but this project was so full of spring power like I can watch daily in the nature- just beautiful.

This time I was too late to get the Project Pack with the original materials, so I decided to draw with my glass pen and Ecoline watercolor inks instead of the Sakura Micron pens which came along with the material pack.
I loved working with this inks and enjoyed the brightness of them!

After finishing the wonderful 6 tiles (I admit I drew some more, because I could not stop...) I completed them to a Mosaic and sticked it on a black Opus tile. After some embellishments with a light green Gelly Roll (Moonlight 06 from PP#08) I framed my Opus tile. And I am happy with the result:

Just before I sticked the tiles on the Opus tile I combined them to another Mosaic with 7 Zendalas.
In the center I drew another Zendala. I arranged them in three several ways:

The string I created using the absolutely amazing "Markus Operandus" . This is a great tool to create strings on Zendalas and other tiles. What an idea! And how generous by Rick and Maria to give us all the opportunity to download it from their website!

For those of you who feel inspired by this project and did not start yet I attach he link to the Project Pack 09 videos as well as for the download of Markus Operandus 

In Europe the Project Pack can be purchased from the Tanglekunst Shop

Walk through my hometown and a new tangle "Egganddart"

Currently we live in a crazy time- the Corona virus has influenced the daily life all over the world and has caused lock- downs.

In Saxony, where I live, we have had some weeks to stay at home (and we have still...), with little exceptions for a walk, for instance.

So we got really new views of our home town and nearby surrounding.

My husband and me spent a holiday week at home- with some walks around our home.

Normally, our hometown Dresden is crowded with lots of tourists and now we have our city only for us. It feels a bit surreal.

During a walk through the historic city of Dresden one Sunday evening we took some photos of our beautiful city.

At the "Georgentor", a part of our castle, I explored a beautiful pattern which fascinated me :

Later I learned that this pattern is a very old Iconic pattern which has been used for ages in the architecture. Here you can see some examples which I found in the web:

The pattern is known as "egg and dart"

At the following days I made some sketches of this pattern and finally I deconstructed it as a tangle.

Here I am going to present you my tangle "EGGANDDART":

Like the original pattern comes in lots of variations the tangle can be varied in many different ways.

I show you some possibilities here:

And finally - this is my step out:

I hope that you like it as I do and wish you a lot of fun while trying it out!

Take care! Stay at home and stay healthy. 

I am looking forward to see some of your interpretations of "Egganddart".

5th Blog anniversary! 300 posts! 2000 comments! Homework instead of Zentangle Class...

Man muss die Feste feiern, wie sie fallen / Today any reason to celebrate is a good reason.

Gerade als ich einen neuen Blogpost schreiben wollte, ist mir bewusst geworden, dass dies mein 300. Beitrag wird/ist!! 

Nicht nur das: außerdem feiert mein Blog „SimTangle“ bereits seinen fünften Geburtstag - unglaublich!
Als ich mit Zentangle und diesem Blog angefangen habe, hätte ich mir niemals träumen lassen, dass es auch fünf Jahre später noch so viele tolle, und regelmäßige Leserinnen und Leser gibt - dafür bin ich euch sehr dankbar!! 

Im Blog konntet ihr alle meine Zentangle-Stationen miterleben: 

Der erste Beitrag hier Anfang 2015, meine Reise nach Providence um CZT zu werden 2016 und auch meine ersten eigenen Workshops in Dresden, 2017. 

Immer mit dabei: ihr! Dafür möchte ich mich ganz herzlich bei euch bedanken!!

Für fast 180.000 Besuche auf diesem Blog aus 117 Ländern dieser Erde und (noch ein Jubiläum!) für 2007 motivierende Kommentare!

Für eure Begeisterung, die ich bei all meinen  bisher 38 Zentangle Kursen erleben durfte und dass sich viele von euch immer wieder zu meinen Kursen anmelden!

DANKE.

Just now, when I started to writing this post I realized :

This is my 300th post on this Blog!
Additionally it is the 5th anniversary of my blog "SimTangle"!

These last 5 years and 300 posts show my way on the Zentangle journey.
I did my very first steps at the beginning of 2015,
I went to Providence to become a Certified Zentangle Teacher in 2016 and 
I started teaching Zentangle in my hometown, Dresden, in 2017.

I am happy about the almost 180.000 visits on my blog from 117 countries all over the world and  2007 comments full of motivation. 

Until now I have taught 38 classes up to now and I am very proud to have many students who come to my classes whenever they can...

This is the time for me to say THANK YOU to all my students and blog readers.

Kommen wir zur Gegenwart / To the present

Wir erleben derzeit ganz komische Zeiten. Das Coronavirus hat das öffentliche Leben auf der ganzen Welt lahm gelegt, soziale Kontakte sind weitestgehend verboten. Und doch: ich habe einmal mehr realisiert, was für ein unglaubliches Geschenk die internationale Zentangle-Community ist. Denn: zwar dürfen Workshops nicht mehr stattfinden, aber online können wir uns dennoch täglich treffen und austauschen. So haben z.B. einige spanische CZTs angefangen, täglich bei Instagram einen Zentangle-Unterricht zu streamen. Alle können teilnehmen, egal wo auf der Welt, entweder live oder innerhalb von 24 Stunden nach dem Stream - das ist eine Entwicklung, die mich wirklich begeistert!

Nachfolgend drei Tiles, die bei einigen dieser Livestreams entstanden sind (siehe unten)

The earth seems to stand still at the moment. Due to the Corona virus all social activities have been banned, our lives take place at home and in social isolation in order to slow down the pandemy.
During a Riis like this you realize which kind of gift the Zentangle method and the Zentangle  community really is: we stand together and stay connected through social media such as Instagram.
Some Spanish CZT have organized DAILY online Zentangle classes via Instagram. Everyone can join this online classes and people from all over the world meet there and tangle together.
What a story!
Even if you are not able to join the lessons live they stay online for 24 hours to watch and tangle later. 

The following three tiles were inspired by such online classes:Attached I show you three tiles which I created inspired by these classes:

1. online class taught by Maria Tovar (Instagram: @elultimotangle)

2. online class taught by Pilar Pulido (Instagram: @zentrarte)

3. online class taught by Os Bursan (Instagram: @erix702000_czt)

Hausaufgaben statt Zentangle Workshop / Homework instead if Organic Class

Eigentlich hatte ich für gestern meinen eigenen Workshop vorbereitet. In sechs Stunden wollte ich mit acht Teilnehmerinnen wunderschöne, organische Tiles erschaffen. Leider, aber vernünftigerweise, wurde der Termin verschoben. 

Um die anderen dennoch ein bisschen zu inspirieren, habe ich ihnen „Hausaufgaben“ aufgegeben: ich habe sie gebeten, mein neustes Tangle „Tulipa“ zu nehmen und ihre eigenen Kreationen zu erschaffen. Hier seht ihr einige der Arbeiten, die sie mir zurück gesendet haben. Ich bin unglaublich stolz, wie toll sich alle in das Muster eingedacht haben, und freue mich unglaublich, dass auch hier wieder so viele tolle, individuelle und unterschiedliche Ergebnisse rausgekommen sind. 

Yesterday I was supposed to teach a 6hour's class with 8 students.
I had some beautiful organic tiles planned. Obviously the workshop had to be postponed.
Instead I asked my students to do a little homework.
As my tangle TULIPA has been released on TanglePatterns.com two weeks ago I asked them to get creative and draw one or more Tulipa tiles themselves.
Here are some of the tiles the others created:

Elke: wunderbare grafische Bearbeitung!

Elke: ganz zart im "Lagenlook"

Elke: zart, blumig, Frühling!

Maike: mit den neuen Gelly Rolls auf 3Z - das ergibt ein tolles Mosaik!

Manja: starke Farben! wie das leuchtet!

Manja: Mit Diva Dance und Crescent Moon: Tanz in den Frühling

In diesem Sinne: Bleibt gesund und danke, dass ihr mein Herzensprojekt „SimTangle“ schon so lange und so fleißig unterstützt! 

On that note let me close this post by saying:
Stay safe and healthy and thank you again for supporting me during the last five years

Relaxagons!

Here is the documentation of my Zentangle class with "Relaxagons" which I run end of January.

Relaxagons are hexagonal shaped tiles. 

Marguerite Samama, CZT from Netherlands, introduced these tiles. You can get them and belonging tutorials on her Etsy shop ("Happytangling").

You can create amazing mosaics with Relaxagons. 

I have created some of them virtually (copied one and arranged in a mosaic).  

In my class we had enough real tiles to create beautiful mosaics.

As a service for you I attach here the list of used materials and some advices and step outs - so you can tangle them if you like.

We used the following materials:

2 Relaxagon tiles, w

white, by Marguerite

1 hexagon tile, cut from a grey Zendala tile

Sakura Micron "PN" (dark blue, burgundy, black)

Charcoal light blue, burgundy, white

The first tile:

The second tile:

 The third tile 

Some more of my Relaxagon tiles , with virtual mosaics