Crafting Corner: Zentangle & Mandala Doodles

Crafting Corner is a monthly feature will appear on the blog on the first Saturday of the month and I hope that some of you will join in with me. Crafting Corner is somewhere for us to chat about anything craft related - it can be sewing, painting, drawing, model making, in fact pretty much anything goes. You may want to review crafting books or just talk about any current projects you're working on or things that you'd like to start. I don't really have a set format for these posts so I'm just going to roll with it and see what happens but hopefully some of you will find it interesting and be willing to share what you're working on too. It doesn't matter what day of the month you join in but if you do take part please come leave a link to your post in the comments so that I can check out what you've been creating!

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First I'd like to apologise for not writing a Crafting Corner post in June, I've already mentioned that I had a bit of a blogging slump last month and this was one of the things that fell by the wayside. Anyway, things are hopefully getting back to normal now so I'm going to try to make sure I post every month from now onwards.

If you saw the last post you may remember that I recently discovered Zentangle & ended up getting a bit hooked on doodling. You can find out all about Zentagle here if you'd like more information about it. I'm not sure that my drawings strictly count as Zentangle but since it's all about letting your creative side out and using repetitive patterns to create drawings I think they're close enough.

It's kind of like meditating and the idea of it is to just let your drawings evolve and take you in unexpected directions. I draw them with pen so there is no erasing mistakes, you just have to incorporate them into the picture and I often find that even when I think I've gone wrong if I keep going I end up with a picture I'm quite pleased with. I've been finding it really relaxing and it's a great way to turn my mind off and stop thinking about anything that is stressing me out.

Here is a slideshow of some of my latest doodles:



Since I started doodling I've become a little obsessed with circles, I even had to buy a compass (I never, ever expected to find a use for one of those after I left school LOL) to help me creating the outlines. The only non-freehand part of the drawings I do has been where I've used the compass to create the circles, everything else has been done by eye. I don't even use a ruler to draw straight lines with! I think when you're working with circular patterns the technical term for it is Mandala rather than Zentangle. Again I've not really done much research into this (you can read more about Mandala's here) because I'm having too much fun just doing whatever I feel like. I don't want to put rules and formulas in my head that don't need to be there so I'm using both of those terms very loosely.

I created this slideshow to show some of my latest circular designs:


Since I was drawing so much I decided to buy some cheap coloured note cards and use them to create birthday cards for friends and family. Most of the drawings in the slideshows are on notecards (I'm going to end up with enough cards to last for years at this rate LOL) but I've also been experimenting with names so below you can see my Dad's Fathers Day card and a birthday card I made for my brother.

So doodling has pretty much taken over my life for the last few months, I've not really spent much time on any other craft projects so I don't really have anything else to talk about in this post.

I'd love to know what you guys have been up to though. If you write your own Crafting Corner post please do leave me a link in the comments so I can come and find it. I'd also love to know what you think of Zentangle or Mandalas. Is it something you've tried yourself? If so please do share some of your creations!