Bordering on . . .

. . . inZanity?

Maria writes:

I realize I have an obsession with any kind of border.

So yesterday I walked around our house with my phone camera to show you a bit of what I see. Imagine what you could find if you were JUST looking for borders!

Wallpaper, Fabric, and Furniture 

Upholstery 

Pillows 

Frames

 (Maria when she was about eight with her younger brother, Tom.)

Mats 

Musical Instruments

Rugs 

Shelving

Jewelry

Furniture

Dishes

Table Linens

Chocolate Boxes

Bed linens

Glassware 

Lamps 

Books

Vases 

Towels

Clothes

Houses 

And even our Kitchen Stove (!!)

Rick adds: That stove used to burn wood, then coal, and now it uses gas. It's also our primary heat source in our living space. Check out the floor. It was our inspiration for our tangle florz.

Well, you get the picture(s). Anyone who is familiar with our house has seen my obsession. Second only to tassels. (!)

What can I say . . . (except I even have tassels with borders!)

(Rick adds:  . . . and borders with tassels! :-)

They instantly attract my eye . . . Guide me around . . . Keep me even-keeled. Maybe it's their ability to keep things together (I can be haphazard with most things) and perhaps I depend on borders "holding" things in place.

Borders provide their own "elegance of limits" to inspire and support.

Perhaps it is the border on your ring or bracelet . . . or the tooling on your leather shoes, or a book binding, or the table runner under the flowers, or the gingerbread on an old Victorian house on the corner, or the elegant gold pinstriping on that old Singer sewing machine, or the multicolored piping around the pillows on your favorite chair, or maybe . . . maybe it is in your memory, of places warm and comfy.

So I have morphed a few of these borders into the world of tangle for you to contemplate.

Rick adds: Take a moment to enjoy matching Maria's tiles with their inspirations. For instance, part of that second to last tile was inspired by the industrial shelving in our shipping area.

Now take another moment to look around you right where you are at this moment and become aware of border tangle inspirations. From where I am right now, a small sampling of what I can see:

• Coiled wire on a telephone land line
• Stitching on leather
• Shadows cast by my computer keyboard keys
• UPC code wrapped around a pencil in a cup nearby
• Scales on a dragon on the picture frame holding Maria's picture
• Grain pattern in the oak wood of my desk
• Interlocking zipper teeth on my back-pack

Next, in your mind's eye, play with how you might deconstruct these images into the fewest and most easily recombined elemental strokes (see page 1 of our book).

Finally, put on some water for tea, grab your tiles, pencil and pen, and enjoy!

We consulted our magic automated number generator and . . . Our winner of the tangled toast tongs blog is . . . drumroll please . . . Anne's Tangle Blog.

Congratulations, Anne, and thanks for your heartfelt story.

Thanks again for taking your time to visit.

Let us know in the comments below what borders you find that inspire you to tangle and we'll choose a commenter to receive one of these tiles. 


Click images for larger views.

grab it!

Maria writes . . . 

I was wandering down the aisle of a grocery store (Whole Foods? . . . Shaw's? . . . I cannot remember which) when I spotted these wooden "grab it" tongs.

 
I do not especially care for grocery shopping, I do, however like to cook. Quite a dilemma. An old friend once told me, "Only buy what you can carry out in your arms, in one trip," and I try to hang onto that mantra. It has (mostly) served me well.

Anyway, going back to the tongs, I am always on the hunt for things I can give as a "hostess gift" that is fun and lasting. I like to bring wine, but sometimes I want something a bit less fleeting.

Oh yeah, the tongs . . . so I grabbed a few of these, they were only $3.29 each! (So, maybe it wasn't Whole Foods.)

They sat around on the counter for a while until I was on the phone one day.

Grabbed my black Sakura® Pigma Micron® and went to town. It did not take very long to do what I had in mind. I did not want to tangle the "use" part of the tongs, just the handle. Not to worry about the ink and foodstuffs.

On the package it said they were made of "beautiful beech wood" (although, I can't imagine them saying it was made of "ugly beech wood" or "smelly beech wood").

I decided to just rub some olive oil on them to protect the ink just a bit then wiped them and, well. . . . here they are.

As another old friend says . . . "cool beans!"

What have you tangled lately?

Something rather unique or silly?

Sometimes the silly stuff comes out pretty cool. . . .

So . . . tell us your story and we'll send these suckers off to one of you for the effort!

Love you guys!


Materials used:

• Wooden tongs
• Sakura® Pigma Micron® - Black 03
• Sakura® Gelly Roll® - White
• Sakura® Pigma Micron® - Brown 01
• Olive oil

Detail:

Rick adds:

Life . . . Grab it!

Click images for larger views.

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Well (a new tangle!)

Rick writes:
A recent trip to a local museum inspired a new tangle. We call it well.

We describe well and provide step-out instructions in this newsletter.

Here are some larger views of images from that newsletter.

How we named this tangle well 
Originally I wanted to call it higgins after the Higgins Armory Museum where this box was found. However we already have a tangle named huggins (named after the person who showed it to us). Even though well has echoes of huggins within it, it would have been a confusing name.

OK, what next? Well, this box looked like a treasure chest that would hold jewels. How about jewel for a name? We didn't go with that because it's potentially too descriptive of an expected outcome. However it was a good enough inspiration to give us well. This name has an added benefit of offering opportunities for fun word play, which we love.

Well . . . that's it for now!

We look forward to your comments and to seeing how you draw well.


Enjoy!



Click images for larger views.