For Christmas, my boyfriend gave me this zentangle book along with a few other incredibly thoughtful and sweet gifts. I've been wanting one of these for a while but I haven't gotten around to getting one. I find that when I go to
tanglepatterns (an awesome website) I can get easily overwhelmed looking at all the patterns. I wind up spending three hours looking at patterns and no hours actually drawing the patterns. In addition, I tend to make judgments on the tangles without actually trying them which I have learned is greatly to my detriment. I can't count the number of times that I think "Ugh, that's ugly, I would never use that" and then I actually try it, put my own spin on it, and then I wind up loving it and using it constantly.
I also love the way this book is split up. You typically get 2-3 tangles to learn each day and then you just draw a tangle using those tangles and any of the previous ones. I've started taking pictures of the day's tangles on my phone and then I just work on those whenever I have a moment for however long it takes me to get done. Sometimes it's one day, sometimes it's four or five. Long story short: This book is awesome for beginners or people who get a little overwhelmed with too many choices.
Word of caution: Don't buy the digital version from Barnes and Nobel. Apparently it's not set up correctly and won't work on most people's devices. It never even occurred to me to buy the digital version though, I love the feeling of a book in my hands and the ability to quickly flip through looking for inspiration.
I decided to start a segment on my blog where I chronicle my journey through this book. I won't be showing any of the pages of the book, nor will I go super in depth on what is under that day just because I feel like that might sway some people from actually buying the book and I don't want to take away from their accomplishments. All of the tangles are available in the public domain though so I think it's acceptable to show what I end up with.
For this project I decided to put my small
moleskin sketch book to use. It's the perfect size and easy to carry around with me. If you buy directly from the moleskin website it's $13.95 and I think you can get the same one from Target for $13 flat (plus no shipping!). And of course, it wouldn't be a zentangle without some micron pens. These
Pigma Micron Pen Set #01 0.25mm are my favorite but I also use .35 a lot.
My tangle for day was absolutely abysmal. I don't know what I was thinking...It really is terrible. For some reason I couldn't break outside the lines on day one. And it shows. Just wait for day 2 though! The difference is amazing! (And yes, I already have a few days done, I didn't think to blog about this until day 3 or 4 but I don't want to pile it all on at once.)
