A while back I waffled on nonchalantly about stamping out a pattern using the Inkadinkado Stamping Gear and then Zentangling into the gaps – just to see what it came out like.

Well, it took longer than expected (mostly because I made it big) but now that it’s done, I think that it turned out a lot better than I thought it would.

Here’s a quick look at what I used, the stages and the finished project.

First up. this is what I made.

Nice isn’t it? I’m quite proud *puffs out chest*.

I think that the choices that I made, as I worked on this, helped make each area of the design stand out yet work together.

Anyway, enough trumpet blowing, you’ll probably want an idea of what I used, right?

Well, there were surprisingly few elements to this.

There was:

• Inkadinkado Stamping Gear circular cog and paddle.
• Elegant Suit Inkadinkado stamp set.
• Memento Tuxedo Black inkpad.
• A set of Sakura Pigma Micron pens.
• A 2H, B and 2B Pencil.
• A blending stump (for blending pencil marks).
• An IG4 Spectrum Noir alcohol marker.
• A large clipboard (A3) (so that I could sit on the sofa and do this).
• White cardstock (for the main image).
• Two shades of grey (no, not 50) and some black cardstock for matting and layering.

The bits in italic were only experimental on my part and I could have achieved a very similar result without them; the finished design would have had more contrast as it would have just been the black and white of the pens/paper but as this was an experiment I was trying out things as I went.

So that’s what I used.  Now here is a quick run down on some of the design choices and processes that I went through to create this.

The choice of stamp was a deliberate one. I opted for the heart stamp from the Elegant Suit set because I anticipated that it would give me lots of open spaces in which to Zentangle once it was stamped out. I recently used the diamond stamp from this set in a totally different way on a Good Luck Card (you can see the blog post here).

I achieved even spacing of the heart shaped outline by using the Inkadinkado Stamping Gear circular cog and paddle. I used the ‘closed basic’ technique to create the design.

The Zentangle patterns were very adhoc; I had no plan (are you supposed to have one?) and am still very new to Zentangling so didn’t really have a clue if there were any ‘rules’.

I’d produced a few shows on Create and Craft TV with Mel Heaton demonstrating Zentangle and had picked up a fair few tips from those but I was still a little nervous about mucking it up. I therefore chose to keep things simple to get things started and just drew simple lines in each of the alternate (smaller) heart shaped spaces.

Here’s a quick pic of the beginning stages.

Once I’d done that, I thought that bold zebra stripes would contrast well in each of the ‘petal’ shapes (that sat in between each of the heart outlines).

It was at that point that it struck me that this looked like a cross between a fruit pie and a sunflower, so I played up to that revelation (bit dramatic eh?) and drew intersecting parallel lines (with a ruler and pencil) in the central area. I drew over the pencil lines with the thickest Micron pen and then added shading with both quick pen strokes (using the thinnest Micron pen) and then also with pencil, blending this out with a pencil blending stub.

The remaining spaces on the outer edge posed a challenge to some degree as I didn’t want to complicate things too much and quite liked the linear feel of the rest of the design. I therefore decided to separate the areas down into smaller sections and create a ‘window’ design.

I used a ruler and pencil to mark out the areas lightly and then began drawing over this with the Micron Pens and adding shading.

The areas between the zebra stripes and the windows were another choice – I now didn’t want to overload the area with more lines so instead chose to add some stippling with different sized nibs making a larger concentration of dots nearest to the inner edge of the central design.

To finish the design I added bolder shadows around some of the main segments with a light gray alcohol marker, to intensify the shadow and visually separate the areas.

And, as they say in France, there you are (but they would probably say it in French of course).

Here’s a closer look at the design so that you can see what I’ve been babbling about a bit better.

It certainly was a labour of love and took many evenings to complete but I really enjoyed doing it. It was almost like having some ‘me time’ and it certainly did calm me down after a long day at work – which I think is part of the point of Zentangle.

Anyway, here’s another look at the overall design, this time, sitting on the shelf where it will be for a while whist I admire it.

Before I go, I should say that I haven’t gone into too much detail about Zentangling here as I am still new to it; you’ll probably discover more via a simple web search anyway as there is so much out there already on the internet but I will be doing more with this technique in the future so may be able to share more tips then.

Anyway, what do you think? Pretty cool idea right?

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to pop them in the box at the bottom of this post and please feel free to share this with anyone that you think might like it – there are sharing buttons at the bottom of this post to make it easy to do so.

Thank you for reading. See you again soon!

John :)