A FUN WAY TO USE ZENTANGLE

I recently came across something new and fun to do.  I kind of think of it as making a Zendangle.  Joanne Fink, author of the wonderful book, "Zenspirations", is the creator of this idea.
She made a fantastic YouTube video showing how she does it.  You can watch her video by clicking here.  Meanwhile, I thought I'd demonstrate the steps I use to make my Dangles below:

Materials

Black Micron Pen

Ruler (if needed)

Colored pens, pencils, markers of your choice

For the sake of this demo, and because this is a rather large Dangle, I used a ruler to make my lines, but it's really far more fun to freehand it if you can.  Although, I admit I've never done one without a few ruler guidelines to "keep me in line" overall.  LOL

Step 1

I always begin with at least some main horizontal lines to establish the top bar and then begin adding my vertical lines (where I'll be hanging my dangles later on) before I've completely finished that top bar.  If you'll notice, I've placed a few of my vertical lines into the horizontal lines to form boxes (that I'll later be adding color to) in the top bar.  Many of the verticals will be attached only to your bottom horizontal lines though.  You get to choose where you want to make your boxes.  There are no rules for it.  So, as you begin, it pretty much will look like this:

Step 2

In this step I've continued to fill in the top lines and chose a few boxes up there to color in with my Micron pen until I'm happy with the way it looks. I've also finished adding all of my vertical lines, or better yet let's call them "strings".  As you can see I've already begun adding decorations into my strings, beads, tiny shapes, etc. and also added a few decorative strings here and there, using zentangle® patterns to make them.   It's a good idea to stagger the length of your strings.  It will give you room to add the bangles at the bottom of them and give your overall Dangle a nice sense of balance.  Now we're ready for the fun part!

Step 3

At this point I'm ready to add all my bangles, or shall we call them "charms"?  Whatever we call them, they're fun to do!  You can use whatever your imagination comes up with.  zentangle® patterns work great, but any kind of shape, bead, or crazy design is just fine for your bangles.  You can see below that I've used tangle patterns, circles, triangles, ovals, a tiny leaf, a birdhouse, and on and on.  Once you've finished adding a bangle to every string, and you're satisfied with how it looks, the real fun begins....adding COLOR!!

Step 4

The sky's the limit when adding colors.  And, so are the materials you use to do it.  Whatever is your favorite "color maker", whatever gets the job done, is my philosophy.  When choosing what colors to add you may want to stick to a theme or then again, maybe not.  Maybe you've used charms that are nature oriented in which case you might use earth colors for your charms.  Or, maybe you'd like to only use blues and greens, or only the three primaries, only warm colors, only use glitter pens, and maybe even no color at all, just shapes.  It's all up to you.  

As you can see in my finished piece below I've pretty much used a rainbow of colors and added plenty of color to the top horizontal bar, as well.  I'm new to "dangling" and hope to get a lot more creative in time, but I was anxious to share this idea with others because it's just so much fun to do.  I'm sure you'll come up with far more inventive ideas for your Dangle than I have.  Please feel free to share them with me in the comments section below.  I'd love to see and hear about what you're doing!

"Dangles, Bangles, and Beads"  11" X 14"

Applications

I'd really like to say that I make art purely for the sake of making art.  And, Of course I do love doing that, love "being in the zone".   But, being a practical person, once I create something like a Dangle I can't help myself; I start thinking about how many ways I could use it.  So with that in mind, below are two blank greeting cards I dangled.  I  also hope to start a Dangle journal or perhaps combine them with my zentangle® journal.  And, I could certainly see adding a few strings into the margin of a written journal and they'd be a great addition to any visual journal.  I'm sure there are other things to be done with this fun idea.  Please let me know if you think of any!!

I hope you've enjoyed this demo and don't forget to watch Joanne Fink's, the creator of Dangles, YouTube video demo (link above)!!

Thanks for looking in and I hope you'll give this a try and share your dangles and ideas with me here.  Have fun!