Skyrim, PU, and hearts ATCs

Despite only having half a usable hand right now (cooking accident), I've had a very productive weekend. My goal was to clear up all the swaps on my dashboard, several of which are due January 31st. The rest are due in February, but I was feeling inspired. So, I've gotten everything done and ready to go. In addition to the projects below (dotee ATCs, Zentangle pattern book and Zentangle journal), I also finished up and packed up these ATCs.

A Skyrim ATC:


A letter P and a letter U (or lowercase n) for a private swap. The P is freshly made, although the u/n is quite old; I remade it by cutting it down and mounting it on the green background:


A hearts ATC for the "Give a piece of your heart" swap. I'm not a big hearts person, but I love the colors of this one:

Zentangle pattern book

After finishing the Zentangle journal (below) I was pretty done with tangling, but I still managed to finish this project. Someone asked me to host another round of the Zentangle pattern book swap, so I did. For this one I chose 26 patterns starting with each letter of the alphabet and drew them in (plus a couple extras at the end). The cover of the book is a page from an old calendar of quilts:




Although the page shown above is black, many of the pages are colored. My original plan was a rainbow (each page a different color) but that fell apart because I forgot what order the pages should go in!

Zentangle journal #7

The pages I made for the Zentangle journal #7 swap. They're A4 sized pages... so it was a lot of work. Other than that, I don't know what else to say about them, but if you're curious you can click to embiggen the first pic below, which is the introduction page I wrote, and tells a bit of information about each tangle:

Winter Dotee ATCs

Making some ATCs with dotee dolls on them is something I've been pondering for a while, and while I was pondering, someone else made a swap for it! Actually, there were two swaps (one Europe only and one international) so I had two chances. One of the swaps was winter-themed, so I decided to make both of the cards similar and hope that I didn't get the same partner (I didn't).


On the first card I got sick of the tail getting in my way so I bunched it up to give the little dotee a bit of a blanket instead. I think I like that better than the trailing tail. But on the second ATC, the face/hair/stars thing came out much better. Anyway, these fraternal twins are off on their way to new homes now!

Zentangled R

The Zentangled alphabet swap rolls on with R...

another Matisse ATC

I signed up for a Matisse ATC thinking that I still had some of the other Matisse-esque ATCs I'd made, but I must have sent them out. So I made one more:


This ATC came out nice, and my partner praised it, but I was pretty disappointed with what I received in this swap. The ATC I received was a painted woman's face, very well-made, but with no real connection to Matisse nor his style. Sigh. Well, can't win them all.

Art Journal

So here's one of the non-ATC projects I've worked on recently. I offered to host this swap as an international version of someone else's swap. Other than the sentence-a-day thing, I've never swapped a journal or art journal before. But 5 pages seemed pretty doable, so I decided to go for it.


Honestly, what a terrible way to start the year. I did not enjoy this swap, not one bit. I seriously considered canceling the swap. It was just too much pressure, and this was one of the few times I've ever felt pressured by a swap. Maybe I set myself up for failure by watching half a hundred videos about art journaling on youtube. Have you watched them? According to the internet, there is only way proper way to make an art journal, and it involves putting twenty layers of paint onto a page in different methods. I don't paint.

Anyway. Now that the project is done, sent, received, and finished, I guess I can find one or two nice things to say about it...


The inside cover. The bird is a failed ATC which pulls out of a pocket; inside is written my name and info:


Page one; paint, silver "paint" (it's actually that junk you spray on your windows to make it look like fake snow), silver pens and glue, blue felt flowers:


Second page; hand drawn fantasy map. I'm not even a drawer, but this came out pretty cool (if I do say so myself). I think this is my favorite page:


Middle page, felt with pockets holding finger puppets:


Some simple mono-tangles:


Last page, heart themed. The realistic heart is 100% copied (or maybe traced, I don't remember) from a clip art I found online. Still, I think it looks pretty great:


Final page, another pocket with a note inside, telling about my impressions of this whole project. A bit less bluntly than I said them above, of course :)

Puppy ATC

This was made as a tag for someone on swap-bot:


For the back, I experimented with a new (I mean, new for me) way of sewing a paper onto the fabric front: