I love tangling! Sandra Strait has been using her bleed-thru journal pages and making some great works of art. She uses a lot of marker....which I do not. My problem with my pages arrives from smudging of the color pencil and pencil on the opposite page of my journal. I have previously hated to use these pages but decided to try and be more inventive.....like Sandra. The result is these three pieces. I find I am really enjoying the effort and am happy with the results....plus I feel less wasteful.  My husband will be happy when I do not have to purchase a new journal every month or so.

So this morning I woke up to the new challenge. I love Mondays because I have a new direction in tangling. It is like I recieve the present of newness each and every time. It is fun anticipating what Laura will come up with next. My first attempt at a stripes string is just that, stripes,.....traditionally done. My next attempt will be a bit more inventive. However, for now this is what I came up with.

Today one more of my children will graduate from High School. I am looking forward to family coming and the fun of grad night which is an all night-er for me. I get the run the mechanical bull tonight......now that seems a bit out of my comfort zone but I'll give it a good try. 

I have been enjoying my rotring pen. It is fun to just sit and tangle. It facilitates line work and experimentation. When I begin a tangle I never know where it will take me. One thing I love to have in one of my ZT's is depth. Sometimes I am able to get that with shading.....sometimes with squirkling, and others with color. There are other times I just use pen work. However  it comes, I am always happy when it works out.

Laura gave us a string to work from.....it is fun not to have to think about strings once in a while.  Thank you Laura! I am excited to see what happens when we all use the same string!

I missed the news last night but this morning heard of the tornado in Joplin, Missouri. I have wonderful memories of the Joplin area. The hospital which was hit so hard harbored my family in safety several times. The Home Depot supplied many of the materials we used while building our home. I watched my daughter play volleyball  on the court of the high school gym and that high school is gone. So many lives lost. It saddens my heart. My prayers go out to those who have suffered loses in that beautiful part of the world. 

I post to flickr all the time.....sometimes I forget to put them here too.
 All of these just happened when I put my new pen on the paper.

It is fun to take old patterns and make them new.....or combine them for a new look. I find I do that in my piece and then people ask for the pattern. These are two new ones.

I have been just falling in love with my new pen........and using it all of the time!  My new pen is a Rotring Rapidograph .35.  It was price

I am posting my first challenge piece. My daughter drew the string before she headed for school this morning. 

Sometimes I like my tangles to be simple and clean, sometimes I live for color, other times I get absorbed in the lines. I guess the past few days it is the lines that are grabbing my attention.  

I enjoyed immensely this challenge!