A little zen

Sometimes between my Torn Paper Painting projects I like to fit in a little bit of something else just to break things up and gain a fresh eye.

Having played a number of times with zentangles, which of course are just elaborate doodles we did as kids, I noticed that many many people were doing what they referred to as zendalas...making their doodles in a round form to mimic a mandala. How pretty.

This looked like just the project I needed to do a little personal "re-boot" so that I could come back to the paper paintings all refreshed.

A "zen" moment

Ahhh...my first ever "zentangle". I joined a swap to give this a try. Felt I needed just a bit of Zen right now anyway.

It came out a bit mushroom-ish...but kinda cute.

Just one more thing to get hooked on.

Had some quiet time

here at home this weekend. Took advantage and did some drawing for an atc draw-a-thon. Got four done.....

two pen & ink

and the lilly done in colored pencil and the tropical boat house done in marker.

I also broke out some of my new beading books and

taught myself a new beadweaving stitch.

I made these green glass bead earrings using some of my

favorite square green beads. They've got little garnet bead

accents.

I think they came out pretty nice for a first time. I've added them to my Etsy shop. I'm gonna try a few more variations on them.

I've also got another stitch in the works but haven't gotten it quite down yet. I think it'll be beautiful once I've figured it all out.