I've taken up zentangle and coloring again.  Most of the coloring I did before was done with watercolor pencils, but I got some new books that I really like, but the paper doesn't work very well with watercolor, so I've been using my Prismacolor pencils.  Although watercolor pencils are easier to use, I'm finding the regular colored pencils fun too.  The secret to getting them nice and smooth is using either a blending pencil or a lighter color to go back and smooth the colors out.  If there's any tooth to the paper, the pencils will leave white showing through, so you have to "blend" them to smooth out the color.  Being the perfectionist that I am, I must have nice and smooth color!

Here are my first two from the book "Balance" by Angie Grace.

I wanted a small coloring book to take along with me on my trip to the British Isles, so made myself one with my own designs that I had made some time ago.  I made a few new ones but mostly reduced my larger designs down by removing some of the outer edges.  I didn't want to just reduce the whole thing because I was afraid the parts would be too tiny.  Here are two that I've colored so far.

And now for my latest zentangle.  I have a small Strathmore Visual Journal, which I'm using for zentangle.  It's nice and small  (about 3.5 x 5 ") so it's easy to slip into my purse and take along when I have spare moments to doodle.  Also, because the pages are small, it's not so overwhelming to fill up a page.  Here are my latest designs.

The following design was done from a tutorial I found on Zenspirations.  She has some great tutorials.  The page after that was done from a post I found on Pinterest.  The dangles are really fun.

 The last one, I saw a picture on Pinterest that someone had done and loved it, so used it for inspiration for this one.  That's one thing I love about Pinterest....so many wonderful ideas.  I want to color these but am saving that for some other time.

So this is what I'm up to these days.  I'm leaving for a trip to the British Isles on Aug 30th and will be there on a bus tour for 22 days.  I'm so excited about that and hope to come home with lots and lots of photos and am thinking of trying some watercoloring, using the photos for reference material.  I've been wanting to play around with watercolor for some time and have everything I need to do it.  It's just a matter of sitting down and playing.  We'll see how that works out.

Bye for now!

I have too many blogs!  One for quilting, one for dolls, one for gardening and this one.  I think I just need one blog for everything I do.  I guess this one will be it.  I'm tired of having so many blogs, so I'm just going to abandon the others and have this one.  The real problem is that I have too many hobbies that I like to do.   I really need to settle on maybe two or three and forget the rest.   But I don't think I can do that because I like to do too many things.

Recently I decided to add knitting to my other hobbies because I wanted to be able to knit little sweaters and things for my dolls.  So then I had to start collecting yarn, which I do by buying old sweaters, made with quality yarns, at the Goodwill outlet store and then take them apart and pull all the yarn out and roll it up into a ball to be re-knit into doll sweaters.  It was actually fun doing that, though.  But, when I finally found a pattern for a doll sweater of the right size, I ended up buying ready made yarn for it so I could get the correct size.  I decided I really need to learn how to knit first, before I try using that tiny yarn that was from the sweaters.

Lately I've been working on a quilt.  I get in the mood to start a new quilt and just do it.  I have so much quilt fabric now, I don't have to go out and buy any.  I just choose it from my stash.   I went kind of crazy buying fabric after starting to quilt.  From what I understand, that's what happens to quilt-a-holics.  They become addicted to fabric.  So I guess I'm just normal in that way.

I have been sewing some doll clothes.  Here's some pics.

I seem to go back and forth between sewing for dolls and and quilting.