"It's a String Thing" #283 Tiles

Happy one day after St. Patrick's Day!

We are carrying on the celebration today with the IAST #283 tiles, a nod to the great saint himself. 

Let's take a look ~

The first tile arrived from Susie (St. Louis, Missouri) ~

From JoAnne (Ontario, Canada) ~

I had no plan in what I was doing, so when the pen flowed, this is what happened!
The Bumpadox mixed with Hamadox for an interesting meld. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

From the Yorkshire Tortoise (Ireland) ~

I have taken a break from the various tangle challenges for a couple of years and am pleased to see you are still going strong with the String Thing Challenge. I seem to have chosen a good week to start again with your St Patrick’s Day string as I live in Ireland. I have attached my tile which I coloured in the green, white and orange of the Irish flag and I coloured the bumpadox in St Patrick’s Blue. St Patrick’s Blue was the national colour of Ireland until recently and is still the colour of the Irish Presidential flag.

Welcome back! And thank you for that interesting tidbit about St. Patrick's Blue.


From Baafke (The Netherlands) ~

Hereby my tile of this week.
I think Bumpadox is a surprising tangle pattern.
I had some difficulty with Slainte, so I made it into a kind of silout.
Sh'rock I will use more often, it is a nice filler.

From Mariam G. (Port Hueneme, California) ~

Well, Paradox was the only tangle this time around that I was familiar with, so I enjoyed experimenting with Sh-Rock and Sláinte; however, I don't think I did justice to Sláinte at all (just could not find a pen around here with a small enough tip to fit in to the cross section). Time to go shopping, obviously!

Happy St Patrick's Day! And to all - 'Sláinte!'

From Robin Steinbeck (Painesville, Ohio) ~

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!☘️
I had no idea what to do with this ...I love the tangles you chose but I’m not very good at them.

 They are just right!


From Lisette, CZT 32 (Switzerland) ~

My Bumpadox truned out like a crystal. Therefore I added some glitter. Slainte is such a lovable beautiful pattern. Thank you for this St. Patrick’s challenge - Slainte!

From Lynn G. (Florida) ~

Thank you, Adele, and Happy St. Patrick's Day.

From Laurel Davis #28 CZT (New York) ~

Your St. Patrick’s Day challenge is always a special one for me! My sister Patty was born on St. Patrick’s Day, a year and 5 days after me. We’re known as “Irish Twins”. The background of flowers is from a beautiful bouquet my sister gave me for my birthday. And, finally, my mother’s family was from County Antrim in Ireland so Slainte was an excellent choice for this week’s challenge. Thanks, Adele!

 Happy Birthday to you!  And to your sister, too!


From Sue Leslie (New Mexico) ~

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Eatin’ and drinkin’ some green for the weekend. And I sit here with the ground all white from the snow storm this week. Another 15 inches of snow and I want green stuff to start coming out. And it soon will with all this moisture! I did see a couple of tulip leaves poking their little heads up before the snow hit. But for today I had to settle for playing with green pens. Thanks Adele for always giving us a good fun challenge for the week. Cheers to all for fun happy weekend!

From Kathy Millard (Prince George, British Columbia, Canada) ~

Greetings from the snowy north. Just when we hoped winter was coming to a close we had another 10 inches of snow on Monday. Hopefully the last of the winter as we now have at least 4 feet of snow on the ground. One nice thing is that it gives me time to work on Zentangles. I enjoyed the tangles this week as they were again all new to me.

From Sue Agnew (Tucson, Arizona) ~

I was so pleased that you used a Bishop’s mitre for the string this week!
I couldn’t master the “shamrock bump” in Paradox, so I just did a Paradox, and it’s a miracle I got it right ... usually I get mixed up partway through. I enjoyed Sh’rock and Sláinte … and remember last week I said one of the tangles kept coming out looking like a shamrock … so I felt obligated to include it this week so you could see what I meant.
The words at the bottom are Saint Patrick’s. I was tangling on Friday and trying to make sense, as many around the world are, of the horrific shootings in New Zealand. I know how devastating the Tucson shootings in 2011 were to the Tucson community. And the MOST devastating thing is that it’s happening all too often. The band I play in is working on a piece commemorating the victims and survivors of the Columbine High School killings, and our director, who is a college professor, said it occurred to her that her college students were born after Columbine so have never lived in a world that didn’t have school shootings. In times of crisis we look to our faith, however we define it … and I hope everyone has some means of seeking comfort.

 ...so well said and prayer is a powerful thing.
You were the first to recognize my inspiration for the string :)


From Amy L. (Stamford, Connecticut) ~

This was another challenge for me because of the grid tangle, and of course my grid was inconsistent. But in the end the leaves decreasing in size were fun. I also had difficulty figuring out how to shade both Slainte and Sh’rock. Bumpadox, on the other hand, I adored. Although I did find that I needed to do additional rotating to follow all of the bumps. Interestingly, while I found the coloring in of the backgrounds monotonous and a bit frustrating, I found the slow, controlled aura-ing of bumpadox, soothing and very much in the “zen” focus the process is intended to produce. And shading it was pure joy! So thanks for both the challenges and the new delights of the week—your weekly prompts keep me constantly learning and stretching myself! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

From Margarete Gilge (Germany) and here on her blog ~

in Germany this week we have real Irish weather. So what else one can do but draw. Here is my contribution for your St. Patricks Day IAST. A second version you can find on my blog under the link...
Thank you for this interesting challenge.
Best wishes from Germany

From Ingrid (The Netherlands) ~

Here is my IAST # 283 tile for this week.
Happy St. Patrick's Day.
Your pie looked so yummie!
With lots of love and have a blessed week,
Ingrid (from a windy and very rainy(this whole week)The Netherlands)

From Sharyn Penna, CZT (Massachusetts) ~

Too much to say about events near and far ...
Sending cheery shamrocks, a wee bit o’ green and a longing for appreciation of all the differences that make us all the same.

From VenaC (Whitby, Ontario, Canada) ~

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
I lost concentration doing bumpadox and I shouldn't have used Sh'rock for the bumps. Your example of bumpadox was so beautiful and mine is a mess, so not happy with mine and no time to start over. The snow is melting and I can see the leaves of tulips coming up. Isn't it amazing that they start their spring growing under the snow!

 It is beautiful.


From Gabi (Germany) ~

I’m just on the way to pub to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day!
A lot of greenish colour Sh-rock and a try to do Bumpadox... looks a little like I had a pint of Guinness before. Nonetheless it was fun to do!

 Hope you had fun!


From Moblue (Bremen, Germany) ~

recovered from the cold and well again I managed to complete this week's challenge in time, finally.
Although the patterns all were of the simple kind, it took a while to bring them all together on one tile. Your tripple divided string just begged me to color it with the Irish Flag and so I tried a bit of color this time.
In the end it turned out not really as I had it on my mind, but nevertheless it was fun drawing the pattern.

From Ginger (California) ~

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to all! I found that the Slainte and sh-rock worked well for today this week's patterns and of course had to add green! Slight shading to pronounce the sh-rock designs.

From Priscilla DeConti, CZT (Kingston, New York) ~

What a fun exercise..I haven't been tangling much due to a variety of reasons, but this helped lift my spirits and get back into it!
I loved the new tangles slainte and shrock and I added a couple of others, betweed and aframe to even out the tile. I found a green tile to work on which definitely helped as well.
Thanks and have a happy Saint Patrick's Day and a blessed week all!

From Lynn F. (Florida) ~

I found Sh’Rock 2 and added it to my tile. All new patterns for me. Brainstormed with my hubby to add the metallic gold dots. It was a team effort!
Thanks for another fun challenge.

From T. ~

Thanks for introducing me to Bumpadox. I enjoyed drawing it so much, I could have filled my entire tile with it.
Interestingly, I’m noticing that from week to week my finished tiles look nothing like I might imagine when I first see the string and patterns you’ve chosen for us to use in each challenge.
This week was no different. The string you gave us reminded me of a bishop’s ceremonial hat, yet my tile has come out looking more like some kind of alien greenhouse. I suppose that’s appropriate, since I love the colour green and this challenge was about St. Patrick’s Day :)

From Antony Visconti (Milan, Italy) ~

Happy Saint Patrick's day

...and a few days later, Antony sent in a second tile ~

Here's another shot at this challenge. Sail away on Saint Patrick's day

From Talia Maynard (London, United Kingdom) ~

...This may be too late but here is my tile for the st Patrick's day challenge. I went a bit crazy with the colour and it's turned out a bit like a flowering shrub in a pot! But I think it does look quite Irish!

From Cyndee Pelley (Indiana) and here on her blog ~

This challenge was a really good challenge. I did 3 tiles this week and felt each time that Sh*rock and the grids were just too much for each other. I never did solve the issue so I am excited to see what others did! Here are 2 tiles that I finished.

From Allison (California) ~

Here’s my late entry for IAST #283. It is ok if it isn’t included in the email, but I had fun doing it.

From Felicity Strohfeldt (Velddrif, South Africa) ~

Hope you are well. We are experiencing severe load shedding, at the present. The lights are switched off twice a day. So, the aim is to see your challenge when there is electricity and to knuckle down to zenning during the inconvenient stoppages. Of course, while there is natural daylight.
Had a great time with challenge 283. Enjoyed Slainte by Kate Mclleary. It’s a rich versatile zentangle. Your version of Bumpadox is charming and adds gorgeous depth to one’s work. A beautiful tribute to St Patrick’s day. Sh’dock works well as four leaf clovers that free up and float about and around on the tile.
Although this is a week to celebrate St Patrick, let’s give a moment to honour all the innocents so cruelly lost and injured in New Zealand this past week.
Have a good St Patrick’s Day.

From Lin H., CZT (Florida) ~

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Adele!

Thank you one and all for your celebratory tiles.  They are particularly beautiful.

Special thanks to the creators of the tangles we used this week ~

Sláinte by Kate McIlreavy
Sh'rock by Diane Lachance, CZT
Bumpadox by Carole Ohl, CZT

Happy St. Patrick's Day one and all!

Check back tomorrow afternoon for "It's a String Thing" #284!