I first heard/read about zentangles about a year ago. They sell kits for $49 plus shipping but at the time that was too steep a price for me. In the past couple of months I have been encountering zentangles more frequently and recently decided to just buy the kit. It came last week.
The kit is very nice. I'm such a sucker for good packaging! It comes in a beautiful box.
The box is designed to sit flat like this or you can stand it on end and put it on a bookcase. Inside the kit is a DVD, an instruction booklet, a legend card (shows examples of different fill designs that are numbered), a die (roll the die and draw the fill design that corresponds to the number rolled), two pencils with a sharpener, a blender stick, two Micron pigma pens, and a generous amount of tiles made from very nice paper for drawing your zentangles on.
The DVD is just 28 minutes of watching someone draw three different zentangles while music plays. No words are necessary. Just watching someone do a few is all the instruction you need. The instruction booklet and legend card give many examples of fill designs. However, any fill design you can imagine will work. This is why I decided to go ahead and get the kit. Any free motion quilting design is a fill design! I am learning that drawing helps me with my quilting and zentangles are fun to draw.
Do you need to buy the kit to draw zentangles? No. In fact I have done some on regular paper and on water color paper. I wanted the booklet, the nice paper tiles and pens and was curious about the DVD. I like using good quality materials and the paper tiles in the kit along with the pens are very nice. You can buy these separately though.
Here is my very first zentangle creation.
At first I thought the 3" by 3" tile would be too small, but after doing some larger ones I think this smaller size is the perfect size for getting the hang of drawing this way. I can envision doing these patterns on cloth with stitch, beads, buttons and other embellishments. In fact, I know there is a new book just out on this very same subject.
The kit is very nice. I'm such a sucker for good packaging! It comes in a beautiful box.
The box is designed to sit flat like this or you can stand it on end and put it on a bookcase. Inside the kit is a DVD, an instruction booklet, a legend card (shows examples of different fill designs that are numbered), a die (roll the die and draw the fill design that corresponds to the number rolled), two pencils with a sharpener, a blender stick, two Micron pigma pens, and a generous amount of tiles made from very nice paper for drawing your zentangles on.
The DVD is just 28 minutes of watching someone draw three different zentangles while music plays. No words are necessary. Just watching someone do a few is all the instruction you need. The instruction booklet and legend card give many examples of fill designs. However, any fill design you can imagine will work. This is why I decided to go ahead and get the kit. Any free motion quilting design is a fill design! I am learning that drawing helps me with my quilting and zentangles are fun to draw.
Do you need to buy the kit to draw zentangles? No. In fact I have done some on regular paper and on water color paper. I wanted the booklet, the nice paper tiles and pens and was curious about the DVD. I like using good quality materials and the paper tiles in the kit along with the pens are very nice. You can buy these separately though.
Here is my very first zentangle creation.
At first I thought the 3" by 3" tile would be too small, but after doing some larger ones I think this smaller size is the perfect size for getting the hang of drawing this way. I can envision doing these patterns on cloth with stitch, beads, buttons and other embellishments. In fact, I know there is a new book just out on this very same subject.
Zentangle for Fabric and Quilts on YouTube
You can watch the video here or go to YouTube and search for the title. You may be able to view a larger version directly on YouTube.
Goldie likes zentangles too.
She also likes water.
I finally had to put her out of my room and shut the door so I could finish. I did a 6" by 6" zentangle on watercolor paper and colored it with my Inktense watercolor pencils. This is my first try at the "Spilling Over" theme for March in the Sketchbook Challenge.
My idea is that the color is spilling over. I like the way the orange "spills over" and the blue isn't bad, but the others are not at all what I envisioned. I'll have to try again. I'm having a hard time with the theme this month. It just isn't speaking to me.
6 comments:
I love zentangles, mostly for the calming effect it has, but I never no what else I can do with them. This is a great post. Thanks for the link. Great video. I'm off to the book store!
I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Zentangles! I love your first creation! Looks so cool. Goldie is so sweet! :-)
I have visited the Zentangle website many a time in the past couple of months and looked at that box...thought about buying it. Thanks for the review. Sometime I'll get it!
I was at the quilt store in Marshall a couple of weeks ago and saw the Zentangle for Quilting book there and couldn't resist that. It did come home with me. :-) Your first try is just awesome!
I haven't been able to keep up with the sketchbook challenge, but I am enjoying watching you do it and watching the posts about it. Great job!
P.S. Maybe you just need to interpret the theme differently if it's not speaking to you...like running over something with a car! haha.
I have been wanting to try this too.
You are so good at this ! I am so impressed...
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