My Unorganized Crafting

My office: this shows the entire width of the office, the only other things that fit in here with me are a tall,  narrow cabinet and Jackson's bunny cage. It is cozy but functional! In the dark spot on the left side of my desk is a small metal drawer cabinet where I keep glue, tape, exacto knife, etc. On top of that is my printer. Immediately to the right of the cabinet is a tie storage box from the Container store. In it I store markers of all kinds, drawing pencils, paint brushes, paint pens, gel pens and Truman the Mizzou Tiger. I have a metal pin board on the wall behind my desk. I also purchased two metal pictures from Hobby Lobby, you can see the Eiffel Tower one on the wall. These double as magnetic boards so that I can put up projects or ideas or just new pictures if I want to change things up. One of my crosses is currently on the other metal picture.   

Another view of my desk.

 

My creativity is usually fueled by Diet Cherry Coke and Starbuck's Black Ice Tea, I think the tea on this day was the Black Currant Ice Tea from Corner Bakery. the watch is my Garmin, it sinks my runs to the computer and automatically puts them on a calendar. One less organizational item to worry about.

 I am not a very organized person. I have a loose organizational system that involves lots of visuals. If it is out of sight then for me it is out of mind. This is one of the reasons there is perpetually a stack of papers on my kitchen counter. This is the stack of papers that I shove into the kitchen cabinet when someone comes to our house. The stack is smaller and more manageable than when the kids were in elementary school. There is just so much less to keep up with now that Bailey is at Mizzou and Parker is in High School- much less:  permission forms, project rubrics, school trip information, Earth Day/ holiday/Fall festival info, car wash, scout information, rec sports info, schedules of all kinds for team, clubs, lessons, picture day forms, prescriptions to be filled,  pictures to be framed, forms to be filed, etc.

The other area of organization that I struggle with is in the area of crafts. I have a craft cabinet and a very small office. I employ the same organizational strategy for making crafts and storing craft materials that I use for paperwork: out of sight, out of mind, therefore keep current project materials handy!  The Zentangle projects are ones that I want to work on often, these can be worked on while "watching" TV with Dean and Parker. I therefore needed a way to store the Zentangle supplies in a way that was easily accessible.

 This is what I came up with- a magazine storage box. I can keep this box with all my books and supplies for Zentangle projects in my office and then easily take it wherever I will be working.

I also needed a way to organize and "store" the different Zentangle patterns. I looked at the many Zentangle websites to see how others have organized their patterns. It is helpful to have them all in one place. Some people complete all the different patterns on special Zentangle tiles but then you have to store all the tiles. This is the method I liked best found at TanglePatterns.com. This is why Linda chose this system of organization:  "I use Moleskine® squared notebooks. The paper is acid-free and nice and smooth for drawing with the Sakura Micron Pens. The squared pages provide light guidelines and these help me get more accurate proportions when I draw. Not having done any drawing before, I need all the help I can get. These notebooks are a perfect size for portability along with your Zentangle® supplies." I agree with Linda. Below are examples from my Moleskine notebook and some tangles I have completed recently.

In the Zentangle books each new step in the tangle is drawn with red pen. I sometimes remember to change pens to illustrate the next step! I could just refer to the books but I need to practice the pattern anyway and this gives me a place to put the Zentangles I learn from the internet websites. It is also helpful to have all your  patterns in one place so you can easily flip through the book and find what you want to use for a project. I am often trying to balance light and dark patterns in a project so it helps to flip through to look for what is needed for balance.

OWLS!

I must have created the one on the right while watching the Big Bang Theory with Dean and Parker. I will use it in my Project Life scrapbook. Bazinga!

Tangling is fun to do. It does not require much skill and can be easily learned. The results are satisfying immediately. I grew up watching my grandmother, her sister and my cousins knit or crochet in front of the TV, while sitting outside, etc. I do one day hope to learn to knit but until then tangling has been so much fun to learn. It's the perfect thing to do while sitting somewhere. I wish I had known about it when I was doing all that waiting in car pool lines and  waiting at soccer practice, dance lessons, and doctors appointments.

I used a jar stamp for the outline of one of the tangles above. I used the same stamp to create one of my cross projects, you can see that here. I have a pear stencil that I used for some and an owl stamp that I love! after stamping I sketched a "string" inside and then tangled around the strings. Sometimes looking at all the little tangled squares reminds me of quilting. Some Zentangle artists make samplers of the different patterns so tangling does have a quilt-making quality. It is as close as I will get to that intricate skill. Happy Tangling!