"It's a String Thing" #114 Tiles

With apologies for the delay, here are the tiles for the 114th "It's a String Thing" challenge.

It was "all about" the number 14 and turned out to be quite a happy celebration.  My heartfelt thanks for the many birthday wishes.

The first tile arrived from Sara Belmont-Kleingeld ~

Thanks for another great challenge. Three firsts for me... hadn't used any of these tangles before. Loved the Ta-Da tangle, I will have to have a bit more of a play with that one...

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos spring from Ta-da
*symmetrical, shadowed Ahh

From Ilse Lukken ~

Happy birthday! I wish you many happy and healthy years to come!
For the challenge, I used all three patterns, Teenos was new to me. The result of that tangle is much nicer than I would have thought. Nice!! :-)
My tile is on my blog as well:

Tangled Tidbits - 

*sparkled Teenos
*festive Ahh

From Sarah Antoinette ~

I liked the patterns as always. Have a great birthday.

Tangled Tidbits -
*Teenos changes from black to white along the color line
*alternating black and white Ta-da

From Juul (France) ~

Bonne anniversaire Adèle !!!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos in the string circle moves out from there
*flowing lines of Ta-da

A very warm welcome to  smgg (Taiwan) ~

I am smgg from Taiwan.
It's my first time joining the "it's a String Thing".
I am so happy I found this challenge.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*aura-ed Ahh and Teenos
*mid lines of Ta-da line up

From Michele Wynne - 

It's a celebration! Happy Birthday Adele!
This was a fun challenge. I love how the choices of 14 represented patterns that were like fireworks.
I am celebrating my unprompted use of a black tile ;-)
I also write about it in my blog.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*starry look created with white on black
*burst of Teenos

From Joanne Faherty ~

Here is my entry for this weeks fun. Well I was tangling away and imaging my surprise when I looked at it and saw fireworks. So I thought maybe id add bright colours to them using my inktense pencils.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teeno/Ta-da tangleation
*dark background for Ahh

From Anita A Westin (Dalarna, Sweden) ~

What a wonderful story around the number 14! And wonderful patterns! Here comes my entry. I had a great time working with this. I haven´t tried Ta-Da and Teenos before. Teenos remids me of some cute little creatures from a fairytale or something like that! Love it!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*grid of Ta-da
*dots repeat on all three tangles

From Jennifer Sparrow (North Carolina) ~

Thanks for another fun challenge this week. It always takes me a bit to get into them, but then, I get my zen on and lose myself! This week, I got so lost that I included Afterglo, which happens to be on the same page as your step-outs for Ahh. (I had struggled with Afterglo when I first started doing Zentangle, and eventually just gave up on it. I couldn't believe how easy and fun it was with your notes. Bravo!) I will now add it to my repertoire! I've posted my tile on my blog.
Thanks for your challenges, and your support of our growing community.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*diamond grid with alternating Ta-da and Teenos
*softly shaded Ahh and Afterglow

From Midori, CZT (Florida) ~

this week's challenge with 'ahh', 'ta-da' and 'teenos' has been a playful melange of lines, circles, curves. these strokes created unexpected nooks for morphed 'ahh's to stretch and to practice with shading.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*dark spaces of Teenos and just a bit of sparkle
*love that tangleation of Ahh!

From Beth Gaughan (North Carolina), whose pumpkins we admired on last Wednesday's post ~

Here is my tile for this week. What a fun set of patterns! And thank you so much for showing the love for my tangled pumpkins on your blog!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*an aura-ed Teeno/Ahh tangleation - fabulous!
*all lines of Ta-da line up

From Cathy Cusson ~

I thought this week’s string and tangles were loads of fun! I used teenos to merge with ta-da. That was interesting.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*tangleation of Teenos and Ta-da
*aura-ed Teenos

From Joy (State College, Pennsylvania) ~

Lots of circles and spirals inspired webs, dreamcatchers, and mystery.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*swirls of tangles form the string's center
*Teenos filled Ta-da

This is my tile - slipping it in here as the 14th entry ~

Tangled Notes -
I began with Ta-da in the string's circle and found it sheer joy to draw.  I added Teenos and finished with sparks of Ahh.

From Beverly G (N. Texas) ~

Four new to me tangles this week. I started with a plan, the Teenos around the edge, but after that the string kind of dissolved when I was trying out Ta-Da. There seem to be some interesting versions of Ta-Da so I may have to do some practicing on that tangle.
Another great challenge, I look forward to seeing what the other entrants came up with.

Here's my link: Gott Heart Art: It's A String Thing #114

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos border
*Ahh burst surrounded by Ta-da

From Meridiana, CZT (Massachusetts) ~

Here’s my String Thing #114, an example of what happens when the best intentions go wrong! LOL. I usually like my tiles, but am not liking this one. I used a black micron, a rose metallic colored pencil, and a gold metallic colored pencil, along with Aha! (modified by some Teenos), Teenos itself, and Ta-Da. I wasn’t too keen on the composition within this string, but things went awry when I tried blending/shading the metallic gold colored pencil with a new type of shading stump called Fantastix. I’m not blaming it on the stump, which I intend to try again in other contexts, but on this tile it ripped up the surface of the paper and also muddied the gold so that it just looks like a dirty smudge.


But then, that’s why we do these challenges—to try things out! Ya win some, ya lose some. I learned a lot from doing this, even if I’m not thrilled with it, so I’m very glad I did it. A humbling experience. Despite it all, I had fun.

Tangled Tidbits -
*Teenos tipped Ahh
*oval in the center lines of Ta-da


From Audrie Weisenfelder (Arizona) ~

When I first saw the string and patterns for this challenge, I was at a total loss as to how to combine them. But once I laid down the first pattern the rest easily fell into place. All in all, I'm pretty happy with it.
As usual, it's also on my blog: Purple Butterfly

Tangled Tidbits -
*rounded edges of Ta-da
*sensational shading


A very warm welcome to  Karen L aka The Creative Miss L (Canberra, Australia) ~

I’ve had a couple of goes at your challenge this week. I’ve attached the best one.
I blog under the name of ‘The Creative Miss L’ and I live in Canberra, Australia.
...my blog post about this challenge.
I enjoyed your challenge as I learnt two new tangles and used a style of string that I wouldn’t normally use.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*all three tangles burst from a center point
*dark string circle contrasts with lighter areas

From Karin (Germany) ~

first of all: belated best wishes to your birthday. I hope you enjoyed your very special day.
I was on holidays for two weeks and now I am happy to join the challenge again!
I really had a lot of fun with the three patterns you choose and it was “Ahh-fireworks” again Tangling “teenos” I really came into a flow! Thank you very much for creating this pattern!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*two Teeno variations with lovely aura
*long and short lines, sparkled dots of Ahh

From Jane Glotzer (Boulder, Colorado) ~

Happy, happy birthday, Adele! (and belated greetings to Isabella, too!)
Sincere wishes for a wonderful celebration and all good things in the year ahead!
So...this was interesting--:) A new approach for me, but I really like it!!
I started with Teenos in the upper left corner--that triangle space seemed to cry out to be filled with one largeTeenos--which was the perfect place to start! Then I followed suit with the large motif idea and filled in the two Ta-Das...those huge orbs needed something, so I aura-ed inside...then the last burning question was do I stay big with my Ahh, or fill that space with lots of little ones? You can see my final decision and I'm quite pleased with the results! I added that last little Teenos to fill the bottom half of the empty circle, so that the negative space above it would stand out. Some shading completed the piece...and when I perused the final outcome...I saw "Snails in Space." :)

Tangled Tidbits - 

*aura-ed circles in Ta-da
*dark spaces between Teenos

From AngelEggroll (Taipei, Taiwan) ~

Happy Birthday to Adele! Also thanks to everyone who joined the challenge last week. I learned a lot from you guys’ sharing. I guess the challenge of this week is about celebrating, so I used “Teenos” as a firework launcher. By the way, “Ta-Da” is one of my favorites.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*gorgeous black space for Ahh
*small perfs on either side of the orbs in Ta-da

From Ingrid (The Netherlands) ~

I hope you had a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
Enclosed my ST #114 tile.
Two focus points in this tile. That is always a bit tricky for the eye. It keeps wandering from one point to the other and back. The shading is too light. There was no time/energy to draw another tile. Learned two very nice tangles: Teenos and TaDa.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teeno/Ahh tangleation
*diamond Ta-da grid

From Susan Theron (South Africa) ~

Hi, I enjoyed this challenge a lot. Also on my blog

Tangled Tidbits - 

*two variations of aura-ed Teenos
*shadowed Ahh and shaded Ta-da

From Becky Welty (North Carolina) ~

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teeno center spiral
*alternating sections of Ta-da and Teenos with Ahh

From Lucy Banta, CZT (New Jersey) ~

Happy Birthday Adele!
Congratulations on your big day and for all things 14. What fun. I'm not sure if you realized, but the string shows a lower case H and B sitting on the line. Even more appropriate for the occasion!
Here's the link to my blog with my tile

Tangled Tidbits - 

*wonderful morphing of all three tangles
*shaded perfs and sparkled dark ones

A very warm welcome to  Susan M (Alaska) ~

This is my first time submitting to your weekly challenge. I really enjoyed playing with this combination of string and tangles! Thank you for sparking the creativity of so many tanglers!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*two versions of each of the three tangles
*great use of black and white in in the two versions of Ta-da

From Sue Agnew (Tucson, Arizona) ~

I ended up doing two this week. After I finished the first one yesterday I decided I'd do another if I had time because I didn't like the sparkle I'd used with Ta-Da, and it ended up reminding me of a moth (or two actually). I liked it much better today (as is often the case) but I did have time to play some more. I wanted to try doing Teenos as a sort-of grid, and I wanted to do the circles in Ta-Da like one of my favorite tangles, Inapod.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Ahh in orbs of Ta-da
*alternating directions and black and white for Teenos
*Sue's sensational, signature sparkle

From Tonya Marie, CZT (Illinois)~

I love the challenges because they keep me trying something new. I thought this was a fun one! And btw my favorite number is 64.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Betweed aura for Ta-da
*orb-ed string lines

From Jenny Hopkins (Australia) ~

Happy Birthday! I hope the celebration was spectacular.
Thanks again for a great challenge. I loved all the components this week but found it difficult to put together. Still, it is the process that is important and I look forward to seeing what everyone else has managed.

Tangled Tidbits ~
*Ahh centered Teenos
*checkered Ta-da with two variations

From Jessie Plouffe (Connecticut) ~

Here's my tile for this week. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about
it, but it was a good challenge. Looking forward to the next
challenge!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos along the string lines
*Ahh dot topped lines repeated in Ta-da

From Elspeth (Wyoming) ~

Hi! Here is my attempt at String 114. Every tangle was new to me and I look forward to using them more. I love the challenges because sometimes I want to draw but I don't know where to start. The string and list of tangles takes care of that problem!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*free floating, aura-ed Teenos

*string lines are the orb-ed lines of Ta-da

From Lily (Hungary) with Zenhugs ~

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Ahh floats in orbs of Ta-da and on aura-ed lines

*Teeno center string circle

From Marla Mendenhall (California) ~

Hope you had a happy birthday week, Adele.
This week's challenge ... wow. The string, the patterns. Hum. First I drew a blank. Then I drew a tile, then another, then another. In Tile #3 I think Ta-Da kind of morphed into a different pattern - the name of which I can't remember - but I liked the way it turned out so much I sent it along any way. Even so, I couldn't get out of 'big', but I guess that's the zen my psyche needed this week. Once again, Adele, your instincts have conjured a genius combination. All I can say is ... Ahh!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos string lines

*Ahh in orbs of Ta-da

*center burst of Teenos

*Ahh sparkle in Ta-da - brilliant!

From Felicity Strohfeldt (South Africa) ~

Ahh! I hear you celebrate your birthday this week. Ta-Da, a fanfare to wish a very happy and joyous new birth year. Your pattern Teenos says it all about you. Young at heart and obviously just as on the go as a young lady. Thank you for a great challenge to fit all the 14’s in your life. Thanks to Dorothy Allison, Linda Farmer and Margaret McKerihan, who contributed their string and lovely tangle patterns.
I enjoyed the challenge and I’m happier with result. Furthermore itangled this party mood zentangle especially for you. Also on my blog.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos in Ahh and Ta-da!

*lovely tangleations of Teenos and shading, too

From Annie Taylor (Spain) ~

Here's hoping you had a lovely birthday. I quite agree about celebrating each one nowadays... I hope we both have many more!
Unusually for me, as soon as I saw String and tangles for this week, my tile drew itself in my head. As I've recently had a most interesting discussion about 'seeing ' things in the mind's eye with a friend.... who cannot and does not have the ability to 'see' things in her head... this was clear evidence that my inner eye is very active. It is rare for someone not to be able to visualise but turns out I have two friends who simply don't do it. And one of them said she thought this was why she couldn't draw. But of course, I reassured her that Zentangle offered her a perfect opportunity to be artistic WITHOUT needing a guiding internal image. This is a potentially very interesting area if study, I'm sure.
So, there... are there any tanglers out there who don't have the ability to see images in their heads but who enjoy Zentangle?

Tangled Tidbits - 

*aura-ed Teenos and Ahh

*dark orbs of Ta-da

*weighted down strokes in the center of Teenos

From Karina (Perth, Australia) ~

Tangled Tidbits - 

*string lines of Teenos
*Ahh bursts from center

From Brenda Urbanik, CZT (South Africa) ~

 On her blog...

I started with this and realised that I tend to stay away from tangles I have no idea what to do with.  While sitting on the beach watching Natasha and her friend playing with a dead "Pyjama Shark" and a live Octopus and some live Sea Urchins (gasp!!!) I realised that life is like this for many people, one of them me, that we stay away from things that make us uncomfortable!  In most cases what is the worst thing that can happen, well, simply that WE FEEL uncomfortable, surely in your 50's why should that actually matter, and quite frankly perhaps being in ones 50's has nothing to do with it anyway!So I thought I would try another tile, this time an ATC, and actually use the third tangle that had been suggested, "Aah".  It's not that I don't like that tangle, it's just that for me it's one of those tangles I simply have no idea how or when to use or how to vary it.  So although I did use it, you'll see that I used it in a very minimalistic way, but I used it, and that's what counts.  I allowed myself to feel uncomfortable for a little while, and look, I am still alive and breathing!!!

Tangled Tidbits -

*gorgeous Ta-da intersecting, blending with Teenos center

*Ta-da tipped with Teenos and Ahh - ingenious!

From Joya

here's my tile for the String Thing Challenge #114. I've never used this STring before and it was really fun :)

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos border

*long lined Ahh

From Elisa (Paris, France) ~

Please find my tile for this week's IAST challenge. All patterns were new to me: I enjoyed finding a place to fit each of them in the suggested string. And more importantly, I had a nice relaxing moment drawing this tile.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos from the string circle

*two variations of Ahh

From Linda Goncalves (Pennsylvania) ~

I just want to wish you a very happy birthday. I think of this as
little glow worms celebrating with you.

Linda photographed her tile on one of my frames :)

Tangled Tidbits - 

*sparkled Teenos
*festive Ahh

From HeidSue (Germany) ~

Just hoping this entry isn't too late for this week's It's a String Thing challenge.
The string really led this one for me. I enjoyed making it "disappear" into my design. haven't used any of these tangles before, though I've seen Aah here and there. I'm going to love playing with teenos. It reminds me of Cat in the Hat :) and TaDa is loads of fun too.
Every time I do a tile, even though I don't try to make it look like anything, it always ends up reminding me of something. This one reminds me of the flow of creation at the beginning of time. Trilobites and single cell organisms, and energy pinpointing then bursting out in teeming life.
thanks for a fun challenge!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*Teenos fills the string circle and moves outward
*swirl of Ta-da

From Sharyn Penna (Massachusetts) ~

A celebration of your lucky number was a great prompt this week. I love morphing patterns ... Teenos blended seamlessly with Ta-Da.

Tangled Tidbits - 

*gorgeous curves of Ta-da line up with neighboring lines
*Teenos infused Ta-da

From Talia Maynard (London, United Kingdom) ~

Tangled Tidbits - 

*sensational shading
*five lined Ta-da - great idea!

From Irina Romanovsky (Russia) ~

I hope I'm not too late with the challenge :) This time it was even more exiting to combine the tangles. Thank you for interesting tasks and great pictures this week!

Tangled Tidbits - 

*gorgeous half moon of Teenos
*lovely lines of Ta-da - added orbs of Ta-da to the string lines

And now, the tile for honors this week was sent in by
 Lisa Preston of Marietta, Georgia!  
Lisa wrote ~

I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge! I love Ta Da, and thought Teenos was terrific! What a GREAT selection of tangles this week! As it happens, my 14th wedding anniversary was Oct 14. There is definitely something magical about that date!
This one reminded me of fireworks.
Happy (slightly belated) birthday to you!

Tangled Tidbits -
*center concentration of tangles burst into Ahh
*Ta-da mid lines connect with neighboring ones
*sparkled Teenos
*soft shading accents the tangles beautifully

Congratulations, Lisa, and Happy Anniversary!
I have a little some thing coming in the mail for you.

Thank you to the creative minds behind the string and patterns we used along with my Teenos ~

TanglePatterns String 114 by Dorothy Allison
Ahh  - the 14th pattern listed on TanglePatterns, by Maria Thomas
Ta-Da - by Margaret McKerihan, the 14th pattern listed under the 'grid' tab on TanglePatterns

To all of our participants this week, a huge thank you for your wonderful artwork. patience with my later post, and  your sweet birthday wishes.

Click here for the details of "It's a String Thing" #115!