Wednesday, January 04, 2012


The Mind Boggles!!!
Since starting to explore the idea and practice of doing an art project every day, I have collected so many resources I scarcely know where to begin.

While not a scrapbooker or a journal keeper, both of these approaches offer good support for the "every day/something" idea. I'm including a link here for the class Julie Fei-Fen conducts.....Thanks Sally B. for leading us to this valuable resource. 

Just a quick browse and I see she uses two of my very favorite things.....carving and Zentangles. We will definitely be talking more about Zentangles...but to give you a start, check out:


These are the folks who started it all and it's caught on like wildfire!
I just love the idea that they have taken "doodling" to the extreme, made "fine art" out of it,  and have figured out a way to make a living doing it! A wonderful, creative success story.

Heather (see comments below) provides another link for "Daily Inspiration. "Julie [Zentangle Originator] . . . is part of a jump start creativity series . . ."
http://nathaliesstudio.com/tutorials/creative-jump-start-summit-2012/
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Have lots more places to share with you but for now a bit of "housekeeping."

Have not yet figured out how to make the "Comments" section more prominent. IT is where the heart of this blog resides! The last post had many very informative comments and ideas to get us all off to an especially creative New Year...........if you don't read them, you will miss out "big time." So, until I can decide a better way to handle these....make them easier to find and harder to overlook....please make sure you read them and add your information and comments as well. Otherwise this won't work. You'll just hear from me and that is apt to get really boring, really quickly!
To entice you toward more participation.......this month a Grab Bag will be given to one of the folks who've posted comments. So, get your name in there!

Have lots more exciting things "in the wings" but this is enough for now.
Thanks for checking out gg designs Gazette.....see you again soon.

ggd
Charlotte
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Don't forget to read (and add to) the COMMENTS below!
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10 comments:

  1. It was fun to visit the Zentangle site and look at the galleries. Haven't tried it yet. It seems like you could start with a stamped image in black, then take your black pen and just go from there?

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  2. I have been a fan of Zentangles for a while and they are great for kids. Julie is my hero- I seriously love her work and I follow her blog. She is part of a jump start creativity series that is FREE. Some wonderful ideas shared in daily videos. http://nathaliesstudio.com/tutorials/creative-jump-start-summit-2012/

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  3. Thanks for the link Heather.
    You are right....they (Zentangles) are great for kids. My granddaughter started doing them about the same time I did and she's still doing them...almost more than I do now.

    Hope it's OK....I'm going to add this link to the body of the Gazette...because I'm not sure everyone checks all the good stuff contained in the "Comments."

    "Daily Videos" plays right in to the whole subject of these last couple of posts.

    Thanks a bunch!

    Charlotte

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  4. Deb....Hadn't thought of starting with a stamp. If you try that, please share a sample with all of us.

    Charlotte

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  5. Another starting point might be your old cookie cutters. Try tracing around them or even use them on your ink pad and see what works best for you. I don't think that cutters used in crafting should later be used in food.

    I tried zentangles out for the first time last summer. My 8 yr. old grandaughter saw me and she did some too. I got started with something I saw online and then picked up a book in Michaels.

    One member of my card making/paper arts group has been doing some pen & ink fantasy drawings for years now and she has used similar techniques to fill in areas in the work. She sells prints of the drawings for framing and as cards.

    I have a suggestion: Perhaps the word you have to click on to get to this section could be made to stand out by changing the font color, size or style.

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  6. Using a cookie cutter to make the "strings" for starting the Zentangle is a good idea. That would be particularly fun if you were using them for a holiday theme.

    Coloring the "comments" would also be a good idea...but it's not something I have control over. The way it appears is "automatic" with the Blogger software, I believe.

    I'll just keep reminding everybody....with a note at the bottom.

    Thanks for checking in Fab. My granddaughter loves to Zentangles. Sounds like yours does too.

    Charlotte

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  7. Fab left this under the New Year post...but I want to thank her for this.....very important to remember, so we don't get so overwhelmed we do nothing!

    fab said...

    We need to be kind with ourselves and if we miss a time we planned for creating, still return to the commitment. I think it is a little like being on a diet. Sometimes we slip up.

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  8. Charlotte- thanks for posting that link more prominently. I shared it for a reason!

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  9. I haven't figured out this whole comment thing. I feel lots of really good stuff gets kind of lost.
    When I checked the page is was lots of conversation back and forth but I don't feel like I got to the "meat" of it yet.
    Any hints?

    Thanks. C.

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  10. Serra55 left this message on a previous post but I moved it here since this is where we were talking about Julie...

    Julie is a New Yorker, and she is a very "freeing" artist. She laughs at mistakes and very often turns them into something usable. She makes it all look so easy, but teaches her method of journaling step by step. Each project is outrageous and challenging. She set her iPhone to 10:00 minutes every session, and would usually finish the art and journaling part during this time. The most amazing part was how after I "lost Julie" at the end of the month I was able to continue journaling almost daily. Now my style emerges, but I don't feel the tension, the "blank page" fear. I just do it. There's a Flickr group where many of us continue to share (not me, my writings have gotten very personal), and I admire what others continue to do, and get ideas from there. The most important part of this class to me is Julie's wacky New York attitude, her love of "mistakes", her incredible variety of ideas, and her ability to enable others to create on into the future.

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