Thinking Outside the Comfort Zone

Do you like challenges? Or do you shy away from them? I think my answer would be a little of both, depending on the situation. Challenges take you out of your comfort zone, throw you off balance, make you think. They also cause you to grow, improve, and truly live. I can't think of a challenge I haven't come away from without feeling it was worth it and improvement was made.

This week's Zentangle challenge truly challenged me. The Diva asked us to take inspiration from a charity called Beads of Courage. I think it's an awesome organization, but how do you boil something like that down to black and white, ink and paper? I could have gone the way others were going, and while I loved what I was seeing, it wasn't speaking to me saying "this is what you should do too."

The essence of the Beads of Courage program is the beads, and the essence of a Zentangle is a string (at the least it's what you build the rest of the tangle on). So I decided to make my string with ball chain to serve as a string of beads. Spontaneously arranging the string and tracing it onto a tile, I was off and running!

The Rolodex Project

In preparation for this post I was reminiscing on the origins of the project I will soon describe, and I sympathize with other creatives who are inevitably asked about the inspiration and genesis of a particular project. Ideas come from a myriad of sources, and concepts contribute to your thinking without your awareness. You may be able to tack down one or two main pieces of inspiration, but to list everything is impossible. On this project, for instance, I was inspired by Lea Redmond and her Rolodex Project, a pin I discovered on Pinterest, the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, the joy I experienced flipping through a full  Rolodex file, and many other venues, all diverse and unrelated snatches of information that I have let circulate in my brain. This truly illustrates the adage:

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

Altered Puzzle Part 1: The Beginning

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity - Douglas Horton

I love altered art. Books, clocks, Rolodexes (Rolodice...Rolodeces...Rolodexes?), and now puzzles. Inspired by a pin on Pinterest, I picked up a cheap three-pack of puzzles from the Dollar Store. I bet those cute, unassuming puzzles never saw this coming! I'm treating each piece as a seperate canvas, which is one of the features I really enjoyed from my inspiration.

I've only completed the two pieces you see above so far, though I'm starting on a third. I wanted a driving force behind the entire puzzle (which will have thirty pieces), and I again took inspiration from a pin I found on Pinterest. Using this site, which is geared toward journal writers, I'm using a writing prompt from the random prompt generator as the basis of each piece. The first prompt asked me to describe the first thing I thought of when I woke up. The day I started creating the piece, the song "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold." came into my head right after the alarm went off. Random, no? With two illustrations (one from an old Alice in Wonderland book and one from a children's encyclopedia), some scrapbook paper, black Stazon ink, and cut out letters, the top piece in these pictures is a loose interpretation of that song. For the second piece the prompt was "List your hobbies", so I chose one, Zentangle, and illustrated the piece with patterns. Two down, twenty eight to go!

I'll post an update on this project when I complete more puzzle pieces.