Tickled To Tangle: "It's a String Thing" #220 Tiles

It was good to give pause and contemplate our blessings this week. The results below are as warm and wonderful as the sentiments they were sent with.

Two exciting projects have otherwise consumed me this week.

In fact, one of them is due out this coming Friday - a collaborative eBook with Dorian Eng, CZT.

I am so excited about it that I could just burst! I am not sure if I can keep it 'under wraps' until then, but I'll try...

While my tile is absent, please know how grateful I am for this community of loving tanglers.

This fabulous show of tiles ends with a current photograph of our Tangled Map - wait until you see how full it is.

With grateful hearts, this is what we tangled ~

The first tile arrived from Lily (Hungary) and here on Instagram ~

...here is my entry for your weekly challenge.
Zenhug:

From Shirley Wohlsen (Australia) ~

I enjoyed the wonderful Tangles for this week’s challenge,
Attached is my tile for - It’s A String Thing #220 challenge.
Thanksgiving is not a traditional celebration for Australians,
but saying that I do have a couple of happening in my life this year that I’m very thankful for,
being my husband’s two operations six weeks apart, I’m thankful he came through them and is as well as can be expected.
Happy Thanksgiving! to all who celebrate this event.

From Ragged Ray (United Kingdom) ~

A funny thing happened while I worked on this week's challenge. I was browsing through my basket of tiles I'd previously coloured and I noticed one I always ignore, because it's murky and dark and a strange mix of colours that reminds me of a bruise. I pulled it out and took a closer look, but dismissed it again. But just as I was putting it away I noticed the reverse side was glowing with this glorious green. Like sunlight through clouds, autumn giving way to spring. And that seemed to say a lot about this year, it dark days and its bright. This suddenly seemed just the right tile for our Thanksgiving challenge. So I wrote my words on the dark side, on that strange blemish line that seemed to ask for them. And then I flipped it and tangled on the bright side. But the two are there, back to back, a call to remember, and to thank.
Thanksgiving best wishes to you and yours Adele. And thank you for inviting us all into your tradition, it's given me a precious moment of calm reflection as the year draws toward its end.

From Lin H, CZT (Florida) ~

A very Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, Adele. Thanks for your challenge. I penciled in “Family” with my string as that is what I am very thankful for this year.

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

here is my tile for your weekly challenge 220. I like your given patterns. Gra-vee I didn’t know yet.
Thank you for this enjoying challenge!
Best wishes from Germany,

From Lisette (Switzerland) ~

Thank you, Adele, for this new chalenge. Gra-vee and Z-trick were both new to me and I like both. I love the idea to write things we are grateful for onto the tile. I think I’ll do that not only at Thanks giving - once a year is not enough to say THANK YOU! Looking forward to the outcome of this challenge.

From Danie (Indonesia) and here on her blog ~

Finally I can submit my drawing for your challenge. What a busy week. Have a wonderful weekend.

From Miriam Gresnigt (The Netherlands) ~

This week I had to tangle on scratchbook-paper, because of tangling in the Spanish sun. I used White and Black gelpen with sanguine-red from Faber Castell.
I loved to do Z-trick in other shapes, some turned out a little bit like fassetts after shading. I could not help, there is Andalusian influence in it, because I am on vacation there.
With tanglehug...

From Joke Leussenkamp (The Netherlands) ~

This is my contribution for this challenge. It was quite fun to draw and color this. Printemps was familiar to me but the other two weren't draw that often by me.
Greetings from a windy and rainy Eibergen.
Tangle hugs

From Hilary (Chicago) ~

Happy Day after Thanksgiving! I hope you had a nice holiday with loved ones
I enjoyed this week's challenge so much. The lovely idea about gratitude really gave me a good vibe while working on it. I definitely added you to my list of people for whom I'm grateful!

From Ria Matheussen (Belgium) and here on her website ~

I enjoyed working on this wonderful challenge with a lovely string and beautiful patterns.
I decided to make my drawing on a watercoloured tile (made smoothly with a puty knife) and used ordinary colourpencils to make the colours a bit stronger. Besides my black pen, I 've used a lot of white with my new Sakura white gellypen...
Thank you very much for this very relaxing and beautiful Zentangleexprerience,
Kind regards from Belgium,

From VenaC (Whitby, Ontario) ~

I had so much fun doing Gra-Vee that it took centre stage.

From Ulrike (Germany) ~

...what a nice challenge again! It wasn't easy to get the square Z-Trik into this swinging string. I used Aura and Sparkles. In the end I have colored my tile even for the first time! And the result was a surprise for me. But see yourself, please.

From Verena (Germany NRW) ~

Greetings from Germany.
I Take your "g" for grateful and an "f" for freedom.

From Lynn G (Florida) ~

A special thanks at Thanksgivings for all you do for the tangle community.

From Cha'Co (France) ~

Here is my contribution to the IAST #220.
It was very difficult for me to use Z-trick (a very angular tangle) with this string (very curved !) but I finally found the solution: I used Z-trick as a background and I was able to draw the wonderful Gra-vee over it. I am finally very happy with my tile !
I hope you did not have indigestion...

A very warm welcome back to Gillian (United Kingdom) ~

Have not sent a zentangle in for well over a year if not 2 ... life overtook me and I lost my way with Zentangling.... trying to get back into it and am glad to have your string thing to give me a focus.
As for my tile I really liked discovering
z-trick, but although made lovely patterns with it when practising, just could not ‘get it’ today.. oh well I enjoyed it none the less so it’s all good :)
And a belated thanksgiving to you and all across ‘The Pond’ :-)

From Sharon Fite (California) ~

What a fun challenge on this busy week! I love Gra-vee and Z-trick - both new to me - and of course the classic Printemps! Yamit Fridman mentioned Sandy Hunter's Cruffle as her inspiration for Z-trick. And you can see it in there with the continuous line aspect. So I added a little Cruffle, like seeing a friend you haven't seen in a while! I lost the string along the way, but I had a fun time with it. I'm grateful for the new tangles, the old favorites, the strings, the weekly challenges, and you, Adele, for making this possible for all of us!! Cheers!

From Trudi (Woodview, Ontario, Canada) ~

Just loved your cute turkey rolls that your family made for Thanksgiving! I often do a Santa bread for Christmas at my daughter's. Special traditions are what really makes the holidays such a great memory IMO.
Nice to be back from vacation and Tangling again.

From Gabriela Garcia (Alberta, Canada) and here on her blog ~

This was a great challenge as I had so much fun adding all of Adele’s tips for Printemps. I changed Printemps sizes, I added more weight in a side of some of them, added sparkles in others and even decided to use pens with different widths starting with .005 Prismacolor Premier black pen, then Micron 01 pen and lastly Sharpie Fine pen, alternating them all the time. I liked how this created more variety and texture. The texture created with all the different widths and sizes is even more apparent in real life than what it shows in the picture. I loved how it looks and how relaxing it was and will definitely will be drawing Printemps like this again! ;-) Thank you Adele!

From Lori Byerly (Washington State) and here on her website ~

I'm "grateful" for all you do for the Zentangle community. :) I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.
Here's my tile for this week's challenge.

From Karen Herstowski (Atlanta, Georgia) ~

Once again, loved this concept. I wish I could have taken it farther but ran out of time!!
This is my idea of honoring all those people who are so important to me. My incredible husband of 41 years, Bruce, who is the center of my world - my nucleus. Our amazing son Brian, who was only with us for 16 years, but still remains so alive. He taught us so much about life.
Thankful for our circle of family and friends, always there, always supportive, always making us laugh - we could not be more fortunate to have them around us.
Thanks to the creators of these wonderfully fun tangles and to Adele for some guidance on our creations.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!

From Jane Glotzer (Boulder, Colorado) ~

Hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful...those turkey rolls are tres crafty and muy adorable!!
We had a small gathering, my husband and myself and one other couple...kids live out of town...luckily we were all just together in New Hampshire in October for our younger son's wedding, so that was fabulous...Thanksgiving was lovely too...small gathering, but a ton of food--:)
I am grateful for my family--my husband, 2 sons, 1 daughter-in-law, numerous "grand"pets...the beautiful place I live...the freedom to create my art...appreciating life every day...
Here's my simple take on #220...I actually had a couple of others started, but did not like where they were going...no mistakes, but definitely no like--:)
Started with the Z-trik at the left side of the middle area, arbitrarily placing their points wherever I thought they'd look good as I went across...added the bottom triangle...wove some Gra-vee through the top loop of the "G" and (after erasing string) I couldn't see that loop anywhere, which I thought was cool--:) Lastly the little "drop" of Printemps, some graphite shading around...tried drop shadows under that Gra-vee which ended up looking like ribbons...happy with try #3--:)

From Sharyn Penna, CZT (Massachusettes) ~

Sending out wishes for a very happy Thanksgiving week.
My grateful list is always very long ... each printemps, z-trik , gra-vee and the extra beadline holds a little thank you for someone, or something, or somewhere, or sometime. This was such a nice introspective exercise of the spirit. And for that, I thank you!
Cheers for Thanksgiving ... and all the leftovers ... both food and memories...

From ToniaC (Rhode Island) ~

I enjoyed this challenge very much. I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving!

From Sue Leslie, CZT (Vadito, New Mexico) ~

Happy TG weekend. Always love the challenges, tho don’t get to do them all, and some I do well after the week so don’t get to send them in. A new tangle for me this week (z-trik) and two of my favorites. Was fun to do. Thanks for all you do for the Zentangle community.

From Susan (Tennessee) ~

Once you said "G" for "Giving" and "Gra-vee", I couldn't think of anything but food.
Z-Trick reminds me of the rim of my great-aunt's china.
I made a reticula and incorporated peas with "Printemps", Turkey with a reticula, Sweet Potato Casserole with a crumbly fragment and some "Printemps"; and cranberry dressing in "(cran)-Poke Root". "Gra-vee" dresses the rest of the plate.
I'm disappointed that the camera didn't pick up my gelly roll (Jelly? Roll?) pens well. They are on the cranberries, peas, and sweet potatoes.
Fun and filling times! Thanks for the inspiration!

From Susie (St. Louis, Missouri) ~

From Susan Theron (Velddrif, South Africa) ~

From Sue Agnew (Tucson, Arizona) ~

This is too late for this week's challenge (the day got away from me), but I wanted to do it anyway because I think it's an important exercise, and because I had an idea in my head and wanted to see if it would work out the same way on paper.
My "happy place" with grid-based tangles is an allover background grid, so I went there this week with Z-trick. I really liked the surprise of stars appearing. Then I tried Trans-Zending with Gra-vee on top. The letters came out looking sort of woodcut, which surprised me. It wasn't till I was putting in the final white outline and shading that I figured out what I'd done wrong with the space where "enough" is placed. But I believe I've heard there are no mistakes in Zentangle!
One of the things I'm grateful for is this community of fellow artists ... and for all that you do to keep it going!
Happy Thanksgiving!

A very warm welcome to Dolly Bolen, CZT (Alberta, Canada) ~

I am finally able to e-mail you one of my finished tiles for your IAST Challenge! I have participated before but never
made your deadline because my life is full of constant deadlines as a Freelance Journalist/Photographer. This is my first
time submitting a tile to you and I do enjoy your challenges. Thank you so much for all you do for the Zentangle community!
I did try the tangles Gra-vee and Printemps before but Z-Trick was new to me, it was great to give it a try!
I do however, post my IAST tiles on the Zentangle Mosaic App when I don’t meet your deadlines. I am so grateful for my family, Zentangle and the Zentangle community, all of which I love very much! The words Family, Zentangle and Love appear in my black Zentangle
Apprentice tile which I tangled with the new Sakura White Gelly Roll Pen 10 and I added touches of Copenhagen Blue Prismacolour
Premier Coloured Pencil to give it some pizazz! Black Printemps were added with a Sakura IDenti Pen. Not traditional Thanksgiving colours but I love to tangle late at night when all is quiet in the world and I have time to just tangle the night away!
In Canada we celebrated Thanksgiving in October but I recognize the US holiday and wish everyone a (belated) Happy Thanksgiving!