Hello fellow crafters and those who like reading about what crafters are up to. This has been a whirlwind winter. I have been able to film and upload a lot of Vee-dios to Youtube. If you have not had the chance to check them out, see the Video list to the left. My area has been getting hit with a lot of snow. Being homebound is no fun unless you have lots to do inside of the house. I surely did. The best part was watching everyone try to dig out their cars and leave...to go where? All of the stores were closed! Great entertainment though.
On to the business at hand. I had been playing around with some images from Dover Publications that I receive in a weekly sampler email. There were some that were crying out for glaze and alcohol inks. Then it hit me: Zentangle Reloaded. I am all about finding easier ways to create art work. I printed all of the images onto acetate and allowed it to thoroughly dry. If you have heat embossable acetate you can use your heat gun. This image struck me as a suncatcher. Great crafting to do with your kids or a troop/club activity. I used some of the Sakura Craft and Hobby Glazes. These are available in a wide range of colors and there have been some metallic glazes added to the line that I am anxious to purchase.Here I played around with the Glaze pen in black and simply traced the circles. I added different pieces of DCWV cardstock to the back to achieve various effects. The middle picture features a heavily glittered green card. The view in person is very striking. I also like the circles and bubbles effect.
This image was accomplished using the Sakura Identi-pens. These are permanent pens and are perfect for acetate because the colors are so vibrant. Again, I just traced over the lines and had a play with the colors. You can make this design be anything that you want. If you are feeling really creative you could go back in fill in some of the white space with the Sakura glaze.
Ok. I can admit and accept when an idea goes wrong. I was getting so carried away with my Sakura and acetate that I pulled out my permapague markers and decided to color in this image using the same method. Well....since the inks are not alcohol based, the colors did not blend as well as I had hoped they would. 
I did not want to throw it out, so I tried using some of the alcohol inks on it. Needless to say it went from bad to worse. I still could not say no, and let it go. I saw the Cuttlebug and thought why not? Just cut it up and make it into something else. I used a set of my Spellbinder dies and made frames from the piece. They look much better separated and you can hardly tell that this was a project destined for the trash bin. Looks really art noveau.
Since I had out the alcohol inks, another why not? opportunity presented itself. I used butterscotch and plum and dabbed these two pieces of acetate. I then turned them over and decorated the front. One I did in freestlye classic Zentangle/Zendoodle.
The other I took some help from some beautifully designed DSWV paisley paper. I laid the acetate over the sheet of card stock and took only the images I wanted. I did a bit of freehand just to give some looseness to the piece. It strikes me as carefree and I did not want to lose that.Out of all of the projects, I think the garbage piece is my favorite. I like how the pens and inks give this a very funky appearance. You could not buy this in a store, so that makes it a true original. I don't like or do cookie cutter. So, I guess my best advice for making your work stand out from the rest, mess it up a bit and feel free to make some mistakes and you just might be pleased with what results. If not, then trash it and start all over again.
When you do start again, make sure that everything gets inked with love.
Until then.
