Happy New Year

I played around today with Zentangling and came up with this new year's message. I tried some background tangles in a light gray brush marker. Pretty much don't like tangling with brush markers...I figured out. Oh well!

This tangle also fits the second weekly challenge here. Do check out the other participants in this challenge if you get the time. I'm so in awe of the creativity that some of these Zentanglers have.

Wishing you all a happy new year. See you next year!

Oh and P.S. Are you interested in doing some journal quilting this new year? Well Vicki is and it looks like others are too. Check it out here.

Growin' Flowers Pattern is Finished

It's officially done. I'm very happy about that. It seems like it took forever.

There are two ways to purchase the pattern if you are interested. It is listed in the shop, here, on the 3 Creative Studios web site and in my Etsy shop.

Vicki Welsh will also be selling the pattern in her etsy shop, but she is going to sell it in kit form, along with some of her luscious gradient fabric, which is featured in each of the four quilts I made. See Vicki's Etsy shop here.

My local quilt shop, Sewing Machines Plus, Mandan, ND; will also be carrying the pattern. I just need to get there to deliver the patterns. So hopefully I can do that soon...like within the next day or three. We are in the midst of another snow storm here, so I'm not sure when exactly I'll be able to venture out.

So.....on to some new things! Charge!

New Books

I got some new books for Christmas. These are all really fun books, but I have to say that my favorite of them all is Totally Tangled.  The inspiration and design ideas in these books is phenomenal. Do you suppose Santa saw my recent craze with Zentangles?

And of course, I just had to show you my latest tangle.

In quilty news, I've been working on my eggplant-themed 12x12 quilt in recent days. I'm almost done with it. I have to say though that it didn't turn out quite how I envisioned it and I'm thinking about trying another one. We'll see. Anyway, I can't show photos of it until the big reveal on the Twelve by Twelve blog on January 12.

I've also been working on my Growin' Flowers pattern and I'm almost done. YAY! I had hoped to have it ready to add to my shop by the first of the year and it looks like I will meet that goal.

Simply Zen-Crazed

As you may have noticed I've been on a Zentangle kick lately.  I go in streaks with certain art forms and I don't know why that happens, but I can't get enough of doing a certain thing and then poof, it's over and I'm moving on to something new, like knitting or crocheting or .... you get the idea.  Maybe I should call it TAFO (Temporary Art Form Overload).

Luckily this TAFO only happens with my extracurricular art forms and not those I consider my majors...like art quilting.

So as I was browsing around the blog-o-sphere and enjoying some Zentangle blogs I found this one that just started a weekly Zentangle challenge.  Looks like fun!

One evening I opened my Zentangle box and what jumped out at me?  Why a Zentangle that I had created probably about a year ago.  The letter "a" with "art" and small circles on it.  I thought that this would be perfect for the first weekly challenge of "simplicity".  So this is my entry.

Meowy Christmas

I hope you all have a magical and wondrous Christmas.

Home Made Gift Tags

Today and tomorrow I am going to be getting things ready for the Christmas holiday. I'm busy with some baking and food preparation and also getting gifts ready. Wrapping and tagging is what I have left to do.

Today I made some zen-doodled gift tags. I doodled these on 140 lb. watercolor paper. I had first removed the paper from the wire binding, carefully so as not to rip the holes in the edge of the paper. That way I can use those holes to add some ribbon to attach the tag to the gift.

You may remember that over the past month or two I had been knitting scarves for gifts. Today I also created a label to attach to the scarves so that the recipients will know how to care for them.

We've been getting snowed on a lot lately and while it is lovely to look at, I'm about ready to say "Hey, please no more snow, thank you very much." And yesterday, I had a mishap in the house. Yes, a house can be a very dangerous place. You never know when the corner of the couch is going to stick out and smack you in the toe. OWWW! I am now sporting a slightly swollen fourth toe, in many lovely shades of purple. I don't know if it's broken, but it sure felt like it yesterday. Today the pain is better and I can walk better, but it still hurts if bent too much.

So I hope your holiday preparations are going smoothly and safely. If you are looking for a last minute gift to make, check out Vicki's Sugar Maple Placemats. They are divine! Oh, and please check out the new and improved 3 Creative Studios web site. We made some changes and hope you approve. If you have a link to 3 Creative Studios, please note that the web url has changed and if you would be so kind to update your link, we'd very much appreciate it.

Christmas Card Winners

Yay, the day has arrived. I had my hubby pick three numbers and the three lucky recipients of a Christmas card are:

Createology

Libby

Sherry

I want to give a BIG THANK YOU to all of you who played along and entered the drawing. Will the three winners please email me with a mailing address so I can get your cards on their way to you.

I Made a Doodle!

I recently discovered my long lost Zentangle kit that I had bought a year or two ago. Okay, maybe it wasn't too long lost, as it was under the end table next to the spot where I sit in front of the TV. You know, that spot where I keep all my creativity things handy so that I always have something to do on a whim. So last night I took out one of the blank paper tiles from the kit and drew this:

I can tell I haven't doodled or Zentagled much recently as I was often at a lost as to what design to doodle. Another name I like to call this activity is zen-doodling.

So after I created this little doodle, I decided to make it into a greeting card:

This is a great way to use these small doodles. The receiver gets a small piece of unique art work and I, the doodler, don't end up with umpteen thousand doodles laying around. Okay, that's probably an exaggeration.

The paper tiles that came in the Zentangle kit are 3.5" square. They would be easy to create from any type of paper you desire....watercolor, handmade, etc. You could even give them a pretty decorative edge with some of those cool scissors or one of those cool blades you put on a rotary cutter.

I follow the blogs of some people who do a lot of Zentangling and they are very inspiring. Here are some of my favorites:

• http://zentanglefun.blogspot.com/
• http://shellybeauch.blogspot.com/
• http://www.openseedarts.blogspot.com/
• http://zentangle.blogspot.com/

Are you a doodler/zentangler/zendoodler? It's a somewhat mindless thing to do when you are sitting in front of the TV and need to keep busy. Especially when hubby is watching one of those shows you don't particularly like watching...like car stuff and such.

REMINDER: Don't forget to add a comment to this blog post if you'd like to be in my drawing to receive a Christmas card from me. I'll be drawing three winners on December 18 (tomorrow), so you still have time to enter, if you are reading this in a timely manner, that is.

Also, over on the Three Creative Studios blog, you can leave a comment to enter a drawing for a lovely book by Noriko Endo. See this post. That drawing will be held late on the 18th as well. Hurry hurry! Go comment and enter.

Oh and one other reminder, my Etsy shop sale is still going. It lasts until Dec. 25. For more details, visit the shop here.

Growin' Petunias

Well quilt #4 in my Growin' Flowers series is now done. I'm very happy about that. Here it is up on my design wall, being blocked. I put the finishing stitches in the binding over the weekend.

The last couple of days I've been working on writing up the instructions for making this quilt series. I'm still hoping to get that done and ready by the first of the year.

Vicki and I have also been busy with getting things ready for the next Three Creative Studios newsletter, which will be out on December 16. We've been working on web site changes and making plans for new challenges that will start in January. That will all be talked about in the Dec. 16 newsletter. If you aren't a subscriber to our newsletter, you can sign up here.

And I just had to share this cool, new-to-me pottery artist that I discovered in the past few days. I just LOVE LOVE LOVE everything in her Etsy shop.

Shop Name: Cinderelish
Etsy Shop link: http://www.etsy.com/shop/cinderelish
Blog: http://cinderelish.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cinderelish/408298880365?v=wall

Guild Challenge

September marks the beginning of a new year for my local quilt guild. New officers take over, dues are renewed and plans are made for upcoming meetings. For as long as I've been a guild member, we also get a challenge in September. We are given a fat quarter of fabric, we all get the same fabric, and then we are given instructions on what to do with the fat quarter. The instructions vary from year to year depending on who has created the challenge.

These challenges are then revealed at our annual Christmas party held in December. And which happens to be this evening. Along with our fat quarter, this year we received a small quilt pattern. There were about five or six (I think) different patterns handed out and they measured approximately 24" square. We were told, though, that we could make anything with the fat quarter, we weren't limited to just making the quilt pattern.

I really wasn't thrilled with the pattern I got, so I decided to do something different. I decided on placemats. My pal, Vicki, has been making placemats lately, so I think I caught the placemat bug from her.

Here they are:

I made four placemats. The challenge fat quarter fabric is the light pinkish/red print in the center strip. Here is a detail shot of some of the quilting.

I finished these just this morning...just in the nick of time to take with me to the party tonight.

Christmas Cards

Late last week I created the mixed-media collage shown above.  It measures approximately 6.5" x 4.5".  I scanned it and also photographed it to see which result would be better when trying to reproduce it in a print. I was a tiny bit surprised to find that the photographed version turned out better.

So I proceeded to Photoshop my image and I printed out several to create Christmas cards.  I'm happy to say that I'm finished preparing my cards for the year and I actually ended up with three extra.

Would you like to get a Christmas card from me that has a print of the above art work on it?  If so, leave a comment on this post and I'll enter you into a drawing.  Three winners will be announced on December 18.  Please make sure I have a way to contact you if I draw your name.  Happy Holidays!

The original mixed-media collage is now available in my Etsy shop.

Free-Motion Frenzy

I've had little to share with you here on my blog lately. I have been spending most of my creative time quilting on my latest quilt.

I have been working on other stuff too, but it is ideas and thoughts in my head at the moment and, well, that's a little hard to photograph.

I've had to take a break from knitting for a bit as my hands were starting to protest from it. I have been thinking about Christmas cards. I think I need to get started on those soon.

Happy December!