"It's a String Thing" #117 Tiles

This week has been such a treat for many reasons.  First of all, we have just returned from our son's wedding.  It was, as my friend Karen described it, "magical and memorable".  Thank you all for your good wishes for the deliriously happy couple.  At the end of this post, I've included a picture of them. It truly is worth a thousand words.

This week's challenge was a monotangle using my new pattern Sand.  The pretty tiles are posted below with accompanying notes, my Tangled Tidbits will return next week.   

It is one thing to develop a tangle, but when it is appreciated and used and morphed into tangleations by talented tanglers,  that is another matter indeed.

Grab a cup of tea and take your time studying these magnificently beautiful tiles.

The first arrived from Sara Belmont-Kleingeld ~

I love starting my day with one of your strings... and your fabulous new tangle made it all the more fun!

Congratulations to your son and his upcoming wedding. It is a magical time for the family so enjoy it!

From Anita A Westin (Dalarna, Sweden) ~

This is such a delightful pattern! I belive I am going to use this now and then. In fact, I did use it as soon as I got it from you and here is my monotangle from today! And thank you for the string!

From Lily Moon (Hungary)  with a "zenhug" ~

From Karin (Germany) ~

Congratulations to your new pattern “sand”. It´s really beautiful and your detailed explanations make it easy even if it looks complicated. At the end of the tile I didn´t want to stop… think this is the meaning of zentangle.
I hope you enjoy the wedding party of your son and send all my best wishes to your whole family!

Greetings from Germany!

From Simone (Germany) and here on her blog ~

thank you for this lovely string and the opportunity to draw a monotangle with “Sand”.
It is a very nice, versatile tangle!
Unless I did some small mistakes in my drawing, I like it, anyway.
I wish you a perfect wedding for your son and his bride and a fantastic Party for you!

From Jessie Plouffe (Connecticut) ~

Here is my tile for this week. I was a bit nervous because though I
love Sand, grid-based tangles often don't turn out well for me. That
being said, I love how this tile turned out!
Thank you!

From Kylie Dinning (Australia) ~

I haven't done IAST for a while but when I read your email this week I couldn't resist. I really enjoyed playing with Sand. Such a fun tangle!

From Esther (Switzerland) ~

Your SAND is a beautiful pattern! For me it was not easy, draw with it a Monotangle. Hope it came out good as mono. I’ll use it again, to get familiar with. To see on my Blog Thank you!

From Joanne Flaherty (United Kingdom) ~

I hope the wedding went well and your recovered from the excitement,
Here this week's offering using your tangle sand I like it lots of different ways it can go, this is the second time I have done a a sand monotangle, but the other one isn't in this string.

From Ilse Lukken (The Netherlands) ~

Here's my entry for this week. It's on my blog as well.
I wish you all a beautiful wedding day for your son!

From Wanda Ambrose (Chesapeake, Virginia) ~

I have to admit that I found this tangle a challenge. I hope I haven't mangled it too badly.
None the less it was still fun to put together an attempt.
Best wishes to your son on his wedding!!!

From Ragged Ray (United Kingdom) ~

It's morning, but so dark and rainy here today there's barely enough natural light to tangle by - but thankfully I did my tile for your challenge a couple of days ago!
I loved playing with Sand, tried various tangleations in my sketchbook and had grand plans to use them all in my tile, but then I kept making tiny mistakes - but instead of scrapping the tile I just ploughed on and here is the result! And I was reminded of the way the sea comes in and erases any marks in the sand, wiping the slate clean twice a day. Forgiving and forgetting and waiting for what comes next.
Thanks for the challenge, thanks for the tangle. And thanks for reminding me that I've got a handful of ideas for new tangles in my sketchbook - I really need to work on a step-out for one and get it out there!

From Sarah at hungrycorgistudio (Michigan) ~

I thought there were a lot of steps at first, but upon closer inspection the idea of the tangle is very balanced and well thought out. Hence the great step-outs that Ms. Bruno did for this new tangle of hers! I just had fun with Sakura Soufflé pens, glaze pens, and I can proudly say I stuck to the string! Always an accomplishment for me! Thanks!

From Deb Jacobs (Tichigan, Michigan) ~

I love this new tangle. It worked so well with the string. Thanks for taking the time to do this challenge.

From Juul (France) "with love" ~

From Elisa (Paris, France) ~

Here's my tile for your "Sand" monotangle challenge. I decided to play with color variation and used the round section of the string for my first attempt at using the dew drop enhancer. Given the "complexity" of the Sand tangle, I'm afraid we don't see it very well... It doesn't matter too much: I had fun doing it.

I hope you will enjoy this special week end and congrats to your son for his wedding !
Zen regards

From Joya (Germany) ~

here's my tile. It was really fun to tangle with your newest pattern and to try out different possibilities to draw it. Thank you for this nice challenge!
Greetings from germany

From Ingrid (The Netherlands) ~

Congratulations on the marriage of your son! I hope you all had a blessed and wonderful day!

Congratulations also on your newest tangle SAND. It is a beautiful tangle with much possibilities. I have to practice and play a lot more than this one tile. It didn't turn out the way I hoped it would. Anyway, I had fun and I'm curious what others did with it and want to see all the possibilities.......

From Lucy Banta, CZT (New Jersey) ~

Hi Adele,
Congratulations on the marriage of your son. Hope you enjoyed every minute.
Attached are two versions of your challenge this week and you can also see here on my blog

From Jennifer Sparrow (North Carolina) ~

Thinking about you and your family on this very special day. You are so generous and kind to give us a challenge this week. I can only imagine how busy you must have been, between the wedding and starting another round of production of your frames. (BTW, I'm so glad that you were able to include my "review"!)
Here's my tile, such as it is!!! I spent hours trying to "figure this out" and thinking, "Adele has given us a puzzle this week! Somehow, this all fits together in a logical way and communicates some secret message. Something to do with weddings, and pearls and diamonds and a ring." My husband had a good laugh watching me try again and again!! I included my first "dewdrop" enhancement. 

From Cathy Cusson ~

I love this new tangle! I have already used it in several pieces. I honestly don't like how I worked it into this string.

From Becky Welty (North Carolina) ~

I found this weeks challenge to be, well, challenging. With only one tangle to work with, I had to find creative ways to use that tangle. Once I got going, it was a lot of fun. Thanks for the challenge!

From Sue Agnew (Tucson, Arizona) ~

I altered the string a little bit so the big circle could feature one of the "pearls." When I was working on using several different sizes of grids I had a problem with where smaller rice shapes intersected a bigger rice shape, and then I remembered Socc, which is one of my favorite tangles. So I used a Socc-like effect to join up smaller with bigger grids. When I got done it seemed like a good time to stop, without adding the background grid. I was afraid to go too far with a good thing.
Thanks! This was a lot of fun!

From Linda Goncalves (Pennsylvania) ~

Not perfect but I had fun doing it. 

From Jane Glotzer (Boulder, Colorado) ~

First off, many congratulations to you and family and wishes for a long, happy, loving life together for your son and his bride. Mazel Tov!!
On to this week's challenge...
WOW, Adele, your SAND is quite a Tangle!!! So so much going on...your example tile is just spectacular...really beautiful work!!

With the challenge being a monotangle, I wanted to find some tangleations, so along with the two differently sized basic versions (with some varying details) on the bottom, I chose to focus on two motifs within the pattern and enlarge them to showcase them on the top of my "tile." I very much like how those came out...added some auras to the underlying grid on the left and around the pearls on the right. Also added some purple colored pencil for accents...chose to highlight a different section of the tangle in each string section...then that left just some small areas for shading--the pearls and some of the petals--and the big hole/pearl in the middle! And for some reason, I tilted my traced "tile" on my paper...as I'm sure you've noticed, I generally like things pretty balanced and somewhat symmetrical, so I threw caution to the wind and went crazy--:) I'm pleased with the final result...
Enjoy sifting through all the SAND...I can't wait to see what everyone else did...and I'm ready for the beach!!

From Sidney Kapinos (Virginia) ~

My entry for It's A String Thing challenge #117 using Sand is attached. Please include a link to my blog post

This was a fun challenge! I enjoyed having the opportunity to try out your newest tangle Sand. Congrats on creating another lovely pattern!

As always, I appreciate the chance to stretch and develop my tangling skills, and look forward to seeing all of the entries on Monday!

From Sharyn Penna (Massachusetts) ~

Wishing you all the joy and happiness a wedding brings ... especially when the wedding is your son's! Hope you steal a dance or two with him!
I love your SAND pattern ... there are so many variations to play with. Now, I very rarely add color to my tiles, but the circle in your string screamed out to me "make me a golden wedding band!" So I did just that. Happy nuptials the the bride and groom ... and to the proud parents ... Cheers!

From Jenny Hopkins (Australia) ~

Congratulations to your son and his new bride! I hope their lives are blessed with love and happiness.

At times this week I have been completely buried in Sand. I have seen so many things as I have been drawing it - from flags, fishing nets and flowers to stained glass and even eggs in a carton. Such fun playing with Sand! I am sure that I could get better at it with more practise.

I don't normally send two tiles, but it kept begging me to draw Sand-inside-Sand and so eventually I relented. I have ended up with a Sand fractal. Is it still a Monotangle or do we call it a Zenfractal?

Congratulations on your new tangle and your new daughter-in-law. Many thanks for inspiring such fun.

From Michele Wynne (California) ~

Thank you so much for the beautiful new pattern. I loved playing with it. I fully intended to do a proper tile but ran out of time, so I'm submitting my sketchbook version. It's also here on my blog.

From Karina (Perth, Western Australia) ~

I wasn't happy with what I had drawn and was going to start again, but decided to get my coloured pencils out instead. Love the results.

From Lisa Preston (Marietta, Georgia) ~

Wow, I really found this week's challenge ... ...challenging. I started this tile three times before I finally decided two things. One, i had to ditch the string, except for the center circle. Two, I had to freehand the tangle. I just couldn't get it with the grid. In the end, I was pretty happy with my result. I give you A Snowflake Made Out of Sand. :)
Best wishes and congratulations on your son's marriage!!

From The Creative Miss L (Canberra, Australia) ~

I really had to concentrate to get this tangle to work. All good though as it keeps me learning and improving my techniques.

I hope your son’s wedding was everything you had all hoped for.
(and here on her blog)

From CZT midori (Florida)~

at first glance, i was not attentive to it, but once i started stroking 'sand',
i realized that...this pattern has all the basic key components of a zentangle tangle: 'aura', 'hollibaugh', 'take off & land', 'redefining lines' and 'tanglenhancers'. this challenge allowed me to enjoy the process of rendering variations of 'sand'. thank you!

From Marla Mendenhall (California) ~

Well, thanks to Adele's new pattern, there should have been enough Zen-vibes going up into the ether-sphere last week to stop any wars, domestic conflicts or abuse to animals and children. At least temporarily, right?
In Tile #1 I played. I allowed the pen to move how it would. I won't deny I had in mind to wonder how many variations I could attain, and a couple stretch the boundaries of artistic license I suppose, but what fun. I especially like the stipple portion. Haven't done any stipple for 40+ years, seriously, and it was a bit intimidating at first. But, reflecting on it now, how apropos that stipple resembles sand, and sand is used to make glass, and the Sand pattern looks like stained glass. Gotta love those instinctive choices. 

Tile #2 started out with the circle from the string, but that's as far as it got. Mind of its own, donchaknow. And I wouldn't have even have imagined that a linear pattern could morph so naturally into a mandala. Once it was done it just begged to be colored, so I obliged.
I was initially aghast at the thought of filling a tile with a monotangle, a non-boring one that is, but this was a delight. Profuse thanks, as always.

 Marla sent her zendala first in black and white - feel free to copy and color it.  It is a good study, as she said, on how a liner pattern can morph into a circular one.  Here are her two variations on the theme ~

From Susan Theron (South Africa) ~

Here is my tile. This was difficult challenge trying to do a monotangle in the string. I've drawn lines parallel to the string lines and use the intersections to place my dots and then I coloured each section. Looking forward to seeing what the others did.
Also on my blog

From Felicity Strohfeldt (South Africa) ~

... This week’s challenge turned into a puzzle par excellence. But perseverance prevailed and here you are the final result.
Hope it’s not too confused. My take on it is very varied. But I’m happy that I went on this wander with the pattern Sand. Rather like a antique brooch.
On my blog.

From smgg (Taiwan) ~

congratulations your son getting married

My heartfelt thanks to all of you for taking in my new pattern SAND and tangling it so creatively and so beautifully - I feel the love!

And now, may I present, the new Mr. and Mrs. John D. Bruno ~

Thank you all for your good wishes and prayers for their happy and long life together!

Stop by tomorrow for "It's a String Thing" #118!